Mile after mile fell behind them, with no relaxation of energy or purpose.  Chase found time and opportunity to give his thoughts over to Genevra.  A mighty longing to clasp her in his arms and carry her to the ends of the earth took possession of him:  a longing to drag her far from the conventions which bound her to a world he could not enter into.  Down in his heart, he knew that she loved him:  it was not a play-day folly with her.  And yet he knew that the end would be as she had said.  She would be the wife of the man she did not love.  Fate had given her to him when the world was young; there was no escape.  In story-books, perhaps, but not in real life.  And how he had come to love her!

They were coming to the ridge road and Selim fell back to explain the need for caution.  The ridge road crept along the brow of the deep canyon that ran down to the sea.  This was the road, in all likelihood, he explained, that the abductors would have used in their flight from the cavern.  Two miles farther south it joined the wide highway that ran from Aratat to the mines.

Selim crept on ahead to reconnoitre.  He was back in ten minutes with the information that a party of men had but lately passed along the road toward the south.  Their footprints in the soft, untraveled road were fresh.  The stub of a cigarette that had scarcely burned itself out proved to him conclusively that the smoker, at least, was not far ahead of them.

They broke away from the road and took a less exposed course through the forest to their right, keeping well within earshot of the ridge, but moving so carefully that there was slight danger of alarming the party ahead.  The fact that the abductors—­there seemed to be no doubt as to identity—­had spent several hours longer than necessary in traversing the distance between the cave and the point just passed, proving rather conclusively that they were encumbered by living, not dead, burdens.

At last the sound of voices came to the ears of the pursuers.  As they crept closer and closer, they became aware of the fact that the party had halted and were wrangling among themselves over some point in dispute.  With Selim in the lead, crawling like panthers through the dense undergrowth, the trio came to the edge of the timber land.  Before them lay the dark, treeless valley; almost directly below them, not fifty yards away, clustered the group of disputing islanders, a dozen men in all, with half as many flaring torches.

They had halted in the roadway at the point where a sharp defile through the rocks opened a way down into the valley.  Like snakes the pursuers wriggled their way to a point just above the small basin in which the party was congregated.

A great throb of exultation leaped up from their hearts, In plain view, at the side of the road, were the two persons for whom they were searching.

“God, luck is with us,” whispered Chase unconsciously.