The docks were very quiet now. Only a few footfalls broke the silence,
and the water sobbed a little round the piles, and there was some
creaking and groaning and grinding, and the vessels drifted at their
moorings, and bumped against the wharves.

The watchman paced up and down, and up and down. I did not hear him very
clearly from under the tarpaulin, and sometimes when he went farther
away I did not hear him at all. At last I was so long without hearing
him that I peeped cautiously out. What Biddy had said might be, seemed
really to have happened. The watchman was sitting in a sort of arm-chair
of ironbound cotton-bales; his long coat was tucked between his legs,
his hat was over his nose, and he was fast asleep.

I did not need any one to tell me that now was my time; but it was with
limbs that almost refused their office from sheer fright, that I crept
past the sleeping man, and reached the edge of the wharf. There was the
vessel moving very slightly, and groaning dismally as she moved, and
there was the hole, and it was temptingly dark. But--the gangway that
had been laid across from the wharf was gone! I could have jumped the
chasm easily with a run, but I dared not take a run. If I did it at all
it must be done standing. I tried to fetch a breath free from
heart-throbs, but in vain; so I set my teeth, and pulled nerves and
sinews together and jumped.

It was too much for me, and I jumped short and fell. Then my training
under the half-caste told in my favour. I caught the edge of the hole
with my hands, and swung suspended over the water, with quite presence
of mind enough to hear and think of what was going on about me. What I