y were now following the coast southward, the lights of Ramsgate
dropping back on their right. The waters out here in the Channel were
wilder, great black waves tossing the cutter to the sky one moment, and
then dropping it sickeningly the next. Frequently its screws raced
loudly as they encountered no resistance but air.

Ennis, clinging precariously on the foredeck, turned the searchlight's
stabbing white beam back and forth on the heaving dark sea ahead, but
without any sign of their quarry disclosed.

White foam of breaking waves began to show around them like bared teeth,
and there was a humming in the air.

"Storm coming up the Channel," Sturt exclaimed. "It'll do for us if it
catches us out here."

"We've got to keep on," Ennis told him desperately. "We must come up
with them soon!"

The coast on their right was now one of black, rocky cliffs, towering
all along the shore in a jagged, frowning wall against which the waves
dashed foamy white. The cutter crept southward over the wild waters,
tossed like a chip upon the great waves. Sturt was having a hard time
holding the craft out from the rocks, and had its prow pointed obliquely
away from them.

The humming in the air changed to a shrill whistling as the outrider
winds of the storm came upon them. The cutter tossed still more wildly
and black masses of water smashed in upon them from the darkness, dazing
and drenching them.

Suddenly Ennis yelled, "There's the lights of a boat ahead! There,
moving in toward the cliffs!"

He pointed ahead, and Campbell and the helmsman peered through the
blinding spray and darkness. A pair of low lights were moving at high
speed on the waters there, straight toward the towering black cliffs.
Then they vanished suddenly from sight.

"There must be a hidden opening or harbor of some kind in the cliffs!"
Inspector Campbell exclaimed. "But that can't be Chandra Dass' boat, for
it carried no lights."

"It might be others of the Brotherhood going to the meeting-place!"
Ennis exclaimed. "We can follow and see."

* * * * *

Sturt thrust his head through the flying spray and shouted, "There are
openings and water-caverns in plenty along these cliffs, but there's
nothing in any of them."

"We'll find out," Campbell said. "Head straight toward the cliffs in
there where that boat vanished."

"If we can't find the opening we'll be smashed to flinders on those
cliffs," Sturt warned.

"I'm gam