“Can you row?” I asked.

“Why don’t you ask your pal?” he demanded savagely; “he rowed on last year’s crew.”

“Phil!” cried Lady Moya.  Her voice suggested a temper I had not suspected.  “You will row or you can get out and walk!  Take the oars,” she commanded, “and be civil!” Lady Moya, with the tiller in her hand, sat in the stern; Stumps, with Kinney huddled at his knees, was stowed away forward.  I took the stroke and Aldrich the bow oars.

“We will make for the Connecticut shore,” I said, and pulled from under the stern of the Patience.

In a few minutes we had lost all sight and, except for her whistle, all sound of her; and we ourselves were lost in the fog.  There was another eloquent and embarrassing silence.  Unless, in the panic, they trampled upon each other, I had no real fear for the safety of those on board the steamer.  Before we had abandoned her I had heard the wireless frantically sputtering the “stand-by” call, and I was certain that already the big boats of the Fall River, Providence, and Joy lines, and launches from every wireless station between Bridgeport and Newport, were making toward her.  But the margin of safety, which to my thinking was broad enough for all the other passengers, for the lovely lady was in no way sufficient.  That mob-swept deck was no place for her.  I was happy that, on her account, I had not waited for a possible rescue.  In the yawl she was safe.  The water was smooth, and the Connecticut shore was, I judged, not more than three miles distant.  In an hour, unless the fog confused us, I felt sure the lovely lady would again walk safely upon dry land.  Selfishly, on Kinney’s account and my own, I was delighted to find myself free of the steamer, and from any chance of her landing us where police waited with open arms.  The avenging angel in the person of Aldrich was still near us, so near that I could hear the water dripping from his clothes, but his power to harm was gone.  I was congratulating myself on this when suddenly he undeceived me.  Apparently he had been considering his position toward Kinney and myself, and, having arrived at a conclusion, was anxious to announce it.

“I wish to repeat,” he exclaimed suddenly, “that I’m under obligations to nobody.  Just because my friends,” he went on defiantly, “choose to trust themselves with persons who ought to be in jail, I can’t desert them.  It’s all the more reason why I shouldn’t desert them.  That’s why I’m here!  And I want it understood as soon as I get on shore I’m going to a police station and have those persons arrested.”

* * * * *

Rising out of the fog that had rendered each of us invisible to the other, his words sounded fantastic and unreal.  In the dripping silence, broken only by hoarse warnings that came from no direction, and within the mind of each the conviction that we were lost, police stations did not immediately concern us.  So no one spoke, and in the fog the words died away and were drowned.  But I was glad he had spoken.  At least I was forewarned.  I now knew that I had not escaped, that Kinney and I were still in danger.  I determined that so far as it lay with me, our yawl would be beached at that point on the coast of Connecticut farthest removed, not only from police stations, but from all human habitation.