I made up my mind, of course, that I must see him before he sailed. But how to do it? Fortunately I knew the name of the boat he was to travel by, unless he had wilfully put Thorne off the scent. But it was too late to get a train that night, and, as the boat I knew sailed at two o’clock, it gave me none too much time to hunt him up at Southampton. When a letter came to me next morning by the early post, requiring an article at once for the afternoon papers, it was only what I expected. Fate had come between me and Bindo every time I had wished to help him, and she was at her old games again. So I sat down and wrote off my article—doggedly rather than savagely—in the spirit of one who gives up the game against chance, yet knowing, all the time I was writing, that I was losing my train, and that it was doubtful whether the next one would catch the _Magdalena_ at all. The official at the Dock entrance told me that she was already throwing off from the quay wall, and it would be quite impossible to get on board. “Far and away your best chance,” he added, “is to run round this way to the Dock gates. You’ll be there before she is, for it takes a lot of time to back and turn her. Then if you want to say good-bye to anyone _very_ particularly (and he smiled), you’ll get a word with her perhaps. For the vessel’s loaded deep, and her portholes won’t stand very high above the quay wall. Besides, she’ll only creep through the gates, but you’ve no time to lose.” I hardly stopped to thank him _then_. On my way back he got, not only thanks, but, to his great astonishment, a five-shilling piece. “Well; he must have wanted to see her badly,” I heard him whisper to his mate. The preliminaries of throwing off, backing, warping, were all over by the time I reached the gates, and the big vessel was beginning to make a move under her own steam. I looked eagerly for Bindo among the passengers. Fate had been kind to me, and given me yet another chance. What if I missed it like the last? But she favoured me this time. He was leaning over the deck-rail, watching the leave-takings as the great vessel swept slowly past the wall. His cap was thrown back and his hair blown off his forehead. What a boy he looked to be starting a new life in a new world, without a friend and with worse than failure for the past! Just then he caught sight of me. For a moment he hesitated—I could _see_ him hesitate; then he left the deck and re-appeared at a port-hole in the aft part of the ship, framed once more (and it was my last picture of him) as the very Bindo of old. “Good-bye,” he said, “old man; it was good of you to come, after the way I’ve treated you. Thanks again, most faithful of friends, and good-bye. Forgive and forget. This time, believe me, I’ll go straight. By the way,” he added, “just give this parcel for me to Fred—naming one of his chums—I had intended it for the pilot, but it will be safer in your hands.”