Selfishly, on Kinney's account and my own, I was
delighted to find myself free of the steamer, and from any chance of her
landing us where police waited with open arms. The avenging angel in the
person of Aldrich was still near us, so near that I could hear the water
dripping from his clothes, but his power to harm was gone. I was
congratulating myself on this when suddenly he undeceived me. Apparently
he had been considering his position toward Kinney and myself, and,
having arrived at a conclusion, was anxious to announce it.
"I wish to repeat," he exclaimed suddenly, "that I'm under obligations
to nobody. Just because my friends," he went on defiantly, "choose to
trust themselves with persons who ought to be in jail, I can't desert
them. It's all the more reason why I _shouldn't_ desert them. That's why
I'm here! And I want it understood as soon as I get on shore I'm going
to a police station and have those persons arrested."
* * * * *
Rising out of the fog that had rendered each of us invisible to the
other, his words sounded fantastic and unreal. In the dripping silence,
broken only by hoarse warnings that came from no direction, and within
the mind of each the conviction that we were lost, police stations did
not immediately concern us.
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