“If I only had Joe Hinman and Allan Harding here now he wouldn’t sail away so easily. But that’s neither here nor there. I’ll know that elegant hull, however, and I’ll know that slick-setting suit of sails anywhere in all this bay, and I’ll get even with him yet. The Surprise couldn’t catch that boat in a race in a hundred years, but I’ll catch him napping somewhere between here and Portland, or I have sailed this bay for nothing.”
The yacht, its sails filling to the light morning airs, sailed slowly out from its place of hiding and faded away into the darkness.
Jack Harvey, waiting a moment longer to rest, started off on an easy jog-trot back to camp. “For,” said he to himself, “the Surprise must up anchor and after that fellow before daylight. We’ll catch him first, and then find out what he has been up to. Perhaps he is another—
“Why, by Jove!” exclaimed Harvey, suddenly, “what a fool I am! How could I ever have forgotten for a moment where I saw that face once before? The man in the rowboat! Whoop! And that yacht is the Eagle, as sure as my name is Harvey. And that man is Chambers. And to think I came across the bay with him, alone at night!”
The cold drops of perspiration stood out on Harvey’s forehead at the very thought of it.
Over hills and through woods ran Harvey, his arms pressed close to his sides and his head down. He had gone about a mile in this way when, upon emerging from a dense clump of bushes and ascending at the same time a little hill, he paused to survey the prospect ahead.
The sight that met his eyes astounded him. Up against the black morning sky there streamed a broad flaring of red, irregular and uncertain. Now it streamed up in a widely diffused glare. Again it darted up in a series of sharp streaks of red.
“Heavens!” cried Harvey. “It’s the hotel and it’s all on fire! Now I know it’s Chambers, for certain. Now I know why he struck me down. Now I know what we’ll hunt him for and what we’ll catch him for.”
Harvey, redoubling his speed, raced for his camp.
While this strange chase of Harvey after the man had been going on, even more exciting things had been happening at the hotel.