CHAPTER III.
"The mariners shout, The ships swing about.
The yards are all hoisted, The sails flutter out." _The Saga of King Olaf_.
The docks were very quiet now.

Only a few footfalls broke the silence, and the water sobbed a little round the piles, and there was some creaking and groaning and grinding, and the vessels drifted at their moorings, and bumped against the wharves.
The watchman paced up and down, and up and down.

I did not hear him very clearly from under the tarpaulin, and sometimes when he went farther away I did not hear him at all.

At last I was so long without hearing him that I peeped cautiously out.

What Biddy had said might be, seemed really to have happened.