"There will be no relief, Smith; those are the troopers, and they're against us. So now--we've got it to ourselves, Smith, for some time."
There was a certain satisfaction at the monopoly in his voice.
[CHAPTER XXIII]
THE SEARCH-LIGHT
The sound of those two shots greeted Vincent Dering as, after infinite difficulty, owing to the darkness, the fitful gusts of wind, and the sand-banks, he drew up the canoe against what he knew must be the high bank below the off-take of the canal.
It had only been by trusting the stream to guide him, and refraining at times from the use of his paddle, that he had managed to steer his way at all.
So he knew he was late; felt, indeed, that he must be too late to use his influence with the men, and yet, despite this knowledge, a keen disappointment filled him when those shots proved him to be so; since by long experience he knew that once open resistance began, there could be no more question of words.
What then, was there for him to do?
If he, in his light canoe, helped, wherever possible, by every atom of strength his arms possessed, had taken so long to come down that mile or two of stream, the raft could not possibly arrive for another half hour.
He could not sit still for half an hour; he felt, indeed, as if he could not sit still for half a minute. A passion to act, to sweep away the past, to forget, was upon him. He had had time during his strange journey--so often idle perforce--to realize his position; time to piece the still stranger events preceding his journey into a reasonable sequence; so that he had, by now, arrived at a fairly accurate guess as to the cause of much, that, when it happened, had seemed causeless.