They rounded the Island, the moon glowing remotely beyond it through the traceries of young willow stems. Stephen was doing something with an anchor at the mouth of the sack, breathing audibly through his nose. John sculled obliquely across the river, struggling against the tide, steadily losing ground, he felt. “Losing ground,” he thought insanely, “ought to be losing water , of course.” So strangely do the minds of men move in critical hours.

When they were halfway over, the chunk-chunk of a motorboat came lazily upstream. “God!” said Stephen, “a police-boat.” John thought, “Will it never end?” It was appalling, this accumulation of obstacles and delays and potential witnesses. He was tired now, and acutely conscious of a general perspiration.