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Then, as if headed off by the noise of hammering within, he faced about and made across the bridge for the quay-head and his favourite bollard. There, as a man in a dream, he found a seat, and vainly for ten minutes strove to collect and arrange his thoughts.
"You shall judge if in this darkness I steer you straight for St. Lide's Quay; and I take you to witness look over your shoulder there is no lamp on the quay-head to guide me, or at least none visible." She laughed again, but on the instant grew serious. "Yes," she added, "I can find my way among the Islands, I thank God." And this puzzled him yet more.
I was standing in the midst of the throng of the quay-head, with my troubled mind rinding ease in the industry and interest of those people without loves or jealousies, and only their poor merchandise to exercise them, when I started at the sound of a foot coming up the stone slip from the wateredge. I turned, and who was there but MacLachlan?
"Coffins sail fastest in a calm." "You'd best all out to the quay-head, and whistle for a wind: it would be an ill one that would blow nobody good just now!" But the wind came not, nor the rain; and the cholera crept nearer and nearer: while the hearts of all in Aberalva were hardened, and out of very spite against the agitators, they did less than they would have done otherwise.
But I was unnerved; the impulse came too late; and as the foresail filled and she picked up steerage way, I stood helpless under the lamp at the quay-head stood and stared after her, alone with the sense of my incredible folly. Somewhere out yonder Captain Coffin was waiting in his shore-boat. I listened, minute after minute, on the chance of hearing his hail.
The boat would just be shoving off from the old Stone Quay when his mother came there in her white mutch. "'Give me back my son, my only son, she cried, standing on the quay-head; 'you will not be taking away the one that keeps me in meat and drink, me an old, old woman. Och, bring him back, my lad, and I'll be blessing ye and praying for ye in your bloody wars.
The loungers on the quay-head let us pass unmolested, and, following the lieutenant's directions, sure enough within five minutes we found ourselves under the lamp of the Blue Posts! The night-porter eyed us suspiciously before admitting us.
They told what an eye he had, as a naturalist, for anything uncommon in the maunds; how he taught them to be observant, alert for any strange fish, and to bring it home alive, if possible; and how he was never so happy as when seated on a bollard near the Quay-head with a drawing-board on his knee, busy for he was a wonder with pencil and brush transferring to paper the outline and markings of a specimen and its perishable exquisite colours; working rapidly while he listened to the account of its capture, and maybe pausing now and again to pencil a note on the margin of the portrait.
On his way to ask news of the group of fishermen at the Quay-head he hurried and almost without observing him past Nicky-Nan; who likewise had hobbled forth to discover the meaning of the uproar, and, having discovered it, had retired to seat himself on the bollard outside the "Three Pilchards" and nurse his leg.
"Godwin, our ill-luck is that you love her also, and that you thought the same thoughts which I did yonder on the quay-head." Godwin flushed a little, and his long fingers tightened their grip upon his knee. "It is so," he said quietly. "To my grief it is so. But Rosamund knows nothing of this, and should never know it if you will keep a watch upon your tongue.
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