"It isn't possible! We can't allow them to...."
"What?" said Dorothy. "You wanted to kill him a little while ago.... Do you want to save him now?"
Webster and his friends did not quite know what they wanted. But they refused to remain inactive any longer in presence of this heartrending spectacle. The cliff was perpendicular, but there were fissures and runlets of sand in it. Webster, seeing that the man with the rifle was no longer paying any attention to them, risked the descent. Dario and Errington followed him.
The attempt was vain. The gang had no intention of fighting. The woman started the motor. When the three young men set foot on the sand of the beach, the boat was moving out to sea, with the engine going full speed. The American vainly fired the seven shots in his revolver.
He was furious; and he said to Dorothy who got down to him:
"All the same ... all the same we should have acted differently.... There goes a band of rogues, clearing off under our very eyes."
"What can we do?" said Dorothy. "Isn't the chief culprit punished? When they're out to sea, they'll search him again, and once certain that his pockets are really empty, that he knows the secret and will not reveal it, they'll throw their chief into the sea, along with the false Marquis, whose corpse is actually at the bottom of the hold."
"And that's enough for you? The punishment of d'Estreicher?"
"Yes."
"You hate him intensely then?"