about him, stood up to look. His weather-tanned face, framed in

the hood, had an aspect of authority and challenging force, with
the deep-set eyes gazing far away fixedly, without a wink, like the

intent, merciless, steady eyes of a sea-bird.
"CHI VA PIANO VA SANO," he remarked at last, with a derisive glance

over the side, in ironic allusion to our own tremendous speed.
The Tremolino was doing her best, and seemed to hardly touch the

great burst of foam over which she darted. I crouched down again
to get some shelter from the low bulwark. After more than half an

hour of swaying immobility expressing a concentrated, breathless
watchfulness, Dominic sank on the deck by my side. Within the

monkish cowl his eyes gleamed with a fierce expression which
surprised me. All he said was:

"He has come out here to wash the new paint off his yards, I
suppose."

"What?" I shouted, getting up on my knees. "Is she the
guardacosta?"

The perpetualsuggestion of a smile under Dominic's piratical
moustaches seemed to become more accentuated - quite real, grim,

actually almost visible through the wet and uncurled hair. Judging
by that symptom, he must have been in a towering rage. But I could

also see that he was puzzled, and that discovery affected me
disagreeably. Dominic puzzled! For a long time, leaning against

the bulwark, I gazed over the stern at the gray column that seemed
to stand swaying slightly in our wake always at the same distance.

Meanwhile Dominic, black and cowled, sat cross-legged on the deck,
with his back to the wind, recalling vaguely an Arab chief in his

burnuss sitting on the sand. Above his motionless" target="_blank" title="a.静止的；固定的">motionless figure the
little cord and tassel on the stiff point of the hood swung about

inanely in the gale. At last I gave up facing the wind and rain,
and crouched down by his side. I was satisfied that the sail was a

patrol craft. Her presence was not a thing to talk about, but
soon, between two clouds charged with hail-showers, a burst of

sunshine fell upon her sails, and our men discovered her character
for themselves. From that moment I noticed that they seemed to

take no heed of each other or of anything else. They could spare
no eyes and no thought but for the slight column-shape astern of

us. Its swaying had become perceptible. For a moment she remained
dazzlingly white, then faded away slowly to nothing in a squall,

only to reappear again, nearly black, resembling a post stuck
upright against the slaty background of solid cloud. Since first

noticed she had not gained on us a foot.
"She will never catch the Tremolino," I said exultingly.

Dominic did not look at me. He remarked absently, but justly, that
the heavy weather was in our pursuer's favour. She was three times

our size. What we had to do was to keep our distance till dark,
which we could manage easily, and then haul off to seaward and

consider the situation. But his thoughts seemed to stumble in the
darkness of some not-solved enigma, and soon he fell silent. We

ran steadily, wing-and-wing. Cape San Sebastian nearly ahead
seemed to recede from us in the squalls of rain, and come out again

to meet our rush, every time more distinct between the showers.
For my part I was by no means certain that this GABELOU (as our men

alluded to her opprobriously) was after us at all. There were
nautical difficulties in such a view which made me express the

sanguine opinion that she was in all innocence simply changing her
station. At this Dominic condescended to turn his head.

"I tell you she is in chase," he affirmed moodily, after one short
glance astern.

I never doubted his opinion. But with all the ardour of a neophyte
and the pride of an apt learner I was at that time a great nautical

casuist.
"What I can't understand," I insisted subtly, "is how on earth,

with this wind, she has managed to be just where she was when we
first made her out. It is clear that she could not, and did not,

gain twelve miles on us during the night. And there are other
impossibilities. . . ."

Dominic had been sitting motionless" target="_blank" title="a.静止的；固定的">motionless, like an inanimate black cone
posed on the stern deck, near the rudder-head, with a small tassel

fluttering on its sharp point, and for a time he preserved the
immobility of his meditation. Then, bending over with a short

laugh, he gave my ear the bitter fruit of it. He understood
everything now perfectly. She was where we had seen her first, not

because she had caught us up, but because we had passed her during
the night while she was already waiting for us, hove-to, most

likely, on our very track.
"Do you understand - already?" Dominic muttered in a fierce

undertone. "Already! You know we left a good eight hours before
we were expected to leave, otherwise she would have been in time to

lie in wait for us on the other side of the Cape, and" - he snapped
his teeth like a wolf close to my face - "and she would have had us

like - that."
I saw it all plainly enough now. They had eyes in their heads and

all their wits about them in that craft. We had passed them in the
dark as they jogged on easily towards their ambush with the idea

that we were yet far behind. At daylight, however, sighting a
balancelle ahead under a press of canvas, they had made sail in

chase. But if that was so, then -
Dominic seized my arm.

"Yes, yes! She came out on an information - do you see, it? - on
information. . . . We have been sold - betrayed. Why? How? What

for? We always paid them all so well on shore. . . . No! But it
is my head that is going to burst."

He seemed to choke, tugged at the throatbutton of the cloak,
jumped up open-mouthed as if to hurl curses and denunciation, but

instantly mastered himself, and, wrapping up the cloak closer about
him, sat down on the deck again as quiet as ever.

"Yes, it must be the work of some scoundrel ashore," I observed.
He pulled the edge of the hood well forward over his brow before he

muttered:
"A scoundrel. . . . Yes. . . . It's evident."

"Well," I said, "they can't get us, that's clear."
"No," he assented quietly, "they cannot."

We shaved the Cape very close to avoid an adverse current. On the
other side, by the effect of the land, the wind failed us so

completely for a moment that the Tremolino's two great lofty sails
hung idle to the masts in the thundering uproar of the seas

breaking upon the shore we had left behind. And when the returning
gust filled them again, we saw with amazement half of the new

mainsail, which we thought fit to drive the boat under before
giving way, absolutely fly out of the bolt-ropes. We lowered the

yard at once, and saved it all, but it was no longer a sail; it was
only a heap of soaked strips of canvas cumbering the deck and

weighting the craft. Dominic gave the order to throw the whole lot
overboard.

I would have had the yard thrown overboard, too, he said, leading
me aft again, "if it had not been for the trouble. Let no sign

escape you," he continued, lowering his voice, "but I am going to
tell you something terrible. Listen: I have observed that the

roping stitches on that sail have been cut! You hear? Cut with a
knife in many places. And yet it stood all that time. Not enough

cut. That flap did it at last. What matters it? But look!
there's treachery seated on this very deck. By the horns of the

devil! seated here at our very backs. Do not turn, signorine."
We were facing aft then.

"What's to be done?" I asked, appalled.
"Nothing. Silence! Be a man, signorine."

"What else?" I said.