Daniel Sweetland had decided on his course of action before he bade his wife farewell. Now he rode back to Furnum Regis, found the King’s Oven empty as he expected, and turned his horse’s head to the south. He crossed the main road, struck down a saddle path, and presently approached Vitifer Mine. Here the land was cut and broken into wild chaos of old-time excavations and deep natural gulleys and fissures. The place was dangerous, for terrific disused shafts opened here, and a network of rails and posts marked the more perilous tracts and kept the cattle out. Sweetland knew this region well, and now, dismounting, he led his horse to a wide pit known as Wall Shaft Gully, and tethered it firmly where miners, going to their work, must see it on the following morning. An ancient adit lined with granite yawned below, and local report said that it was unfathomable. Two years before a man had accidentally destroyed himself by falling into it, and though the fact was known, the nature of the place made it impossible to recover his corpse.

Now Daniel took a pencil and paper from his pocket. Then, under the waning moon, he wrote the words “Good-bye, all. Let Sim break it to my wife—D. Sweetland.” Next he took a stick, stuck it up, and set his message in a cleft of it; and lastly he kicked and broke the soil at the edge of the shaft, so that it should seem he had cast himself in with reluctance. That done, he set out for Plymouth at his best pace, consulted his watch, and saw that if all went well he might reach the shelter of the streets by four o’clock in the morning.

That information respecting his escape must be there before him, he knew. As soon as the police reached Princetown, telegrams would fly to Exeter and Plymouth and elsewhere. But Daniel trusted that early news would come from the Moor. Then, if once it was supposed that he had committed suicide, the severity of the search was certain to relax.

His estimate of the distance to be travelled proved incorrect, and the runaway found himself surprised by the first grey of morning long before he had reached the skirts of the town. He turned, therefore, into the deep woods that lie among those outlying fortresses which surround the great seaport, and near the neighbourhood of Marsh Mills, where the river Plym runs by long, shining reaches to the sea, Daniel hid close under an overhanging bank beside the water. Here he was safe enough, and saw no sign of life but the trout that rose beneath him. The food that Minnie made him carry was soon gone, and another nightfall found Sweetland ravenous. At dusk he lowered himself to the river and drank his fill, but not until midnight was past did he leave his snug holt and set forth again.

By three o’clock on the following morning he was in Plymouth, and turned his steps straightway to the Barbican. For Daniel sought a ship. He had debated of all possibilities, and even thought of hiding upon the Moor and letting Minnie feed him by night, until the truth of Thorpe’s murder came to be known; but the futility of such a course was manifest. To intervene actively must be impossible for him without discovery; he felt it wiser, therefore, to escape beyond reach of danger for the present. Then, once safe, he hoped to communicate with his friends and hear from them concerning their efforts to prove his innocence.

The Barbican grew out of dawn gradually, and its picturesqueness and venerable details stood clear cut in the light of morning. It woke early, and Daniel hastened where a coffee-stall on wheels crept down to the quay from an alley-way that opened there. He was the first customer, and he made a mighty breakfast, to the satisfaction of the merchant. Daniel was cooling his third cup when other wayfarers joined him. Some were fishermen about to sail on the tide; some were Spanish boys, just setting out on their rounds with ropes of onions; some were sailors from the ships.

A thin, hatchet-faced man in jack-boots and a blue jersey attracted Daniel. He wore his hair quite long in oily ringlets; gold gleamed in his ears; his jaws were clean-shaven, and his teeth were yellow.

“Have any of you chaps seen a Judas-coloured man this morning?” he asked of the company. “His name’s Jordan, and he carries a great red beard afore him, and the Lord knows where he’s got to. Went off his ship last night and never came back.”

A fisherman was able to give information.

“I seed the very man last night. He was drinking along with some pals and females at the ‘Master Mariner’—that publichouse at the corner. He’s got into trouble, mister.”

“Of course, of course; I might have knowed it. He’s a man so fiery as his colour. Have they locked him up?”

“That I couldn’t tell you. There was a regular upstore an’ pewter mugs flying like birds. First a woman scratched the man’s face; then three chaps went for him all at once. The police took him away, but whether he’s to the lock-up or the hospital I couldn’t tell ’e. One or t’other for sartain.”

The sailor with the earrings showed no great regret.

“Let him stop there, the cranky, spit-firing varmint. But we sail after midday on the tide, and the question is where am I going to pick up a carpenter’s mate between now and then?”

“What’s your ship?” asked Daniel Sweetland.

“The Peabody, bound for the West Indies, and maybe South America after.”

“How long will you be away from England?”

“Can’t say to a month. Might be twelve weeks, might be twenty; but most like we shall be home by end of February.”

“I’ll come,” said Daniel. “I want a ship, an’ I want it quick.”

“D’you know your job?”

“Ess, fay; an’ what I don’t know I’ll larn afore we’m off the Eddystone light-house.”

“Come on then,” answered the other. “I’m in luck seemingly. You’re all right—eh? Ban’t running away from anybody?”

“I’m running away from my wife,” answered Daniel, frankly.

The other shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, well, that’s a home affair—your business, not mine. Sometimes there’s nought better than a bit of widowhood for females. You’ll make friends when you go back, no doubt.”

“Very likely we shall.”

“There was one man shipped with me who told that story, and I thought no more of it at the time. But afterwards I found that the chap had murdered his missis afore he ran away from her. You haven’t done that, I hope?”

“No, no—just left her for her good for the present,” explained Daniel. “And who be you, if I may ax?”

“My name is James Bradley, and I’m mate of the Peabody,” answered his companion. “I’ll not deceive you. I’m offering you nothing very well worth having. The Peabody’s an old tank steamer, and rotten as an over-ripe pear. Sometimes I think the rats will put their paws through her bottom afore long. A bad, under-engined, under-manned ship.”

“Why do you sail in her then?”

“That’s not here or there. I’m mate, and men will risk a lot for power. Besides, I’m a philosopher, if you know what that is, and I’ve got a notion, picked up in the East, that what will happen will happen. If I’m going to be drowned, I shall be drowned. Therefore, by law an’ logic, I’m as safe in the Peabody as I should be in a battleship. But perhaps your mind is not used to logic?”

“Never heard of it,” said Daniel.

“I’ll larn you,” answered Mr Bradley. “There’s the ship alongside that quay. I’ll lay you never saw a uglier.”

The Peabody was not an attractive craft, but Daniel had no eye for a ship and merely regarded the steamer as an ark of refuge until better days might dawn. She lay low in the water, had three naked, raking masts, and bluff bows. Her engines were placed right aft. The well of the ship was not five feet above the water-line.

Mr Bradley, ignorant of the fact that the new carpenter’s mate had seldom seen a ship in his life, and never been upon one, supposed that Daniel was taking in the steamer with a sailor’s eye.

“A better weather boat than you’d think, for all she’s so low. Ten knots with a fair wind. We’re taking out a mixed cargo and we shall bring back all sorts and probably cruise around on the South American coast till we can fill up somehow.”

“What sort of a captain have you got?”

“A very good old man. Too good for most of us. A psalm-smiter, in fact.”

“I’ll come an’ see the captain, an’ have a bit more breakfast, if you’ve no objection,” said Daniel.

“He won’t be there. He’s along with his wife and family at Devonport. He’ll only come aboard an hour afore we sail. But I’m in command now. We’ll sign you on right away. What sort of a sailor are you?”

“Never knowed what it was to be sea-sick in my life,” said Daniel, laughing to himself at the joke.

“Lucky for you. The Peabody finds the weak spots in a man’s system when she’s in a beam sea—that I promise you. I’m always ill for a week after I’ve been ashore a fortnight. Here’s Chips.”

The man addressed as “Chips” was standing at the entrance of the forecastle as Bradley and Daniel crossed a gangway and arrived on the deck of the ship.

He came forward to the mate.

“Have ’e heard or seen aught of Jordan?” he asked.

“Seen nought; heard all I want to hear. He’s either in hospital or police-station. There won’t be time for him to come back now, even if he wants to. Tell the boy to pack his kit-bag and send it ashore to the ‘Master Mariner.’ They’ll know where he’s been taken. And this man has come in his place. What’s your name, my son?”

“Bob Bates.”

“Come and eat your breakfast, Bob Bates,” said the carpenter. “Then I’ll find you plenty to do afore we sail.”

“I’m a thought out of practice, but I’ll soon get handy,” answered Daniel.

“Where’s your papers?” asked the mate.

“Haven’t got none,” answered the other.

“Old man will never take you without papers.”

The carpenter, who liked the look of his new mate, intervened. “Leave that, Bradley. Cap’n will listen to me, if not to you. Seeing this man ships in such a hell of a hurry, ’twill be all right. Then, if he’s the proper sort, old man will soon forget.”

“You can pretend I’m a stowaway an’ not find me till we’re out to sea,” suggested Daniel.

“No need, no need; ’twill be all right,” answered the other.

Time proved that the carpenter of the Peabody was correct. His injured mate did not reappear, and in the hurry of sailing no questions were asked. That night, in a weak ship rolling gunwales under, Sweetland made acquaintance with the ailment he had never known, and Mr Bradley, who found him under the light of an oil lamp in an alley-way, regarded the prostrate wreck of Daniel with gloomy triumph.

“I told you as this ship would twist your innards about a bit. I’m awful bad myself. Drink a pint of sea-water; ’tis the only thing to do. If it don’t kill you, it cures you.”

The landsman grunted inarticulately. He was thinking that to perish ashore, even with infamy, would be better than the dreadful death that now prepared to overtake him.

But after twenty-four hours the Peabody was ship-shape and panting solidly along on an even keel. Daniel quickly recovered, and what he lacked in knowledge he made up in power to learn and power to please. Chips, of course, discovered that his new mate was no carpenter, and Bradley also perceived that Daniel had never been to sea before. But your land-lubber, if he be made of the right stuff, will often get on with a ship’s company better than a seasoned salt. Sweetland was unselfish, hard-working, and civil. The men liked him, and the captain liked him. He prospered and kept his own dark cares hidden.

To detail at length the life on shipboard is not necessary, since no events of importance occurred to be chronicled, and within a few weeks of sailing, accident withdrew Sweetland from the Peabody for ever. The usual experience befell him; the wonders of the deep revealed themselves to him for the first time; but only one thing that the sea gave up interested Sweetland, and that chanced to be an English newspaper. It happened thus. When off the Azores on the Sunday after sailing, a big steamer overhauled the Peabody, went past her as if she was standing still, and in two hours was hull down again on the horizon.

“’Tis the Don,” said Bradley. “One of the Royal Mail boats from Southampton for Barbados and Jamaica.”

Sweetland frowned to himself and wondered how it came about that the vessel’s name should be familiar to him. Then he remembered that it had entered his ear before the tragedy. Henry Vivian intended to sail by this ship. Doubtless he was on her now.

The liner passed within two hundred yards of the tramp. Then, just as she drew ahead, somebody pitched a newspaper over her taffrail into the water. It was crumpled up, and the sea being smooth, the journal floated, and a current drifted it across the bows of the Peabody. A man forward saw it, guessed that it contained later news than any on the ship, and prepared to fish it up. Three sailors with lines were ready for the floating paper as it passed the side of the steamer, and the second angler secured it. It proved to be The Times of a date one day later than the sailing of the Peabody.

The journal was carefully dried and then, in turn, each man who cared to do so studied it at leisure.

For Daniel Sweetland it contained one highly interesting paragraph, and he smiled to see how successful his crude deception had proved.

The item of news may be reproduced, for it defines the supposed situation left behind by Sweetland, and fittingly closes this chapter of his life’s story.

“THE TRAGEDY ON DARTMOOR

“A sensational sequel is reported to the arrest of the man Daniel Sweetland on his wedding day. It will be remembered that Sweetland, a notorious poacher, was suspected—on the evidence of his own gun—to have murdered a gamekeeper in the woods of Middlecott Court estate near the little town of Moretonhampstead, Devon. Three officers arrested him and started to convey him to Plymouth. But accident detained the party in the lonely central region of the Moor, and their horse falling lame, they spent some time at a solitary publichouse known as the Warren Inn. Here Sweetland, taking the police into his confidence, confessed to being an accomplice in the recent famous burglary at Westcombe—the seat of the Giffards not far distant from Middlecott Court.…”