“Dundee,” he replied.  “Dundee—­and we’re just between sixty and seventy miles away now, and it’s near seven o’clock.  We’ll be in Dundee early in the afternoon, anyway.  And what’ll you do there?  You’ll be for getting the next train to Berwick?”

“I’m not so sure, captain,” I answered.  “I don’t want that man to know I’m alive—­yet.  It’ll be a nice surprise for him—­later.  But there are those that I must let know as soon as possible—­so the first thing I’ll do, I’ll wire.  And in the meantime, let me have a sleep.”

The steamer that had picked me up was nothing but a tramp, plodding along with a general cargo from London to Dundee, and its accommodation was as rough as its skipper was homely.  But it was a veritable palace of delight and luxury to me after that terrible night, and I was soon hard and fast asleep in the skipper’s own bunk—­and was still asleep when he laid a hand on me at three o’clock that afternoon.

“We’re in the Tay,” he said, “and we’ll dock in half an hour.  And now—­you can’t go ashore in your underclothing, man!  And where’s your purse?”

He had rightly sized up the situation.  I had got rid of everything but my singlet and drawers in the attempt to keep going; as for my purse, that was where the rest of my possessions were—­sunk or floating.

“You and me’s about of a build,” he remarked.  “I’ll fit you up with a good suit that I have, and lend you what money you want.  But what is it you’re going to do?”

“How long are you going to stop here in Dundee, captain?” I asked.

“Four days,” he answered.  “I’ll be discharging tomorrow, and loading the next two days, and then I’ll be away again.”

“Lend me the clothes and a sovereign,” said I.  “I’ll wire to my principal, the gentleman I told you about, to come here at once with clothes and money, so I’ll repay you and hand your suit back first thing tomorrow morning, when I’ll bring him to see you.”

He immediately pulled a sovereign out of his pocket, and, turning to a locker, produced a new suit of blue serge and some necessary linen.

“Aye?” he remarked, a bit wonderingly.  “You’ll be for fetching him along here, then?  And for what purpose?”

“I want him to take your evidence about picking me up,” I answered.  “That’s one thing—­and—­there’s other reasons that we’ll tell you about afterwards.  And—­don’t tell anybody here of what’s happened, and pass the word for silence to your crew.  It’ll be something in their pockets when my friend comes along.”

He was a cute man, and he understood that my object was to keep the news of my escape from Sir Gilbert Carstairs, and he promised to do what I asked.  And before long—­he and I being, as he had observed, very much of a size, and the serge suit fitting me very well—­I was in the streets of Dundee, where I had never been before, seeking out a telegraph office, and twiddling the skipper’s sovereign between thumb and finger while I worked out a problem that needed some little thought.