'We can leave the things here,' I argued feebly, 'and walk over with
my bag.'

'Oh, I shall have to go aboard anyhow,' he rejoined; 'I _never_ sleep
on shore.'

He seemed to be clinging timidly, but desperately, to some diplomatic
end. A stony despair was invading me and paralysing resistance.
Better face the worst and be done with it.

'Come on,' I said, grimly.

Heavily loaded, we stumbled over railway lines and rubble heaps, and
came on the harbour. Davies led the way to a stairway, whose weedy
steps disappeared below in gloom.

'If you'll get into the dinghy,' he said, all briskness now, 'I'll
pass the things down.

I descended gingerly, holding as a guide a sodden painter which ended
in a small boat, and conscious that I was collecting slime on cuffs
and trousers.

'Hold up!' shouted Davies, cheerfully, as I sat down suddenly near
the bottom, with one foot in the water.

I climbed wretchedly into the dinghy and awaited events.

'Now float her up close under the quay wall, and make fast to the
ring down there,' came down from above, followed by the slack of the
sodden painter, which knocked my cap off as it fell. 'All fast? Any
knot'll do,' I heard, as I grappled with this loathsome task, and
then a big, dark object loomed overhead and was lowered into the
dinghy. It was my portmanteau, and, placed athwart, exactly filled
all the space amidships. 'Does it fit?' was the anxious inquiry from
aloft.

'Beautifully.'

'Capital!'

Scratching at the greasy wall to keep the dinghy close to it, I
received in succession our stores, and stowed the cargo as best I
could, while the dinghy sank lower and lower in the water, and its
precarious superstructure grew higher.

'Catch!' was the final direction from above, and a damp soft parcel
hit me in the chest. 'Be careful of that, it's meat. Now back to the
stairs!'

I painfully acquiesced, and Davies appeared.

'It's a bit of a load, and she's rather deep; but I _think_ we shall
manage,' he reflected. 'You sit right aft, and I'll row.'

I was too far gone for curiosity as to how this monstrous pyramid was
to be rowed, or even for surmises as to its foundering by the way. I
crawled to my appointed seat, and Davies extricated the buried sculls
by a series of tugs, which shook the whole structure, and made us
roll alarmingly. How he stowed himself into rowing posture I have not
the least idea, but eventually we were moving sluggishly out into the
open water