“Not for worlds!” Hastily.  “It is necessary they should not see me.  If they did—­”

He was obliged to explain a little of the real situation to her; of the stratagem he had employed.  This he did in few words.  She listened eagerly.  The mantle of the commonplace, which to her eyes had fallen a few moments before on his shoulders, became at least partly withdrawn.  She divined the great hazard, the danger he had faced—­was facing now.  Detective or not, it had been daringly done.  Her voice, with a warm thrill in it, said as much.  Her eyes shone like stars.  She came of a live virile stock, from men and women who had done things themselves.

“If only I, too, had a weapon!” she said, leaning toward him.  “In case they should discover—­”

“No, no.  It wouldn’t do at all.”

“Why not?” the warm lips breathed.  “I can shoot.  Some one once taught me—­”

She stopped short.  A chill seemed descending.  “You were saying—­” he prompted eagerly.

But she did not answer.  The sweep of her hair made a shadowy veil around her; his mind harked swiftly back.  She had always had wondrous hair.  It had taken two big braids to hold it; most girls could get their hair in one braid.  He had been very proud, for her, of those two braids—­once—­with their blue or pink ribbons that had popped below the edge of her skirts.  He continued to see blue and pink ribbons now.

Both were for some time silent.  At length she stirred—­seated herself.  Mr. Heatherbloom mechanically did likewise, but at a distance from her.  He tried not to see her, to become mentally oblivious of her presence, to concentrate again solely on the matter in hand.  A long, long interval passed.  Chug! chug! the engines continued to grind.  How far away they sounded.  Another sound, too, at length broke the stillness—­a stealthy footfall on the deck.  It sent him at once softly to the window; he gazed out.  She followed.

“Are—­are we getting anywhere near port?”

He did not tell her that it was not port he was looking for so soon as he gazed out searchingly into the night.

“What is it?” She had drawn the curtain a little.  Her shoulder touched him.

Suddenly his arm swept her back.  “What do you mean”—­he turned on her sternly—­“by drawing that curtain?”

“Was any one there?”

“Any one—­” he began almost fiercely; then paused.  The figure he had seen in that flash looked like that of the foreman of the stokers.  In that case, then, the fellow was not dead; he had recovered.  Through a mistaken sense of mercy Mr. Heatherbloom had not slipped the seemingly lifeless body over the side.  Now he, and she, too, were likely to pay dearly for that clemency.  Bitterly he clenched his hands.  Had the man caught a glimpse of him at the window?  A flicker of electric light, without, shone on it.