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 wi