ad saved the Gray Seal a hundred times
before was weaving, planning, discarding, eliminating, scheming a way
out--with death, ruin, disaster the price of failure. His eyes swept
the dim, irregular outline of the shore. To his right, in the opposite
direction from where he had left his car, and perhaps a mile ahead, as
well as he could judge, the land seemed to run out into a point. Jimmie
Dale headed for it instantly. If he could reach it with a little lead to
the good, there was a chance! It would take, say, six minutes, granting
the boat a speed of ten miles an hour--and she could do that. The others
could hardly overtake him in that time--they hadn't got started yet. He
could hear them still shouting and talking at the wharf. And Mittel's
"twice as fast" was undoubtedly an exaggeration, anyhow.

A minute more passed, another--and then, astern, Jimmie Dale caught the
racket from the exhaust of a high-powered engine, and a white streak
seemed to shoot out upon the surface of the water from where, obscured
now, he placed the wharf. A quarter-mile lead, roughly four hundred
yards; yes, he had as much as that--but that, too, was very little.

He bent over his engine, coaxing it, nursing it to its highest
efficiency; his eyes strained now upon the point ahead, now upon his
pursuers behind. He was running with the wind, thank Heaven! or the
small boat would have had a further handicap--it was rolling up quite a
sea.

The steering gear, he found, was corded along the side of the boat,
permitting its manipulation from almost any position, and, abruptly now,
Jimmie Dale left the engine to rummage through the little locker in the
stern of the boat. But as he rummaged, his eyes held speculatively on
the boat astern. She was gaining unquestionably, steadily, but not as
fast as he had feared. He would still have a hundred yards' lead, at
least, abreast the point--and, he was smiling grimly now, a hundred
yards there meant life to the Gray Seal! The locker was full of a
heterogeneous collection of odds and ends--a suit of oilskins, tools,
tins, and cans of various sizes and descriptions. Jimmie Dale emptied
the contents, some sort of powder, of a small, round tin box overboard,
and from his pocket took out the banknotes, crammed them into the box,
crammed his watch in on top of them, and screwed the cover on tightly.
His fingers were flying now. A long strip torn from the trousers' leg of
the oilskins was wrapped again and again