CHAPTER SEVENTEENMacdonald had been standing in the darkness for over an hour, with the crash of the sea and the whistle of the wind as a background to his thoughts, before he realised that somebody else was moving forward of him, close to the rail, in the bleak bitterness of the night. He could just make out a man’s form as a blacker blackness against the murky sky. At first he thought it might be one of the crew, but then he saw the man sit down on a bollard, with his arms braced against the rail. A thought flashed into Macdonald’s mind: “I suppose a man who is a strong swimmer might risk jumping for it once we reached the lee of the jetty: on a night like this he wouldn’t be seen and he might make it. For a powerful swimmer it wouldn’t be any more hazardous than jumping from a train, an
