clothes--which he failed, perhaps fortunately, to find.
He regarded with an overwhelming sense of desolation the tremendous arid
waste of time which must intervene before he dared expect her: a good
four hours--no, four and a half, since she would in all likelihood dine
at a sensible hour, say about eight o'clock. By half-past eight, then,
he might begin to look for her; but, since she was indisputably no woman
to cheapen herself, she would probably keep him waiting till nearly
nine.
Colossal waste of time, impossible to contemplate without
exacerbation...!
To make matters worse, Sum Fat innocently enough served Whitaker's
dinner promptly at six, under the misapprehension that a decent
consideration for his foot would induce the young man to seek his bed
something earlier than usual.
Three mortal hours to fritter away in profitless anticipation ...
At seven Whitaker was merely nervous.
By eight he was unable to sit still.
Half an hour later the house was too small to contain him. He found his
cane and took to the veranda, but only to be driven from its shelter by
a swarm of mosquitoes attracted by the illuminated windows. Not in the
least resentful, since his ankle was occasioning him no pain whatever,
he strolled down toward the shore: not a bad idea at all--to be there to
welcome her.
The night was loud and dark. The moon was not to rise for another
half-hour, and since sundown the wind had come in from the southwest to
dissipate the immaculate day-long calm and set the waters and the trees
in motion with its urgent, animating breath. Blowing at first fitfully,
it was settling momentarily down into a steady, league-devouring stride,
strong with the promise of greater strength to come.
Whitaker reflected: "If she doesn't hurry, she won't come by boat at
all, for fear of a wetting."
He thought again: "And of course--I might've known--she won't start till
moonrise, on account of the light."
And again, analyzing the soft, warm rush of air: "We'll have rain before
morning."
He found himself at the end of the dock, tingling with impatience, but
finding some little consolation in the restless sweep of the wind
against his face and body. He stood peering up along the curve of the
shore toward the other landing-stage. He could see little--a mere
impressionistic suggestion of the shore-line picked out with the dim,
semi-phosphorescent glow of breaking wavelets. The night was musical
with the clash of rushing waters, crisp and lively above the long,
soughing drone of the wind in the trees. Eastward the barrier beach was
looming stark and black against a growing greenish pallor in the sky. A
mile to the westward, down the shore, the landlocked lighthouse reared
its tower, so obscure in gloom that the lamp had an effect of hanging
without support, like a dim yellow Japanese lantern afloat in mid-air.
Some minutes elapsed. The pallor of the east grew more marked. Whitaker
fancied he could detect a figure moving on the Fiske dock.
Then, startled, he grew conscious of the thick drone of a
heavily-powered motor boat near inshore. Turning quickly, he discovered
it almost at once: a black, vague shape not twenty yards from where he
stood, showing neither bow nor side-lights: a stealthy and mysterious
apparition creeping toward the dock with something of the effect of an
animal about to spring.
And immediately he heard a man's voice from the boat, abrupt with anger:
"Not this place, you ass--the next."
"Shut up," another voice replied. "There's somebody on that dock."
At the same time the bows of the boat swung off and the shadow slipped
away to westward--toward the Fiske place.
A wondering apprehension of some nameless and desperate enterprise,
somehow involving the woman who obsessed his thoughts, crawled in
Whitaker's mind. The boat--running without cruising lights!--was seeking
the next landing-stage. Those in charge of it had certainly some reason
for wishing to escape observation.
Automatically Whitaker turned back, let himself down to the beach, and
began to pick his way toward the Fiske dock, half running despite his
stiff ankle and following a course at once more direct and more
difficult than the way through the woods. That last would have afforded
him sure footing, but he would have lost much time seeking and sticking
to its meanderings, in the uncertain light. As it was, he had on one
hand a low, concave wall of earth, on the other the wash of crisping
wavelets; and between the two a yard-wide track with a treacherous
surface of wave-smoothed pebbles largely encumbered with heavy
bolster-like rolls of seaweed, springy and slippery, washed up by the
recent gale.
But in the dark and formless alarm that possessed him, he did not stop
to choose between the ways. He had no time. As it was, if there were
anything evil afoot, no earthly power could help him cover the distance
in time to be of any aid. Indeed, he had not gone half the way before he
pulled up with a thumping heart, startled beyond expression by a cry in
the night--a cry of wild appeal and protest thrown out violently into
the turbulent night, and abruptly arrested in full peal as if a hand had
closed the mouth that uttered it.
And then ringing clear down the wind, a voice whose timbre was
unmistakably that of a woman: "_Aux secours! Aux secours!_"
Twice it cried out, and then was hushed as grimly as the first
incoherent scream. No need now to guess at what was towards: Whitaker
could see it all as clearly as though he were already there; the
power-boat at the dock, two women attacked as they were on the point of
entering their rowboat, the cry of the mistress suddenly cut short by
her assailant, the maid taking up the appeal, in her fright
unconsciously reverting to her native tongue, in her turn being forcibly
silenced....
All the while he was running, heedless of his injured foot--pitching,
slipping, stumbling, leaping--somehow making progress.
By now the moon had lifted above the beach high enough to aid him
somewhat with its waxing light; and, looking ahead, he could distinguish
dimly shapes about the dock and upon it that seemed to bear out his most
cruel fears. The power-boat was passably distinct, her white side
showing plainly through the tempered darkness. Midway down the dock he
made out struggling figures--two of them, he judged: a man at close
grips with a frantic woman. And where the structure joined the land, a
second pair, again a man and a woman, strove and swayed....
And always the night grew brighter with the spectral glow of the moon
and the mirroring waters.
For all his haste, he was too slow; he was still a fair thirty yards
away when the struggle on the dock ended abruptly with the collapse of
the woman; it was as if, he thought, her strength had failed all in an
instant--as if she had fainted. He saw the man catch her up in his arms,
where she lay limp and unresisting, and with this burden step from the
stage to the boat and disappear from sight beneath the coaming. An
instant later he reappeared, standing at full height in the cockpit.
Without warning his arm straightened out and a tongue of flame jetted
from his hand; there was a report; in the same breath a bullet buried
itself in the low earth bank on Whitaker's right. Heedless, he pelted
on.
The shot seemed to signal the end of the other struggle at the
landing-stage. Scarcely had it rung out ere Whitaker saw the man lift a
fist and dash it brutally into the woman's face. Without a sound audible
at that distance she reeled and fell away; while the man turned, ran
swiftly out to the end of the dock, cast off the headwarp and jumped
aboard the boat.
She began to sheer off as Whitaker set foot upon the stage. She was
twenty feet distant when he found himself both at its end and at the end
of his resource. He was too late. Already he could hear the deeper
resonance of the engine as the spark was advanced and the throttle
opened. In another moment she would be heading away at full tilt.
Frantic with despair, he thrashed the air with impotent arms: a fair
mark, his white garments shining bright against the dark background of
the land. Aboard the moving boat an automatic fluttered, spitting ten
shots in as many seconds. The thud and splash of bullets all round him
brought him to his senses. Choking with rage, he stumbled back to the
land.
On the narrow beach, near the dock, a small flat-bottomed rowboat lay,
its stern afloat, its bows aground--as it had been left by the women
surprised in the act of launching it. Jumping down, Whitaker put his
shoulder to the stem.
As he did so, the other woman roused, got unsteadily to her feet,
screamed, then catching sight of him staggered to his side. It was--as
he had assumed--the maid, Elise.
"_M'sieur!_" she shrieked, thrusting a tragic face with bruised and
blood-stained mouth close to his. "_Ah, m'sieur--madame--ces
canailles-la--!_"
"Yes, I know," he said brusquely. "Get out of the way--don't hinder me!"
The boat was now all afloat. He jumped in, dropped upon the middle
thwart, and fitted the oars in the rowlocks.
"But, m'sieur, what mean you to do?"
"Don't know yet," he panted--"follow--keep them in sight--"
The blades dipped; he bent his back to them; the rowboat shot away.
A glance over his shoulder showed him the boat of the marauders already
well away. She now wore running lights; the red lamp swung into view as
he glanced, like an obscene and sardonic eye. They were, then, making
eastwards. He wrought only the more lustily with the oars.
Happily the Fiske motor-boat swung at a mooring not a great distance
from the shore. Surprisingly soon he had the small boat alongside.
Dropping the oars, he rose, grasped the coaming and lifted himself into
the cockpit. Then scrambling hastily forward to the bows, he disengaged
the mooring hook and let it splash. As soon as this happened, the
liberated _Trouble_ began to drift sluggishly shoreward, swinging
broadside to the wind.
Jumping back into the cockpit, Whitaker located the switch and closed
the battery circuit. An angry buzzing broke out beneath the engine-pit
hatch, but was almost instantly drowned out by the response of the motor
to a single turn of the new-fangled starting-crank which Whitaker had
approved on the previous morning.
He went at once to the wheel. Half a mile away the red light was
slipping swiftly eastward over silvered waters. He steadied the bows
toward it, listening to the regular and business-like _chug-chug_ of the
motor with the concentrated intentness of a physician with an ear over
the heart of a patient. But the throbbing he heard was true if slow;
already the boat was responding to the propeller, resisting the action
of wind and water, even beginning to surge heavily forward.
Hastily kicking the hatch cover out of the way, he bent over the open
engine-pit, quickly solved the puzzle of the controlling levers,
accelerated the ignition and opened the throttle wide. The motor
answered this manipulation with an instantaneous change of tune; the
staccato drumming of the slow speed merged into a long, incessant rumble
like the roll of a dozen muffled snare-drums. The _Trouble_ leaped out
like a live thing, settling to its course with the fleet precision of an
arrow truly loosed.
With a brief exclamation of satisfaction, Whitaker went back to the
wheel, shifted the ignition from batteries to magneto; and for the first
time since he had appreciated the magnitude of the outrage found himself
with time to think, to take stock of his position, to consider what he
had already accomplished and what he must henceforward hold himself
prepared to attempt. Up to that moment he had acted almost blindly,
swayed by impulse as a tree by the wind, guided by unquestioning
instinct in every action. Now....
He had got the boat under way with what in retrospect appealed to him as
amazing celerity, bearing in mind his unfamiliarity with its equipment.
The other boat had a lead of little if any more than half a mile; or so
he gauged the distance that separated them, making due allowance for the
illusion of the moon-smitten night. Whether that gap was to diminish or
to widen would develop before many minutes had passed. The _Trouble_ was
making a fair pace: roughly reckoned, between fourteen and sixteen miles
an hour. He suspected the other boat of having more power, but this did
not necessarily imply greater speed. At all events (he concluded) twenty
minutes at the outside would see the end of the chase--however it was to
end: the eastern head of the bay was not over five miles away; they
could not long hold to their present course without running aground.
He hazarded wild guesses as to their plans: of which the least
implausible was that they were making for some out-of-the-way landing,
intending there to transfer to a motor-car. At least, this would
presumably prove to be the case, if the outrage were what, at first
blush, it gave evidence of being: a kidnapping uncomplicated by any
fouler motive.... And what else could it be?... But who was he to say?
What did he know of the woman, of her antecedents and circumstances?
Nothing more than her name, that she had attracted him--as any handsome
woman might have--that she had been spied upon within his personal
knowledge and had now been set upon and carried off by _force majeure_.
And knowing no more than this, he had without an instant's thought of
consequences elected himself her champion! O headlong and infatuate!
Probably no more severe critic of his own chivalric foolishness ever set
himself to succour a damsel in distress. Withal he entertained not the
shadow of a thought of drawing back. As long as the other boat remained
in sight; as long as the gasoline and his strength held out; as long as
the _Trouble_ held together and he retained the wit to guide her--so
long was Whitaker determined to stick to the wake of the kidnappers.
A little more than halfway between their starting-point and the head of
the bay, the leading boat swung sharply in toward the shore, then shot
into the mouth of a narrow indentation. Whitaker found that he was
catching up quickly, showing that speed had been slackened for this
manoeuvre. But the advantage was merely momentary, soon lost. The boat
slipped out of sight between high banks. And he, imitating faithfully
its course, was himself compelled to throttle down the engine, lest he
run aground.
For two or three minutes he could see nothing of the other. Then he
emerged from a tortuous and constricted channel into a deep cut, perhaps
fifty feet in width and spanned by a draw-bridge and a railroad trestle.
At the farther end of this tide-gate canal connecting the Great West Bay
with the Great Peconic, the leading power boat was visible, heading out
at full speed. And by the time he had thrown the motor of the _Trouble_
back into its full stride, the half-mile lead was fully reestablished,
if not improved upon.
The tide was setting in through the canal--otherwise the gates had been
closed--with a strength that taxed the _Trouble_ to surpass. It seemed
an interminable time before the banks slipped behind and the boat picked
up her heels anew and swept out over the broad reaches of the Peconic
like a hound on the trail. The starboard light of the leader was slowly
becoming more and more distinct as she swung again to the eastward. That
way, Whitaker figured, with his brows perplexed, lay Shelter Island,
Greenport, Sag Harbor (names only in his understanding) and what else he
could not say. Here he found himself in strange waters, knowing no more
than that the chase seemed about to penetrate a tangled maze of islands
and distorted channels, in whose intricacies it should prove a matter of
facility to lose a pursuer already well distanced.
Abandoning the forward wheel in favour of that at the side, near the
engine pit, for a time he divided his attention between steering and
tinkering with the motor, with the result that the _Trouble_ began
presently to develop more speed. Slowly she crept up on the leader,
until, with Robins Island abeam (though he knew it not by name) the
distance between them had been abridged by half. But more than that she
seemed unable to accomplish. He surmised shrewdly that the others,
tardily observing his gain, had met it with an equalizing demand upon
their motor--that both boats were now running at the extreme of their
power. The _Trouble_, at least, could do no better. To this he must be
resigned.
Empty of all other craft, weird and desolate in moonlight, the Little
Peconic waters widened and then narrowed about the flying vessels. Shore
lights watched them, now dim and far, now bright and near at hand.
Shelter Island Sound received them, slapped their flanks encouragingly
with its racing waves, sped them with an ebbing tide that tore seawards
between constricted shores, carried them past high-wooded bluffs and low
wastes of sedge, past simple cottage and pretentious country home, past
bobbing buoys--nun and can and spar--and moored flotillas of small
pleasure craft, past Sag Harbor and past Cedar Island Light, delivering
them at length into the lonelier wastes of Gardiner's Bay. Their
relative positions were unchanged: still the _Trouble_ retained her
hard-won advantage.
But it was little comfort that Whitaker derived from contemplation of
this fact. He was beginning to be more definitely perplexed and
distressed. He had no watch with him, no means of ascertaining the time
even roughly; but unquestionably they had been upwards of two hours if
not more at full tilt, and now were braving wilder waters; and still he
saw no sign of anything resembling a termination of the adventure. In
fact, they were leaving behind them every likely landing place.
"Damn it!" he grumbled. "What are they aiming at--Boston?"
Near the forward wheel a miniature binnacle housing a compass with
phosphorescent card, advised him from time to time, as he consulted it,
of the lay of their course. They were just then ploughing almost due
northeast over a broad expanse, beckoned on by the distant flicker of a
gas-buoy. But the information was less than worthless, and every
reasonable guess he might have made as to their next move would have
proved even more futile than merely idle; for when they had rounded the
buoy, instead of standing, as any reasonable beings might have been
expected to, on to Fisher's Island or at a tangent north toward the
Connecticut littoral, they swung off something south of east--a course
that could lead them nowhere but to the immensities of the sea itself.
Whitaker's breath caught in his throat as he examined this startling
prospect. The Atlantic was something a trifle bigger than he had
bargained for. To dare its temper, with a southwester brewing (by every
weather sign he knew) in what was to all intents an open boat, since he
would never be able to leave the cockpit for an instant's shelter in the
cabin in any sort of a seaway--!
He shook a dubious, vastly troubled head. But he held on grimly in the
face of dire forebodings.
Once out from under the lee of Gardiner's Island, a heavier run of waves
beset them, catching the boats almost squarely on the beam: fortunately
a sea of long, smooth, slow shouldering rollers, as yet not angry. Now
and again, for all that, one would favour the _Trouble_ with a
quartering slap that sent a shower of spray aboard her to drench
Whitaker and swash noisily round the cockpit ere the self-bailing
channels could carry it off. He was quickly wet to the skin and
shivering. The hour was past midnight, and the strong air whipping in
from the open sea had a bitter edge. His only consolation inhered in the
reflection that he had companions in his misery: those who drove the
leading boat could hardly escape what he must suffer; though he hoped
and believed that the woman was shut below, warm and dry in the cabin.
Out over the dark waste to starboard a white light lifted, flashing. For
a while a red eye showed beneath it, staring unwinkingly with a
steadfast and sardonic glare, then disappeared completely, leaving only
the blinking white. Far ahead another light, fixed white, hung steadily
over the port counter, and so remained for over an hour.
Then most gradually the latter wore round upon the beam and dropped
astern. Whitaker guessed at random, but none the less rightly, that they
were weathering Block Island to the south with a leeway of several
miles. Indisputably the Atlantic held them in the hollow of its
tremendous hand. The slow, eternal deep-sea swell was most perceptible:
a ceaseless impulse of infinite power running through the pettier, if
more threatening, drive of waves kicked up by the wind. Fortunately the
course, shifting to northeast by east, presently took them out of the
swinging trough of the sea. The rollers now led them on, an endless
herd, one after another falling sullenly behind as the two boats shot
down into their shallow intervals and began to creep slowly up over the
long gray backs of those that ran before.
It was after three in the morning, and, though Whitaker had no means of
knowing it, they were on the last and longest leg of the cruise. They
still had moonlight, but it was more wan and ghastly and threatened
presently to fail them altogether, blotted out by the thickening
weather. The wind was blowing with an insistent, unintermittent force it
had not before developed. A haze, vaguely opalescent, encircled the
horizon like a ghost of absinthe. The cold, formless, wavering dusk of
dawn in time lent it a sickly hue of gray together with a seeming more
substantial. Swathed in its smothering folds, the moon faded to the
semblance of a plaque of dull silver, then vanished altogether. By
four-thirty, when the twilight was moderately bright, Whitaker was
barely able to distinguish the leading boat. The two seemed as if
suspended, struggling like impaled insects, the one in the midst, the
other near the edge, of a watery pit walled in by vapours.
He recognized in this phenomenon of the weather an exceptionally
striking variation of what his sea-going experience had taught him to
term a smoky sou'wester.
That hour found him on the verge of the admission that he was, as he
would have said, about all in: the limit of endurance nearly approached.
He was half-dazed with fatigue; his wet skin crawled with goose-flesh;
his flesh itself was cold as stone. In the pit of his stomach lurked an
indefinite, sickening sensation of chilled emptiness. His throat was
sore and parched, his limbs stiff and aching, his face crusted with
stinging particles of salt, his eyes red, sore and smarting. If his
ankle troubled him, he was not aware of it; it would need sharp agony to
penetrate the aura of dull, interminable misery that benumbed his
consciousness.
With all this, he tormented himself with worry lest the tanks run dry.
Though they had been filled only the day before, he had no clear notion
of the horse-power of the motor or its hourly consumption of gasoline;
and the drain upon the supply could not have been anything but
extraordinary. If it were to run out before they made a landing or safe
anchorage, he would find himself in ticklish straits; but this troubled
him less than the fear that he might be obliged to give up the chase to
which he had stuck so long and with a pertinacity which somewhat
surprised even his own wonder.
And to give up now, when he had fought so far ... it was an intolerable
thought. He protested against it with a vain, bitter violence void of
any personal feeling or any pride of purpose and endurance. It was his
solicitude for the woman alone that racked him. Whatever the enigmatic
animus responsible for this outrage, it seemed most undeniable that none
but men of the most desperate calibre would have undertaken it--men in
whose sight no crime would be abominable, however hideous. To
contemplate her fate, if abandoned to their mercies...!
The end came just before dawn, with a swiftness that stunned the
faculties--as though one saw the naked wrath of God leap like lightning
from the sky.