Sara Lee stood in the shadows and listened. There were voices overhead,
from the bridge. A door opened onto the deck and threw out a ray of
light. Some one came out and went on shore, walking with brisk ringing
steps. And then at last she put down her bag and tried door after door,
without result.
The man who had gone ashore called another. The gangway was drawn in.
The engines began to vibrate under foot. Sara Lee, breathless and
terrified, stood close to a cabin door and remained immovable. At one
moment it seemed as if a seaman was coming forward to where she stood.
But he did not come.
The Calais boat was waiting until the other steamer had got well out of
the harbor. The fog had lifted, and the searchlight was moving over
the surface. It played round the channel steamer without touching it.
But none of this was visible to Sara Lee.
At last the lights of the quay began to recede. The little boat rocked
slightly in its own waves as it edged away. It moved slowly through
the shipping and out until, catching the swell of the channel, it shot
ahead at top speed.
For an hour Sara Lee stood there. The channel wind caught her and tore
at her skirts until she was almost frozen. And finally, in sheer
desperation, she worked her way round to the other side. She saw no
one. Save for the beating heart of the engine below it might have been
a dead ship.
On the other side she found an open door and stumbled into the tiny dark
deck cabin, as chilled and frightened a philanthropist as had ever
crossed that old and tricky and soured bit of seaway. And there, to be
frank, she forgot her fright in as bitter a tribute of seasickness as
even the channel has ever exacted.
She had locked herself in, and she fell at last into an exhausted sleep.
When she wakened and peered out through the tiny window it was gray
winter dawn. The boat was quiet, and before her lay the quay of Calais
and the Gare Maritime. A gangway was out and a hurried survey showed
no one in sight.
Sara Lee picked up her suitcase and opened the door. The fresh morning
air revived her, but nevertheless it was an extremely pale young woman
who, obeying Henri's instructions, went ashore that morning in the gray
dawn unseen, undisturbed and unquestioned. But from the moment she
appeared on the gangway until the double glass doors of the Gare
Maritime closed behind her this apparently calm young woman did not
breathe at all. She arrived, indeed, with lungs fairly collapsed and
her heart entirely unreliable.