Here was a difficulty; but I resolved to make everything sure.  I took my handkerchief out of the coat pocket, and bent down to tie my feet firmly together.  All this I did quite calmly and mechanically.  As far as one can be certain of anything at this distance of time, I am certain of this, that no thought of hesitation came into my head.  It was not that I overcame any doubts; they never occurred to me.

I was stooping down, and had already bound the handkerchief once around my ankles, when my boat grated softly against something.  I looked up, and saw once more above me a dark ship’s hull, and right above my head the white letters, Water-Witch.

This would never do.  My boat had drifted up the river again with the tide, stern foremost, but a little aslant, and had run against the warp by the schooner’s bows.  I must pull out again, for otherwise the people on board would hear me.  I pushed gently off from the warp and took the sculls, when suddenly I heard voices back towards the stern.

My first impulse was to get away with all speed, and I had already taken half a stroke, when something caused my hands to drop and my heart to give one wild leap.

What was it?  Something in the voices?  Yes; something that brushed my stupor from me as though it were a cobweb; something that made me hush my breath, and strain with all my ears to listen.

The two voices were those of man and woman, They were slightly raised, as if in a quarrel; the woman’s pleading and entreating, the man’s threatening and stern.  But that was not the reason that suddenly set my heart uncontrollably beating and all the blood rushing and surging to my temples.

For in those two voices I recognised Mrs. Luttrell and Simon Colliver!

“Have you not done enough?” the woman’s voice was saying.  “Has your cruelty no end, that you must pursue me so?  Take this money, and let me go.”

“I must have more,” was the answer.

“Indeed, I have no more just now.  Go, only go, and I will send you some.  I swear it.”

“I cannot go,” said the man.

“Why?”

“Never mind.  I am watched.”  Here the voice muttered some words which I could not catch.  “So that unless you wish to see your husband swing—­and believe me, my confession and last dying speech would not omit to mention the kind aid I had received from you and Clar-”

“Hush! oh, hush!  If I get you this money, will you leave us in peace for a time?  Knowing your nature, I will not ask for pity—­only for a short respite.  I must tell Claire, poor girl; she does not know yet—­”

Quite softly my boat had drifted once more across the schooner’s bows.  I pulled it round until its nose touched the anchor chain, and made the painter fast.  Then slipping my hand up the chain, I stood with my shoeless feet upon the gunwale by the bows.  Still grasping the chain, I sprang and swung myself out to the jib-boom that, with the cant of the vessel, was not far above the water:  then pressed my left foot in between the stay and the brace, while I hung for a moment to listen.