n came
the rain in torrents, smearing out the fog from the atmosphere, as a
painter, with a sponge, might wipe a color from his canvas. Long tails
of yellow vapor, twining--twining--but always coiling downward, floated
like snakes about them; and the oily waters of the Thames became
pock-marked in the growing light.

Stringer now quite clearly discerned the quarry--a very rakish-looking
motor cutter, painted black, and speeding seaward ahead of them. He
quivered with excitement.

"Do you know the boat?" cried Rogers, addressing his crew in general.

"No, sir," reported his second-in-command; "she's a stranger to me. They
must have kept her hidden somewhere." He turned and looked back into the
group of faces, all directed toward the strange craft. "Do any of you
know her?" he demanded.

A general shaking of heads proclaimed the negative.

"But she can shift," said one of the men. "They must have been going
slow through the fog; she's creeping up to ten or twelve knots now, I
should reckon."

"Your reckoning's a trifle out!" snapped Rogers, irritably, from the
stern; "but she's certainly showing us her heels. Can't we put somebody
ashore and have her cut off lower down?"

"While we're doing that," cried Stringer, excitedly, "she would land
somewhere and we should lose the gang!"

"That's right," reluctantly agreed Rogers. "Can you see any of her
people?"

Through the sheets of rain all peered eagerly.

"She seems to be pretty well loaded," reported the man beside Stringer,
"but I can't make her out very well."

"Are we doing our damnedest?" inquired Rogers.

"We are, sir," reported the engineer; "she hasn't got another oat in
her!"

Rogers muttered something beneath his breath, and sat there glaring
ahead at the boat ever gaining upon her pursuer.

"So long as we keep her in sight," said Stringer, "our purpose is
served. She can't land anybody."

"At her present rate," replied the man upon whose shoulders he was
leaning, "she'll be out of sight by the time we get to Tilbury or she'll
have hit a barge and gone to the bottom!"

"I'll eat my hat if I lose her!" declared Rogers angrily. "How the
blazes they slipped away from the wharf beats me!"

"They didn't slip away from the wharf," cried Stringer over his
shoulder. "You heard what Sowerby said; they lay in the creek below the
wharf, and there was some passageway underneath."

"But damn it all, man!" cried Rogers, "it's high tide; they must be a
ga