, aft, and dead ahead, water and air merged in
two boat lengths. Barlow leaned through the pilot-house window, one hand
on the wheel, straining his eyes on their course. Suddenly he threw out
the clutch, shut down his throttle control with one hand, and yanked
with the other at the cord which loosed the _Waterbug's_ shrill whistle.

Dead ahead, almost upon them, came an answering toot.

"I thought I heard a gas-boat," Barlow exclaimed. "Sufferin' Jerusalem!
Hi, there!"

He threw his weight on the wheel, sending it hard over. The cruiser
still had way on; the momentum of her ten-ton weight scarcely had
slackened, and she answered the helm. Out of the deceptive thickness
ahead loomed the sharp, flaring bow of another forty-footer, sheering
quickly, as her pilot sighted them. She was upon them, and abreast, and
gone, with a watery purl of her bow wave, a subdued mutter of exhaust,
passing so near than an active man could have leaped the space between.

"Sufferin' Jerusalem!" Barlow repeated, turning to Stella. "Did you see
that, Mrs. Jack? They got him."

Stella nodded. She too had seen Monohan seated on the after deck, his
head sunk on his breast, irons on his wrists. A glimpse, no more.

"That'll help some," Barlow grunted. "Quick work. But they come blame
near cuttin' us down, beltin' along at ten knots when you can't see
forty feet ahead."

An empty beach greeted them at Tumbling Creek. Reluctantly Stella bade
Barlow turn back. It would soon be dark, and Barlow said he would be
taking chances of piling on the shore before he could see it, or getting
lost in the profound black that would shut down on the water with
daylight's end.

Less than a mile from Cougar Bay, the _Waterbug's_ engine gave a few
premonitory gasps and died. Barlow descended to the engine room, hooked
up the trouble lamp, and sought for the cause. He could not find it.
Stella could hear him muttering profanity, turning the flywheel over,
getting an occasional explosion.

An hour passed. Dark of the Pit descended, shrouding the lake with a
sable curtain, close-folded, impenetrable. The dead stillness of the day
vanished before a hot land breeze, and Stella, as she felt the launch
drift, knew by her experience on the lake that they were moving
offshore. Presently this was confirmed, for out of the black wall on the
west, from which the night wind brought stifling puffs of smoke, there
lifted a yellow effulgence that grew to a red glare as the