But luck was not on her side. None seemed to be leaving on that day, nor even that week. And with every delay her fear grew, until by late afternoon she was consumed with mounting panic. At last, when she'd exhausted her last hope, a smallish vessel that, though converted to steam, retained its twin masts from the final days of sail, a porter touched her arm as she walked past him, despondent.
''Scuse me, Miss, but I couldn't help overhearing that you wanted on a ship quick as possible. There's a passenger-freighter leaving in twenty minutes if you make haste.'
Kara thanked the elderly gentleman profusely, pressed a coin into his hand, gave him a quick peck on the cheek, and left at a run.
This was the worst thing she could have done. Two men, their eyes drawn by her quick movement through the throngs of people crowded on the docks, spotted her immediately and began giving chase.
Several times Kara almost stumbled and fell headlong as she ran along the slippery wooden bird-dropping-spattered docks littered with greasy, untidily coiled hawsers, tools, cargo and refuse. The ship was not far away- but the porter's estimate had been wrong! The first lines had already been cast off and the crew was preparing to haul in the gangplank!
'Stop! Wait!'
The few passengers on board the vessel, peering down from a tiny side platform by the small crew's and passenger's quarters, spotted the running girl and began cheering her on.
'Hold the gangplank! There's one more coming if she can make it!'
'Come on! The ship's already moving! Run for it, lass! Don't mind your bonnet- you can buy another when you get to the Americas!'
Running pell-mell, almost tripping over her own shoes which were not made for running, clutching her hat with one hand and the carpetbag to her chest with the other, Kara ran for all she was worth. As she drew near, part of her registered the widening gap between gangplank and dock as the cheers and encouragement turned to warnings and dismay. Staring whitely at the open expanse of water opening before her, something in her decided to trust her lot to fate- she mustered one last burst of speed, closed her eyes and jumped.
Had the sailors standing with outstretched arms at the bottom of the gangplank been inexperienced or taken wholly unawares, they wouldn't have expected this final act of desperation. But these were able-bodied men who'd spent their entire lives at sea, and had been witness to all manner of the emotional extremes wrought by the need to escape the clutches of the Old World. Though Kara had fallen short and seemed destined for a plunge into the murky blue-green water, two separate outstretched hands deftly caught her even as she lost her hat and fell, the men hanging from the bottom-most ropes of the gangplank. As they stood upright, with the rescued Kara steadied between them, still clutching her carpetbag, they acknowledged with world-weary good nature the cheer that went up from the watching passengers high above.