"'And so to bed,'" quoted the other. The taverns and places of amusement were emptying their patrons into the murky street. Raucous laughter and farewells filled the night.
"Yes." The Junior Watch-keeper yawned, and they walked on in silence, each busy with his own long thoughts. By degrees the traffic lessened, until, nearing the Dockyard, the two were alone in deserted thoroughfares with no sound but the echo of their steps. They were threading the maze of dimly-lit, cobbled streets that still lay before them, when a draggle-skirted girl, standing in the shelter of a doorway, plucked at their sleeves. They walked on almost unheeding, when suddenly the Young Doctor hesitated and stopped. The woman paused irresolute for a moment, and then came towards them, with the light from a gas-lamp playing round her tawdry garments. She murmured something in a mechanical tone, and smiled terribly. The Young Doctor emptied his pockets of the loose silver and coppers they contained, and thrust the coins into her palm: with his disengaged hand he tilted her face up to the light. It was a pathetically young, pathetically painted face. "Wish me good luck," he said, and turned abruptly to overtake his companion.
The woman stood staring after them, her hand clenched upon her suddenly acquired riches. An itinerant fried-fish and potato merchant, homeward bound, trundled his barrow suddenly round a distant corner. The girl wheeled in the direction of the sound.
"'Ere!" she called imperiously, "_'ere!_..."
The echo of her voice died away, and the Young Doctor linked his arm within the other's.
"There is a poem by some one[#] I read the other day--d'you know it?--
"'I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by.'"
He mused for a moment in silence as they strode along. "I forget how it goes on: something about a 'vagrant gypsy life,' and the wind 'like a whetted knife'--
"'And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, And a quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.'
The Junior Watch-keeper nodded soberly. "Yes.... But it's the star we need the most, Peter--you and I."
It was early in the morning, and thin columns of smoke were rising from the funnels of a cruiser lying alongside one of the Dockyard jetties. On her decks there was a bustle of preparation: steaming covers were being laced to yards and topmasts: the Boatswain, "full of strange oaths" and of apoplectic countenance, moved forward in the wake of a depressed part of the watch. On the booms the Carpenter was superintending the stowage of some baulks of timber. Packing-cases were coming in at the gangway; barefooted messengers darted to and fro. There was a frequent shrilling of pipes, and the hoarse voice of the Boatswain's Mate bellowing orders.