Almost as soon as my feet touched the ground I struck straight out from the wall which stretched away on either hand, for I had a wholesome respect for the people I had left behind me there. The Chief—or Emperor as Ivanovitch had called him—was doubtless waiting for the latter’s return with news of me, and it would not be long, probably, before the deaths of Ivanovitch and his assistant were discovered. To be frank, there was a quality of cold and deadly chill in the tones of the man who had spoken to me in the room of the voices that filled me with an urgent desire to put a lot of country between myself and him.
I seemed to be in some kind of an orchard now, and the grass, while it was wet and pretty long, made decent walking, and silent. The night was clear and dark and I could make out the dim bulk of the trees without much trouble, so that I made pretty good going.
By locating the North Star in the sky, I made out that the wall where I left it ran west by southeast. My own direction at right angles to it was about northeast, so that I was going away from town. I knew nothing about my surroundings, of course, nor what obstructions I should find, so, for a time, I kept on in as nearly as possible a straight line. I might be on either side of the Island or in the middle for all I knew.
But it was possible that we had followed a winding course in coming to the place, and I might not be so far from town and from reënforcements after all. And presently the urge came to me to strike off to the northwest, and later bear around to the southwest again and so encircle the place and at least find myself going in the direction in which New York lay. For at present I was going away from it all the time.
About the same time I struck a wall running at right angles to my course and made out, in the dim light, dense woods on the other side of it. So I turned to the right and followed the wall, keeping close to it, so that I could climb it and plunge into the woods at the first sign of pursuit.
And presently the trees about me thinned, the land ahead fell away and I came to the top of a bluff. I looked down some sixty or seventy feet to a long white beach, deserted in the starlight, and saw the white line made by little breakers. Far in the distance shone the lights of the Connecticut coast. I was somewhere on the north shore of the Island; and, judging by the bluff, I was a long way from town; somewhere out beyond Port Jefferson, I thought.
Then I had a shock. My eye swept along the line of the beach and I realized suddenly that it was not deserted. To my left, and, as I judged, about opposite the house from which I had escaped, I made out the dim outline of a smack pulled part way up on the sand. I could dimly discern the moving figures of men about it and the murmur of voices came softly to my ears. But the boat carried no lights nor did the men about it.
On impulse, I made my way along the top of the bluff until I came almost opposite to where the boat lay. Here my progress was stopped by a sort of gully running inland a little way, and I lay down on the bluff to watch, keeping my head down so that it could not show up against the sky-line. These people might be picnickers or almost any one. But, on the other hand, they were close to the house I had left and I did not intend to take any chances. They might also be bootleggers, in which case they would hardly be pleased to see me.
Presently the men about the boat drew away from it in a mass and came up the beach toward me. They seemed to be carrying heavy burdens.
They came forward steadily, and I was just getting ready to beat a retreat when I realized that they were drawing into single file and preparing to advance into the gully. I wriggled forward a little and looked down again. The men moved slowly forward in single file for a matter of twenty yards or so. Then, one by one, they disappeared!