“You want to watch out or you 'll be coming down with brain fever one of these days. Come, boys, we 'll go back.”
“You think what he did was to take to the road back up there and set the boat adrift?” asked Pink.
“Of course.” The words came from the deeper water, where the special agent was already swimming back. A moment more and Dick and Pink were after him.
“Now, Mister van Deelen,” said Beveridge, when they had gathered together, “take us to the road.”
“It's right back up-stream. You know where it is as well as I do.”
“Can't we strike right over through the woods?”
“Why, yes, you could do—”
“All right, Dick. It 'll be lighter when we get up out of this hole.”
They floundered through a hundred yards of undergrowth and finally came upon the open road. They were a dismal enough party. The water in their shoes gurgled when they moved and spurted out at the lacings in little streams. Other streams ran down their clothing to the road, where the sand drank them up. Beveridge was without coat or collar, and the others were nearly as dilapidated. The physical strain of the chase, and the loss of sleep, not to speak of Beveridge's fight with McGlory, had worn them down nearly to the point at which nature asserts her peremptory claims,—but not one of them knew it. They did not know that they were a desperate spectacle in the eyes of the bewildered farmer; even if they could have stood in the light of day and looked full at one another, it is to be doubted if any of the three would have observed the deep-lined, white faces, the ringed eyes, of the other two. For the spirit of the chase was in them.
“Now, Mister Van,” said Beveridge, almost gayly, “how far is it to the next house?”