in the skiff and trying to find out
what we were doing. The spy fisherman, sitting beside us on the
stringerpiece, was likewise puzzled. He could not understand our
inactivity. The men in the skiff rowed nearer the shore, but stood up
again and scanned it, as if they thought we might be in hiding there.
But a man came out on the beach and waved a handkerchief to indicate
that the coast was clear. That settled them. They bent to the oars to
make a dash for it. Still Charley waited. Not until they had covered
three-quarters of the distance from the _Lancashire Queen_, which left
them hardly more than a quarter of a mile to gain the shore, did
Charley slap me on the shoulder and cry:

"They're ours! They're ours!"

We ran the few steps to the side of the _Streak_ and jumped aboard.
Stern and bow lines were cast off in a jiffy. The _Streak_ shot ahead
and away from the wharf. The spy fisherman we had left behind on the
stringer-piece pulled out a revolver and fired five shots into the air
in rapid succession. The men in the skiff gave instant heed to the
warning, for we could see them pulling away like mad.

But if they pulled like mad, I wonder how our progress can be
described? We fairly flew. So frightful was the speed with which we
displaced the water, that a wave rose up on either side our bow and
foamed aft in a series of three stiff, up-standing waves, while astern
a great crested billow pursued us hungrily, as though at each moment
it would fall aboard and destroy us. The _Streak_ was pulsing and
vibrating and roaring like a thing alive. The wind of our progress was
like a gale--a forty-five-mile gale. We could not face it and draw
breath without choking and strangling. It blew the smoke straight
back from the mouths of the smoke-stacks at a direct right angle to
the perpendicular. In fact, we were travelling as fast as an express
train. "We just _streaked_ it," was the way Charley told it afterward,
and I think his description comes nearer than any I can give.

As for the Italians in the skiff--hardly had we started, it seemed to
me, when we were on top of them. Naturally, we had to slow down long
before we got to them; but even then we shot past like a whirlwind and
were compelled to circle back between them and the shore. They had
rowed steadily, rising from the thwarts at every stroke, up to the
moment we passed them, when they recognized Charley and me. That took
the last bit of fight out of them. They haul