“The Elsa,” replied a woman, who had been selling bread all day on the quay, and was now packing up her stall, “you ask for the Elsa. There is such a ship, I know. But how can I say which she is? See, they lie right across the river like a bridge. Besides, it is late, and sailors are rough men.”
Désirée hurried on. Louis d’Arragon had said that the ship was lying near to the Krahn-Thor, of which the great hooded roof loomed darkly against the stars above her. She was looking about her when a man came forward with the hesitating step of one who has been told to wait the arrival of someone unknown to him.
“The Elsa,” she said to him; “which ship is it?”
“Come along with me, Mademoiselle,” the man replied; “though I was not told to look for a woman.”
He spoke in English, which Désirée hardly understood; for she had never heard it from English lips, and looked for the first time on one of that race upon which all the world waited now for salvation. For the English, of all the nations, were the only men who from the first had consistently defied Napoleon.
The sailor led the way towards the river. As he passed the lamp burning dimly above some steps, Désirée saw that he was little more than a boy. He turned and offered her his hand with a shy laugh, and together they stood at the bottom of the steps with the water lapping at their feet.
“Have you a letter,” he said, “or will you come on board?”
Then perceiving that she did not understand, he repeated the question in German.
“I will come on board,” she answered.
The Elsa was lying in the middle of the river, and the boat into which Désirée stepped shot across the water without sound of oars. The sailor was paddling it noiselessly at the stern. Désirée was not unused to boats, and when they came alongside the Elsa she climbed on board without help.
“This way,” said the sailor, leading her towards the deckhouse where a light burned dimly behind red curtains. He knocked at the door and opened it without awaiting a reply. In the little cabin two men sat at a table, and one of them was Louis d’Arragon dressed in the rough clothes of a merchant seaman. He seemed to recognize Désirée at once, though she still stood without the door, in the darkness.
“You?” he said in surprise. “I did not expect you, madame. You want me?”
“Yes,” answered Désirée, stepping over the combing. Louis’s companion, who was also a sailor, coarsely clad, rose and, awkwardly taking off his cap, hurried to the door, murmuring some vague apology. It is not always the roughest men who have the worst manners towards women.
He closed the door behind him, leaving Désirée and Louis looking at each other by the light of an oil lamp that flickered and gave forth a greasy smell. The little cabin was smoke-ridden, and smelt of ancient tar. It was no bigger than the table in the drawing-room in the Frauengasse, across which he had bowed to her in farewell a few days earlier, little knowing when and where they were to meet again. For fate can always turn a surprise better than the human fancy.
Behind the curtain, the window stood open, and the high, clear song of the wind through the rigging filled the little cabin with a continuous minor note of warning which must have been part of his life; for he must have heard it, as all sailors do, sleeping or waking, night and day.
He was probably so accustomed to it that he never heeded it. But it filled Désirée’s ears, and whenever she heard it in afterlife, in memory this moment came again to her, and she looked back to it, as a traveller may look back to a milestone at a crossroad, and wonder where his journey might have ended had he taken another turning.
“My father,” she said quickly, “is in danger. There is no one else in Danzig to whom we can turn, and—”
She paused. What was she going to add? She hesitated, and then was silent. There was no reason why she should have elected to come to him. At all events she gave none.
“I am glad I was in Danzig when it happened,” he said, turning to take up his cap, which was of rough dark fur, such as seamen wear even in summer at night in the Northern seas.
“Come,” he added, “you can tell me as we go ashore.”
But they did not speak while the sailor sculled the boat to the steps. On the quay they would probably pass unnoticed, for there were many strange sailors at this time in Danzig, and Louis d’Arragon might easily be mistaken for one of the French seamen who had brought stores by sea from Bordeaux and Brest and Cherbourg.
“Now tell me,” he said, as they walked side by side; and in voluble French, Désirée launched into her story. It was rather incoherent, by reason, perhaps, of its frankness.
“Stop—stop,” he interrupted gravely, “who is Barlasch?”
Louis walked rather slowly in his stiff sea-boots at her side, and she instinctively spoke less rapidly as she explained the part that Barlasch had played.
“And you trust him?”
“Of course,” she answered.
“But why?”
“Oh, you are so matter-of-fact,” she exclaimed; “I do not know. Because he is trustworthy, I suppose.”
She continued the story, but suddenly stopped and looked up at him under the shadow of her hood.
“You are silent,”
