Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/281

 his course about an occasional obstacle, sounding for his channel, shying away from each danger-spot as a careful pilot shies away from a shoal-buoy.

When he came to the empty piano-crate he felt like a swimmer who had reached an island of deliverance. That gave him something on which to base a new reckoning of his position. It brought him assurance, as the voice of an old friend might, and permitted him to breathe more freely. So far all had been well. And every foot that he covered meant a further guarantee of safety.

He began his journey again, astonished by the apparent length of the pier, wondering how wrong he might also be in his reckoning of time, arguing with himself that an hour or two of mental agony might easily prolong itself into what seemed a whole night. He had heard of such cases.

Perhaps, after all, it was little past midnight, and in his torturing anxiety he had translated minutes into hours, just as during that stealthy advance towards the pier-end he had accepted his travels as something which should have carried him into mid-ocean, as something which seemed to have no beginning and no end. But he kept on, doggedly, determinedly, unceasingly.

He kept on until his extended fingers came in contact with the sheet-iron covering of a side-wall. He felt noiselessly along this wall until he had groped his way to what seemed the door he wanted. Then came the hardest part of his night's work. For that door was locked, he found, as he let his fingers caress the huge knob and turn it with incalculable slowness so