Part 31 (2/2)
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 a.s.sumed--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 l.u.s.tily with the oars.
Happily the Fiske motor-boat swung at a mooring not a great distance from the sh.o.r.e. Surprisingly soon he had the small boat alongside.
Dropping the oars, he rose, grasped the coaming and lifted himself into the c.o.c.kpit. 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 sh.o.r.eward, swinging broadside to the wind.
Jumping back into the c.o.c.kpit, 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 m.u.f.fled 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, s.h.i.+fted 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 pa.s.sed. 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 circ.u.mstances?
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 sh.o.r.e, 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 man[oe]uvre. 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 ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l--otherwise the gates had been closed--with a strength that taxed the _Trouble_ to surpa.s.s. 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.
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