"Here they are, guv'ner--the Apaches!" said Dollops in a whisper. "That's the lot, sir. Keep your eye on them as they come aboard, and if they are with him--Crumbs! Not a sign; not a blessed one!" For the Apaches, stringing up the gangplank by twos and threes and coming within brushing distance of the waiting man, passed on as the Oriental pedler had passed on, taking no notice of him, nor he of them, nor yet of how, as they advanced, the pedler slouched forward and slipped into the thick of them. "By James! one of them--that's what the fellow is!" said Narkom, as he observed this. "If during the voyage the Mauravanian speaks to one man of the lot----" He stopped and sucked in his breath and let the rest of the sentence go by default. For of a sudden there had come into sight upon the pier a dapper little French dandy, fuzzy of moustache, mincing of gait, with a flower in his buttonhole and a shining "topper" on his beautifully pomaded head; and it came upon Narkom with a shock of remembrance that he had seen this selfsame living fashion plate pass by Scotland Yard twice that very day! Onward he came, this pretty monsieur, with his jaunty air and his lovely "wine-glass waist," onward, and up the gangway and aboard the packet; and there the Mauravanian still stood, looking out over the crowd and taking no more heed of him than he had taken of anybody else. But with the vanishing of this exquisite, to whom he had paid no heed, his alertness and his interest seemed somehow to evaporate; for he turned now and again to watch the sailors and the longshoremen at their several duties, and strolled leisurely aboard and stood lounging against the rail of the lower deck when the call of "All ashore that's going!" rang through the vessel's length, and was still lounging there when the packet cast off her mooring, and swinging her bows round in the direction of France, creamed her way out into the Channel and headed for Calais. A wind, unnoticed in the safe shelter of the harbour, played boisterously across the chopping waves as the vessel forged outward, sending clouds of spray sweeping over the bows and along the decks, and such passengers as refrained from seeking the shelter of the saloon and smoke-room sought refuge by crowding aft. "Come!" whispered Narkom, tapping Dollops' arm. "We can neither talk nor watch here with safety in this crowd. Let us go 'forrard.' Better a drenching in loneliness than shelter with a crowd like this. Come along!"