This time, bewildered and uneasy, she certainly saw Henri.But he ignored her.He was alone, and smoking one of his interminable cigarettes.He had not said he was crossing, and why had he not spoken to her? He wandered past down the pier, and she lost him in the shadows.When he came back he paused near her, and at last saluted and spoke.
"Pardon," he said."If you will stand back here you will find less wind."Thank you."
He carried her suitcase back, and stooping over to place it at her feet he said: "I shall send him on board with a message to the captain.When I come back try again."He left her at once.The passengers for Boulogne were embarking now.A silent lot, they disappeared into the warmth and brightness of the little boat and were lost.No one paid any attention to Sara Lee standing in the shadows.
Soon Henri came back.He walked briskly and touched his cap as he passed.He went aboard the Boulogne steamer, and without a backward glance disappeared.
Sara Lee watched him out of sight, in a very real panic.He had been something real and tangible in that shadowy place - something familiar in an unfamiliar world.But he was gone.She threw up her head.
So once more Sara Lee picked up her suitcase and went down the pier.Now she was unchallenged.What lurking figure might he on the dark deck of the Calais boat she could not tell.That was the chance she was to take.The gangway was still out, and as quietly as possible she went aboard.The Boulogne boat had suddenly gone dark, and she heard the churning of the screw.With the extinction of the lights on the other boat came at last deeper night to her aid.A few steps, a stumble, a gasp - and she was on board the forbidden ship.
She turned forward, according to her instructions, where the overhead deck made below an even deeper shadow.Henri had said that there were cabins there, and that the chance was of finding an unlocked one.If they were all locked she would be discovered at dawn, and arrested.And Sara Lee was not a war correspondent.She was not accustomed to arrest.Indeed she had a deep conviction that arrest in her case would mean death.False, of course, but surely it shows her courage.
As she stood there, breathless and listening, the Boulogne boat moved out.She heard the wash against the jetty, felt the rolling of its waves.But being on the landward side she could not see the faint gleam of a cigarette that marked Henri's anxious figure at the rail.So long as the black hulk ofthe Calais boat was visible, and long after indeed, Henri stood there, outwardly calm but actually shaken by many fears.She had looked so small and young; and who could know what deviltry lurked abroad that night?
He had not gone with her because it was necessary that he be in Boulogne the next morning.And also, the very chance of getting her across lay in her being alone and unobserved.
So he stood by the rail and looked back and said a wordless little prayer that if there was trouble it come to his boat and not to the other.Which might very considerably have disturbed the buyers had they known of it and believed in prayer.
Sara Lee stood in the shadows and listened.There were voices overhead, from the bridge.A door opened onto the deck and threw out a ray of light.Some one came out and went on shore, walking with brisk ringing steps.And then at last she put down her bag and tried door after door, without result.
The man who had gone ashore called another.The gangway was drawn in.The engines began to vibrate under foot.Sara Lee, breathless and terrified, stood close to a cabin door and remained immovable.At one moment it seemed as if a seaman was coming forward to where she stood.But he did not come.
The Calais boat was waiting until the other steamer had got well out of the harbor.The fog had lifted, and the searchlight was moving over the surface.It played round the channel steamer without touching it.But none of this was visible to Sara Lee.
At last the lights of the quay began to recede.The little boat rocked slightly in its own waves as it edged away.It moved slowly through the shipping and out until, catching the swell of the channel, it shot ahead at top speed.
For an hour Sara Lee stood there.The channel wind caught her and tore at her skirts until she was almost frozen.And finally, in sheer desperation, she worked her way round to the other side.She saw no one.Save for the beating heart of the engine below it might have been a deadship.
On the other side she found an open door and stumbled into the tiny dark deck cabin, as chilled and frightened a philanthropist as had ever crossed that old and tricky and soured bit of seaway.And there, to be frank, she forgot her fright in as bitter a tribute of seasickness as even the channel has ever exacted.
She had locked herself in, and she fell at last into an exhausted sleep.When she wakened and peered out through the tiny window it was gray winter dawn.The boat was quiet, and before her lay the quay of Calais and the Gare Maritime.A gangway was out and a hurried survey showed no one in sight.
Sara Lee picked up her suitcase and opened the door.The fresh morning air revived her, but nevertheless it was an extremely pale young woman who, obeying Henri's instructions, went ashore that morning in the gray dawn unseen, undisturbed and unqestioned.But from the moment she appeared on the gangway until the double glass doors of the Gare Maritime closed behind her this apparently calm young woman did not breathe at all.She arrived, indeed, with lungs fairly collapsed and her heart entirely unreliable.
A woman clerk was asleep at a desk.Sara Lee roused her to half wakefulness, no interest and extremely poor English.A drowsy porter led her up a staircase and down an endless corridor.Then at last he was gone, and Sara Lee turned the key in her door and burst into tears.
