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.
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