"Straight ahead," the girl shouted. "I see him."
Gregory had already thrown in the clutch. In a swirl of white water the Richard raised her head proudly, and snorting angry defiance, raced across the intervening waves which separated her from her primordial enemy. Gregory saw the Fuor d'Italia leap forward in the moonlight, noted that the craft had already changed direction and was heading off at a tangent, a course which would bring Mascola under cover of the fog bank.
Veering as sharply as her speed would permit, the Richard dipped like a gull and sped on to intercept the Fuor d'Italia. The shifting bank of blinding mist
hung uncertainly above the shimmering waters less than half a mile ahead, dead ahead for Mascola, off Gregory's starboard quarter. For the Italian it meant safety. To his pursuer it spelled defeat.
The Richard was gaining. Gregory measured the distance with a calculating eye. He was going to head the Italian off.
"Swing her to port. Catch him on the beam."
Acting at once upon Dickie's advice, Gregory saw the wisdom of it at once. His angling course would have put him into the fog before the Fuor d'Italia reached it. Now he would catch Mascola broadside, full on the beam. Or at least at an angle which would drive the heavier hull through the lighter one.
With seaman's instinct, Mascola sensed rather than saw the Richard's change of course. If he tried to make the fog he would be cut in two. If he deviated a hair's breadth at that speed he'd turn turtle. There was only one thing he could do.
He reached his decision in a whirl of the propeller.
Dickie Lang knew his answer.