oks quite simple and obvious, in theory.
Nevertheless--"

"Men of your character are useful, in places," said the Master,
incisively. "You are good in a charge, in sudden daring, in swift
attack. But in the approach to great decisions, you vacillate. That's
your racial character.

"I'm beginning to doubt my own wisdom in having chosen you as next in
command. There's a bit of doubting Thomas in your ego. It's not
too late, yet, for you to turn back. I'll let you, as a special
concession. Brodeur will jump at the chance to be your successor."

His hand swung the wheel, sweeping the racer in a curve toward the
Manhattan shore. Bohannan angrily pushed the spokes over again the
other way.

"I stick!" he growled. "I've said the last word of this sort you'll
ever hear me utter. Full speed ahead--to Paradise--or Hell!"

They said no more. The launch split her way swiftly toward the north.
By the vague, ghostly shimmer of light upon the waters, a tense smile
appeared on the steersman's lips. In his dark eyes gleamed the joy
which to some men ranks supreme above all other joys--that of bending
others to his will, of dominating them, of making them the puppets of
his fancy.

Some quarter hour the racer hummed upriver. Keenly the Master kept
his lookout, picking up landmarks. Finally he spoke a word to
Captain Alden, who came forward to the engines. The Master's
cross-questionings of this man had convinced him his credentials were
genuine and that he was loyal, devoted, animated by nothing but the
same thirst for adventure that formed the driving power behind them
all. Now he was trusting him with much, already.

"Three quarters speed," ordered the Master. The skilled hand of the
captain, well-versed in the operation of gas engines, obeyed the
command. The whipping breeze of their swift course, the hiss at the
bows as foam and water crumbled out and over, somewhat diminished. The
goal lay not far off.

To starboard, thinning lights told the Master they were breasting
Spuyten Duyvil. To port, only a few scattered gleams along the base of
the cliff or atop it, showed that the sparsely settled Palisades were
drawing abeam. The ceaseless, swarming activities of the metropolis
were being left behind. Silence was closing in, broken only by vagrant
steamer-whistles from astern.

A crawling string of lights, on the New York shore, told that an
express was hurling itself cityward. Its muffled roar began to echo
out over the sta