I may be old when it is over, and not able to travel very well.
You will come and visit me, Nicole?
There is so much that I shall want to say to you.
So much that I wanted to talk over with you, if we had not been so hurried and so troubled in the last few days.'
She said: 'I will come and stay with you as soon as we can travel.
And you shall talk to me about John.'
The German said: 'You must go now, Mr Englishman.'
He kissed the girl; for a minute she clung to him.
Then he got down into the boat among the children.
Pierre said: 'Is this the boat that's going to take us to America?'
The old man shook his head.
'Not this boat,' he said, with mechanical patience.
'That will be a bigger boat than this.'
'How big will that one be?' asked Ronnie.
'Twice as big?'
Focquet had slipped the warp out of the ring and was thrusting vigorously with an oar against the quay-side.
The stretch of dark water that separated them from France grew to a yard, to five yards wide.
The old man stood motionless, stricken with grief, with longing to be back on the quay, with the bitter loneliness of old age.
He saw the figure of the girl standing with the three Germans by the water's edge, watching them as they slid away.
The ebb caught the boat and hurried her quietly out into the stream; Focquet was heaving on a halliard forward and the heavy nut-brown sail crept slowly up the mast.
For a moment he lost sight of Nicole as a mist dimmed his eyes; then he saw her again clearly, still standing motionless beside the Germans.
Then the gloom shrouded all of them, and all he could see was the faint outline of the hill against the starry sky.
In deep sorrow, he turned and looked forward to the open sea.
But tears blinded him, and he could see nothing of the entrance.
Ronnie said: 'May I work the rudder, Mr Howard?'
The old man did not answer him.
The little boy repeated his question.
Rose said: 'I do feel sick.'
He roused himself and turned to their immediate needs with heavy heart.
They had no warm clothes and no blankets to keep off the chill of the night sea.
He spoke a few sentences to Focquet and found him mystified at their deliverance; he found that the young man intended to cross straight over to Falmouth.
He had no compass and no chart for the sea crossing of a hundred miles or so, but said he knew the way.
He thought that it would take a day and a night, perhaps a little longer.
They had no food with them, but he had a couple of bottles of red, wine and a beaker of water.
They pulled a sail out from the forepeak and made a resting-place for the children.
The old man took Anna and made her comfortable in a corner first, and put her in the charge of Rose.
But Rose, for once, displayed little of her maternal instinct; she was preoccupied with her own troubles.
In a very few minutes she was sick, leaning over the side of the boat under the old man's instructions.
One by one the children followed her example as they reached the open sea; they passed Le Trepied, a black reef of rock, with so much wailing that they might just as well have had the engine running after all.
In spite of the quick motion of the boat the old man did not feel unwell.
Of the children, the only one unaffected was Pierre, who stood by Focquet at the stern, gazing at the moonlight on the water ahead of them.
They turned at the Libenter buoy and headed to the north.
In a lull between the requirements of the children Howard said to Focquet: 'You are sure that you know which way to steer?'
The young Frenchman nodded.
He glanced at the moon and at the dim loom of the land behind them, and at the Great Bear shimmering in the north.
Then he put out his hand.
That way,' he said.
'That is where Falmouth is.' He called it 'Fallmoot.'
'In the morning we will use the engine; then we will get there before evening.'
A fresh wailing from the bows drew the old man away.