ith 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.

They were precisely as they had been, within a certain distance of one
another, toiling on and ever on like strange misshapen spirits doomed to
run an endless race. The harsh, shapeless light of imminent day alone
manufactured a colour of difference: Whitaker now was able to see as two
dark shapes the men in the body of the leading boat. The woman was not
visible, but the doors to the cabin were closed, confirming his surmise
that she at least had been sheltered through the night. One of the men
was standing by the wheel, forward, staring ahead. The other occupied a
seat in the cockpit, head and shoulders alone visible above the coaming.
For the most part he seemed sunk in lethargy, head fallen forward, chin
on chest; but now and then he looked up and back at the pursuing boat,
his face a featureless patch of bleached pink.

Now suddenly the man at the wheel cried out something in a terrible
voice of fright, so high and vehement that it even carried back against
the booming gale for Whitaker to hear. Simultaneously he put the wheel
over, with all his might. The other jumped from his seat, only to be
thrown back as the little vessel swung broadside to the sea, heeling
until she lay almost