I don't know when my nausea finally left me, unless it was after nothing whatever remained in my stomach. I sat limp and cold, conscious only of the erratic bobbing of the little vessel and the ceaseless rhythm of the oars. At last, unbelievably, the sky turned from black to gray. I could not believe it anything but an optical illusion in the endless night and I strained to dissipate whatever biliousness was affecting my vision. But it was dawn, sure enough, and soon it revealed the pettish, wallowing Channel and the fragile outline of our boat, even tinier than I had conceived. I shuddered with more than cold--had I known what a cockleshell it was I might have paused before trusting my life so readily to it. Line by line the increasing light drew the countenance of my guide. At first he was nothing but a shape, well muffled, with some kind of flat cap upon his head. A little more light revealed a glittering eye, more, a great, hooked nose with wide nostrils. He was a man of uncertain age, bordering upon the elderly, with a black skullcap under which curled outward two silverygray horns of hair. The lower part of his face was covered with a grizzled beard. He must have been studying me as intently, for he now broke the silence which had prevailed all night. "You are not a poor man," he announced accusingly. "How is it you have waited so long?" "I'm afraid youve made a mistake in me, my friend," I told him jovially, "we shan't be making an illegal entry. I am resident in England and can come home at any time." He was silent; from disappointment, I concluded. "Never mind, I'll pay you as much as a refugee--within reason." "You are a follower of reason, sir?" I tried hard to make out more of his still obscured face for there was a note of irony in his voice. "I believe we'd all be better off if everyone were to accept things philosophically. Responsible people will find a way to end our troubles eventually and in the meantime madness and violence--" I waved my hand to the French coast behind--"don't help at all." "Ah," he said without pausing in his rowing, "men alone, then, will solve Man's problem." "Who else?" "Who Else, indeed?" The smuggler's answer or confirmation or whatever the equivocal echo was irritated me. "You think our problems can be solved from the outside?" He managed to shrug his shoulders without breaking the rhythm of his arms. "Perhaps my English is unequal to understanding what you mean by outside. All the forces I know are represented within." I was baffled and switched the subject to more immediate themes. "Are we about halfway, do you think?" The light now exposed him fully. His hands were small and I doubted if the arms extending from them were muscular, but he radiated an air of great vitality. His face was lined, his eyes fierce under outthrust eyebrows, his lips--where the crisp waves of his beard permitted them to show--stern, but his whole demeanor was not unkindly.