“Don’t know, sir,” answered the captain, after a look through his glasses.  “Private yacht—­can’t make out her name—­there’s a flag or something hanging over the stern.  She’s flying the French flag.  There come the other press boats behind us, sir,” he added.  “And there’s the Savoie just slowing down at quarantine.”

Far ahead we could see the great hull of the liner, dark against the horizon, and crowned with row upon row of glowing lights.

“One doesn’t appreciate how big those boats are until one sees them from the water,” I remarked.  “Isn’t she immense?”

“And yet she’s not an especially big boat, either,” said Godfrey.  “To swing in under the really big ones—­like the Olympic—­is an experience to remember.”

The Savoie had by this time slowed down until she was just holding her own against the tide, and one of her lower ports swung open.  A moment later, a boat puffed up beside her, made fast, and three or four men clambered aboard and disappeared through the port.

“There go the doctors,” said Godfrey.  “And there is that French boat going alongside.”

The tug from quarantine dropped astern and the French yacht took her place.  After a short colloquy, one man from her was helped aboard the Savoie.  Then it was our turn, and after what seemed to me a tremendous swishing and swirling at imminent risk of collision, we swung up to the open port, a line was flung out and made fast, and a moment later Godfrey and I and the other two men were aboard the liner.

My companions exchanged greetings with the officer in charge of the open port, and then we hurried forward along a narrow corridor, smelling of rubber and heated metal, then up stair after stair, until at last we came to the main companionway.  Here the two men left us, to seek certain distinguished passengers, I suppose, whose views upon the questions of the day were (presumably) anxiously awaited by an expectant public.  Godfrey stopped in front of the purser’s office, and passed his card through the little window to the man inside the cage.

“I should like to see M. Pigot, of the Paris Service du Surete” he said.  “Perhaps you will be so kind as to have a steward take my card to him?”

“That is unnecessary, sir,” replied the purser, courteously.  “That is M. Pigot yonder—­the gentleman with the white hair, with his back to us.  You will have to wait for a moment, however; the gentleman speaking with him is from the French consulate, and has but this moment come aboard.”

I could not see Inspector Pigot’s face, but I could see that he held himself very erect, in a manner bespeaking military training.  The messenger from the legation was a youngish man, with waxed moustache and wearing an eyeglass.  He was greeting M. Pigot at the moment, and, after a word or two, produced from an inside pocket an official-looking envelope, tied with red tape and secured with an immense red seal.