"It ain't much of a cabin," Sampson said apologetically. "Such as it is, you'll find it down there."
"Thank you," answered Ezra; "we'll stay on deck at present. When ought we to get to the Downs?"
"At this rate we'll be there by to-morrow afternoon."
"Thank you."
The fisherman and his boy took turn and turn, one steering and the other keeping a look-out forward and trimming the sails. The two passengers crouched huddled together against the weather rail. They were each too occupied with thought to have time for speech. Suddenly, after passing Claxton and rounding the point, they came in full sight of the Priory, every window of which was blazing with light. They could see dark figures passing to and fro against the glare.
"Look there," Girdlestone whispered.
"Ay, the police have not taken long," his son answered. John Girdlestone was silent for some time. Then he suddenly dropped his face upon his hands, and sobbed hoarsely for the first and last time in his career.
"I am thinking of Monday in Fenchurch Street," he said. "My God! is this the end of a life of hard work! Oh, my business, my business, that I built up myself! It will break my heart!"
And so through the long cold winter's night they sat together while the boat ploughed its way down the English Channel. Who shall say what their thoughts were as they stared with pale, rigid faces into the darkness, while their minds, perhaps, peered even more cheerlessly into the dismal obscurity which lay over their future. Better be the lifeless wreck whom they have carried up to the Priory, than be torn as these men are torn, by the demons of fear and remorse and grief, and crushed down by the weight of a sin-stained and irrevocable past.