When the campus was still with the quiet of sleep, Hugo crossed it as swiftly as a spectre. All night he strode remorselessly over country roads. His face was set. His eyes burned. He ignored the trembling of his joints. When the sky faded, he went back. He packed his clothes in two suit-cases. With them swinging at his side, he stole out of the Psi Delta house, crossed the campus, stopped. For a long instant he stared at Webster Hall. The first light of morning was just touching it. The débris collected for a fire that was never lighted was strewn around the cannon. He saw the initials he had painted there a year and more ago still faintly legible. A lump rose in his throat.

“Good-by, Webster,” he said. He lifted the suitcase and vanished. In a few minutes the campus was five miles behind him—six—ten—twenty. When he saw the first early caravan of produce headed toward the market, he slowed to a walk. The sun came over a hill and sparkled on a billion drops of dew. A bird flew singing from his path. Hugo Danner had fled beyond the gates of Webster.

X

A year passed. In the harbour of Cristobal, at the northern end of the locks, waiting for the day to open the great steel jaws that dammed the Pacific from the Atlantic, the Katrina pulled at her anchor chain in the gentle swell. A few stars, liquid bright, hung in the tropical sky. A little puff of wind coming occasionally from the south carried the smell of the jungle to the ship. The crew was awakening.

A man with a bucket on a rope went to the rail and hauled up a brimming pail from the warm sea. He splashed his face and hands into it. Then he poured it back and repeated the act of dipping up water.

“Hey!” he said.

Another man joined him. “Here. Swab off your sweat. Look yonder.”

The dorsal fin of a shark rippled momentarily on the surface and dipped beneath it. A third man appeared. He accepted the proffered water and washed himself. His roving eye saw the shark as it rose for the second time. He dried on a towel. The off-shore breeze stirred his dark hair. There was a growth of equally dark beard on his tanned jaw and cheek. Steely muscles bulged under his shirt. His forearm, when he picked up the pail, was corded like cable. A smell of coffee issued from the galley, and the smoke of the cook’s fire was wafted on deck for a pungent moment. Two bells sounded. The music went out over the water in clear, humming waves.