I began a quick search of the darkening beach hoping for some small boat that might take me out to her.

Minutes passed, and the futility of the enterprise asserted itself.

I turned my attention once more to the ship. Despite the oncoming night and the fog, I realized that I was going to swim out to it. There was no other way to get there. Though I had been skilled at rough-andtumble even before I'd joined the army, I had no illusions concerning my ability to defend myself against an entire ship's crew. My speed as a boxer, my expertise at wrestling would hardly serve me against a dozen sturdy sailors with belaying pins and boat hooks. Yet I could not let the black ship sail away again, taking Annie out of my life for what was likely the last time. I would have to take any chance, run any risk rather than let her get away.

But even as I knelt to unlace my boots, I heard the creaking of a winch. It came from the ship, where moments later I saw that a boat was being lowered into the water. My boots remained laced and I stood slowly, squinting. Obviously, the ship was not about to sail away this instant. With a party about to disembark from it, I might stand to increase my chances of helping Annie by observing rather than splashing my way out to the sinister hulk. It was also possible that the entire affair might be handled with less risk than I had first anticipated.

After all, could I be certain that there was something nasty afoot? Might I not have misunderstood a situation wherein Annie had been hurrying of her own volition to keep a pressing shipboard engagement? Could I not be projecting my own fears and apprehensions onto an innocuous event—turbulent emotions bred of our mysterious relationship?

The perverse imp which invariably appeals against my reasonings shouted No! It is unfortunate how often that imp seems possessed of the greater part of wisdom. I felt this minutes later, after the rowers of that boat had commenced their way shoreward through the deepening fog. For I hailed them, and they corrected their course, coming in my direction.