Presently there was a sound of motors. Cars without lights, many of them, were racing along the riverside highway from downtown Pittsburgh. They rushed over the bridge, toward the distant uproar of shooting.
"That decoyed them out," Lanterman said. He gave orders, quick and fierce. "Allerman, you and Jim take your boats in here. Block the bridges, so they can't get back in a hurry."
Two skiffloads of men darted toward the dim shore. And the rest, with Lanterman's skiff leading, moved under oars down along the riverside.
Now Wales glimpsed lights—a few dim, scattered gleams. With a shock, he saw big, black towers against the stars, and realized they were the skyscrapers of downtown Pittsburgh.
Their skiffs shot in, bumped and stopped. The men piled out, onto a cobbled levee that slanted up from the river.
Lanterman's voice rang out. "We've got 'em cold, with most of their men chasing Harry across the river! Come on! But remember—don't shoot anyone unless they show fight! Most of 'em'll join us, later."
The dark figures of the men, gun-barrels glinting in the starlight, went up the levee in a stumbling rush. Somewhere ahead, a voice yelled in alarm.
Wales, behind Lanterman, felt more than ever caught in a nightmare. These men, ignorant in their unbelief, battling for an empty city upon a world toward which doom was coming—it seemed a terrible dream from which he could not wake.
CHAPTER IV