His first act was to take his revolver from his pocket, preparatory to reloading it from the cartridges stored in one of his trunks.
Two chambers of the pistol were undischarged, and, as he jerked back the extractor, these two shells fell on the bed. He looked at them stupidly.
Had he heard T. B. Smith speaking as he went flying down the road, Poltavo might have understood.
"Good." Then, in French, he addressed a figure that stood in the doorway.
Catherine's little laugh came out to him. "I am quite safe," she said quietly.
"I cannot understand why you allowed him to escape----" she began. "That you should desire blank cartridges to be placed in his revolver is not so difficult, but I do not see----"
"I suppose not," said T. B. politely, and left her abruptly.
He sprang onto a horse that was waiting, and went clattering down the hill, through the Sôk, down the narrow main street that passes the mosque; dismounting by the Custom House, he placed his horse in charge of a waiting soldier, and walked swiftly along the narrow wooden pier.
At the same time as the count was boarding the _Doro_, T. B. and Van Ingen were being rowed in a cockleshell of a pinnace to the long destroyer which lay, without lights, in the bay.
They swung themselves up a tiny ladder onto the steel deck that rang hollow under their feet.
"All right?" said a voice in the darkness.
"All right," said T. B.; a bell tinkled somewhere, the destroyer moved slowly ahead, and swung out to sea.
"Will you have any difficulty in picking her up?" He was standing in the cramped space of the little bridge, wedged between a quick-firing gun and the navigation desk.
"No--I think not," said the officer; "our difficulty will be to keep out of sight of her. It will be an easy matter to keep her in view, because she stands high out of the water, and she is pretty sure to burn her regulation lights. By day I shall let her get hull down and take her masts for guide."
It was the strangest procession that followed the southern bend of the African coast. First went the _Doro_, its passengers serenely unconscious of the fact that six miles away, below the rim of the horizon, followed a slim ugly destroyer that did not once lose sight of the _Doro's_ mainmast; behind the destroyer, and three miles distant, came six destroyers steaming abreast. Behind them, four miles away, six swift cruisers.