And, as a matter of fact, at the very moment when Guy was driving down to the tender, in order to escape from an imaginary charge of forgery, his brother Cyril, to his own immense astonishment, was being conveyed from Dover Pier to Tavistock, under close police escort, on a warrant charging him with the wilful murder of Montague Nevitt, two days before, at Mambury, in Devon.
If Guy had only known that, he would never have fled. But he didn't know it. How could he, indeed, in his turmoil and hurry? He didn't even know Montague Nevitt was dead. He had been too busy that day to look at the papers. And the few facts he knew from the boys crying in the street he naturally misinterpreted, by the light of his own fears and personal dangers. He thought he was "wanted" for the yet undiscovered forgery, not for the murder, of which he was wholly ignorant.
Nevertheless, we can never in this world entirely escape our own personality. As Guy went on board, believing himself to have left his identity on shore, he heard somebody, in a voice that he fancied he knew, ask a newsboy on the tender for an evening paper. Guy was the only passenger who embarked at Plymouth; and this person unseen was the newsboy's one customer.
Guy couldn't discover who he was at the moment, for the call for a paper came from the upper deck; he only heard the voice, and wasn't certain at first that he recognised even that any more than in a vague and indeterminate reminiscence. No doubt the sense of guilt made him preternaturally suspicious. But he began to fear that somebody might possibly recognise him. And he had bought the paper with news about the warrant. That was bad; but 'twas too late to draw back again now. The tender lay alongside a while, discharging her mails, and then cast loose to go. The Cetewayo's screw began to move through the water. With a dim sense of horror, Guy knew they were off. He was well under way for far distant South Africa.
But he did NOT know or reflect that while he ploughed his path on over that trackless sea, day after day, without news from England, there would be ample time for Cyril to be tried, and found guilty, and perhaps hanged as well, for the crime that neither of them had really committed.