He hurried off homeward.  What was he going to do?

As he passed a turret close to the signal mast the strident howl of the fog-horn went off in his very face.  He was so startled that he nearly fell and shrank back as far as the granite parapet.  He sat down half-stunned by the sudden shock.  The steamer which was the first to reply seemed to be quite near and was already at the entrance, the tide having risen.

Pierre turned round and could discern its red eye dim through the fog.  Then, in the broad light of the electric lanterns, a huge black shadow crept up between the piers.  Behind him the voice of the look-out man, the hoarse voice of an old retired sea-captain, shouted: 

“What ship?” And out of the fog the voice of the pilot standing on deck—­not less hoarse—­replied: 

“The Santa Lucia.”

“Where from?”

“Italy.”

“What port?”

“Naples.”

And before Pierre’s bewildered eyes rose, as he fancied, the fiery pennon of Vesuvius, while, at the foot of the volcano, fire-flies danced in the orange-groves of Sorrento or Castellamare.  How often had he dreamed of these familiar names as if he knew the scenery.  Oh, if he might but go away, now at once, never mind whither, and never come back, never write, never let any one know what had become of him!  But no, he must go home—­home to his father’s house, and go to bed.

He would not.  Come what might he would not go in; he would stay there till daybreak.  He liked the roar of the fog-horns.  He pulled himself together and began to walk up and down like an officer on watch.

Another vessel was coming in behind the other, huge and mysterious.  An
English India-man, homeward bound.

He saw several more come in, one after another, out of the impenetrable vapour.  Then, as the damp became quite intolerable, Pierre set out towards the town.  He was so cold that he went into a sailors’ tavern to drink a glass of grog, and when the hot and pungent liquor had scorched his mouth and throat he felt a hope revive within him.

Perhaps he was mistaken.  He knew his own vagabond unreason so well!  No doubt he was mistaken.  He had piled up the evidence as a charge is drawn up against an innocent person, whom it is always so easy to convict when we wish to think him guilty.  When he should have slept he would think differently.

Then he went in and to bed, and by sheer force of will he at last dropped asleep.

CHAPTER V

But the doctor’s frame lay scarcely more than an hour or two in the torpor of troubled slumbers.  When he awoke in the darkness of his warm, closed room he was aware, even before thought was awake in him, of the painful oppression, the sickness of heart which the sorrow we have slept on leaves behind it.  It is as though the disaster of which the shock merely jarred us at first, had, during sleep, stolen into our very flesh, bruising and exhausting it like a fever.  Memory returned to him like a blow, and he sat up in bed.  Then slowly, one by one, he again went through all the arguments which had wrung his heart on the jetty while the fog-horns were bellowing.  The more he thought the less he doubted.  He felt himself dragged along by his logic to the inevitable certainty, as by a clutching, strangling hand.