They approached the liner, and Sylvia saw some dark heads looking over the railing at her.  Her boatman rowed around the stern to the other side, where the slanting stairs used in boarding the harbor-boats still hung over the side.  The landing was far above their heads.  Sylvia stood up and cried loudly to the dull faces, staring down at her from the steerage deck.  “Send somebody down on the stairs to speak to me.”  There was a stir; a man in a blue uniform came and looked over the edge, and went away.  After a moment, an officer in white ran down the stairs to the hanging landing with the swift, sure footing of a seaman.  Sylvia stood up again, turning her white face up to him, her eyes blazing in the shadow of her hat.  “I’ve just heard that my mother is very sick, and I must get back to America at once.  If you will let down the rope ladder, I can climb up.  I must go!  I have plenty of money.  I must!”

The officer stared, shook his head, and ran back up the stairs, disappearing into the black hole in the ship’s side.  The dark, heavy faces continued to hang over the railing, staring fixedly down at the boat with a steady, incurious gaze.  Sylvia’s boatman balanced his oar-handles on his knees, rolled a cigarette and lighted it.  The boat swayed up and down on the shimmering, heaving roll of the water, although the ponderous ship beside it loomed motionless as a rock.  The sun beat down on Sylvia’s head and up in her face from the molten water till she felt sick, but when another officer in white, an elderly man with an impassive, bearded face, came down the stairs, she rose up, instantly forgetful of everything but her demand.  She called out her message again, straining her voice until it broke, poised so impatiently in the little boat, swinging under her feet, that she seemed almost about to spring up towards the two men leaning over to catch her words.  When she finished, the older man nodded, the younger one ran back up the stairs, and returned with a rope ladder.

Sylvia’s boatman stirred himself with an ugly face of misgiving.  He clutched at her arm, and made close before her face the hungry, Mediterranean gesture of fingering money.  She took out her purse, gave him the fifty-lire note, and catching at the ladder as it was flung down, disregarding the shouted commands of the men above her to “wait!” she swung herself upon it, climbing strongly and surely in spite of her hampering skirts.

The two men helped her up, alarmed and vexed at the risk she had taken.  They said something about great crowds on the boat, and that only in the second cabin was there a possibility for accommodations.  If she answered them, she did not know what she said.  She followed the younger man down a long corridor, at first dark and smelling of hemp, later white, bright with electric light, smelling strongly of fresh paint, stagnant air, and machine-oil.  They emerged in a round hallway at the foot of a staircase.  The