s grubby face perspiring. Then the lock gates opened;
and so, in a Babel of shouting, whining of blocks, and creaking of
spars, our whole company was split out into the dingy bosom of the
Elbe. The 'Johannes' gathered way under wind and tide and headed for
midstream. A last shake of the hand, and Bartels reluctantly slipped
the head-rope and we drifted apart. 'Gute Reise! Gute Reise!' It was
no time for regretful gazing, for the flood-tide was sweeping us up
and out, and it was not until we had set the foresail, edged into a
shallow bight, and let go our anchor, that we had leisure to think of
him again; but by that time his and the other craft were shades in
the murky east.

We swung close to a _glacis_ of smooth blue mud which sloped up to a
weed-grown dyke; behind lay the same flat country, colourless, humid;
and opposite us, two miles away, scarcely visible in the deepening
twilight, ran the outline of a similar shore. Between rolled the
turgid Elbe. 'The Styx flowing through Tartarus,' I thought to
myself, recalling some of our Baltic anchorages.

I told my news to Davies as soon as the anchor was down,
instinctively leaving the sex of the inquirer to the last, as my
informant had done.

'The 'Medusa' called yesterday?' he interrupted. 'And outward bound?
That's a rum thing. Why didn't he inquire when he was going _up_?'

'It was a lady,' and I drily retailed the official's story, very busy
with a deck-broom the while. 'We're all square now, aren't we?' I
ended. 'I'll go below and light the stove.'

Davies had been engaged in fixing up the riding-light. When I last
saw him he was still so engaged, but motionless, the lantern under
his left arm and his right hand grasping the forestay and the
half-knotted lanyard; his eyes staring fixedly down the river, a
strange look in his face, half exultant, half perplexed. When he
joined me and spoke he seemed to be concluding a difficult argument.

'Anyway, it proves,' he said, 'that the 'Medusa' has gone back to
Norderney. That's the main thing.'

'Probably,' I agreed, 'but let's sum up all we know. First, it's
certain that nobody we've met as yet has any suspicion of _us_--'

'I told you he did it off his own bat,' threw in Davies.

'Or, secondly, of _him._ If he's what you think it's not known here.'

'I can't help that.'

'Thirdly, he inquires for you on his way _back_ from Hamburg, three
weeks after the event. It doesn't look as if he thought he had
dispose