“You did it after all, did you? Get back; keep back!”
He bent again and gathered up the scarf, drew the emeralds together and knotted up the corners, keeping a keen eye on his prisoners. He slipped the extemporized sack into his pocket, with a red-and-white scarf end hanging out.
“You stay where you are for half an hour,” he commanded. “I’ll be watching you. One move, and it’ll be the last you’ll make.”
He edged away, his face over his shoulder. His figure was growing faint in the fog, when Lang leaped toward the bark layers that covered his rifle. He snatched it out, aimed, fired, once—twice at the vanishing form. It seemed to lurch, stumble; and a pale flash came back from it, with a bullet that knocked up the fire cinders. Lang fired again, and then the figure had entirely disappeared.
“He mustn’t get back to the boat!” he exclaimed. “We must head him off.”
Once aboard, he realized like a flash, Carroll would put on the power and leave them marooned. He started impulsively away, halted dizzily, not knowing in which direction lay the sea.
Eva took his hand and guided him. A breeze had risen, and the fog was sweeping in, huge pillars and billows of it. Through its blinding density, they ran together down the slope, and must have been near the water when Lang heard a sound of hurrying footsteps ahead.
He had expected that. He drew Eva aside into the shelter of a dense cedar shrub. A figure grew in the fog, growing to a slim, boyish form, running so as to pass directly where Lang stood. He stepped suddenly out.
“Is that you, Carroll?” exclaimed the runner. “What was that shooting? Hell!”
Lang’s rifle was already swinging, but the gunman was so swift that he already had his revolver clear of his pocket when the steel rifle barrel crashed down on his skull. He dropped limply, flinging his arms wide. Lang picked up the pistol and stood listening. No sound came from landward.