“Let her go!” shouted Rogers—“close inshore! Keep a sharp lookout for a cutter, boys!”
Stringer, aroused now to excitement, went blundering forward through the fog, joining the men in the bows. Four pairs of eyes were peering through the mist, the damnable, yellow mist that veiled all things.
“Curse the fog!” said Stringer; “it's just our damn luck!”
“Cutter 'hoy!” bawled a man at his side suddenly, one of the river police more used to the mists of the Thames. “Cutter on the port bow, sir!”
“Keep her in sight,” shouted Rogers from the stern; “don't lose her for your lives!”
Stringer, at imminent peril of precipitating himself into the water, was craning out over the bows and staring until his eyes smarted.
“Don't you see her?” said one of the men on the lookout. “She carries no lights, of course, but you can just make out the streak of her wake.”
Harder, harder stared Stringer, and now a faint, lighter smudge in the blackness, ahead and below, proclaimed itself the wake of some rapidly traveling craft.
“I can hear her motor!” said another voice.
Stringer began, now, also to listen.