I lay down with the greater part of my clothes on, and slept well for a few hours.  When I awoke, the wind had risen, and the sign of the house (the Ship) was creaking and banging about, with noises that startled me.  Rising softly, for my charge lay fast asleep, I looked out of the window.  It commanded the causeway where we had hauled up our boat, and, as my eyes adapted themselves to the light of the clouded moon, I saw two men looking into her.  They passed by under the window, looking at nothing else, and they did not go down to the landing-place which I could discern to be empty, but struck across the marsh in the direction of the Nore.

My first impulse was to call up Herbert, and show him the two men going away.  But, reflecting before I got into his room, which was at the back of the house and adjoined mine, that he and Startop had had a harder day than I, and were fatigued, I forbore.  Going back to my window, I could see the two men moving over the marsh.  In that light, however, I soon lost them, and feeling very cold, lay down to think of the matter, and fell asleep again.

We were up early.  As we walked to and fro, all four together, before breakfast, I deemed it right to recount what I had seen.  Again our charge was the least anxious of the party.  It was very likely that the men belonged to the Custom House, he said quietly, and that they had no thought of us.  I tried to persuade myself that it was so — as, indeed, it might easily be.  However, I proposed that he and I should walk away together to a distant point we could see, and that the boat should take us aboard there, or as near there as might prove feasible, at about noon.  This being considered a good precaution, soon after breakfast he and I set forth, without saying anything at the tavern.

He smoked his pipe as we went along, and sometimes stopped to clap me on the shoulder.  One would have supposed that it was I who was in danger, not he, and that he was reassuring me.  We spoke very little.  As we approached the point, I begged him to remain in a sheltered place, while I went on to reconnoitre; for, it was towards it that the men had passed in the night.  He complied, and I went on alone.  There was no boat off the point, nor any boat drawn up anywhere near it, nor were there any signs of the men having embarked there.  But, to be sure the tide was high, and there might have been some footprints under water.

When he looked out from his shelter in the distance, and saw that I waved my hat to him to come up, he rejoined me, and there we waited; sometimes lying on the bank wrapped in our coats, and sometimes moving about to warm ourselves:  until we saw our boat coming round.  We got aboard easily, and rowed out into the track of the steamer.  By that time it wanted but ten minutes of one o’clock, and we began to look out for her smoke.

But, it was half-past one before we saw her smoke, and soon afterwards we saw behind it the smoke of another steamer.  As they were coming on at full speed, we got the two bags ready, and took that opportunity of saying good-bye to Herbert and Startop.  We had all shaken hands cordially, and neither Herbert’s eyes nor mine were quite dry, when I saw a four-oared galley shoot out from under the bank but a little way ahead of us, and row out into the same track.