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 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.”