He bent over his engine, coaxing it, nursing it to its highest efficiency; his eyes strained now upon the point ahead, now upon his pursuers behind.  He was running with the wind, thank Heaven! or the small boat would have had a further handicap—­it was rolling up quite a sea.

The steering gear, he found, was corded along the side of the boat, permitting its manipulation from almost any position, and, abruptly now, Jimmie Dale left the engine to rummage through the little locker in the stern of the boat.  But as he rummaged, his eyes held speculatively on the boat astern.  She was gaining unquestionably, steadily, but not as fast as he had feared.  He would still have a hundred yards’ lead, at least, abreast the point—­and, he was smiling grimly now, a hundred yards there meant life to the Gray Seal!  The locker was full of a heterogeneous collection of odds and ends—­a suit of oilskins, tools, tins, and cans of various sizes and descriptions.  Jimmie Dale emptied the contents, some sort of powder, of a small, round tin box overboard, and from his pocket took out the banknotes, crammed them into the box, crammed his watch in on top of them, and screwed the cover on tightly.  His fingers were flying now.  A long strip torn from the trousers’ leg of the oilskins was wrapped again and again around the box—­and the box was stuffed into his pocket.

The flash of a revolver shot cut the blackness behind him, then another, and another.  They were firing in a continuous stream again.  It was fairly long range, but there was always the chance of a stray bullet finding its mark.  Jimmie Dale, crouching low, made his way to the bow of the boat again.

The point was looming almost abreast now.  He edged in nearer, to hug it as closely as he dared risk the depth of the water.  Behind, remorselessly, the other boat was steadily closing the gap; and the shots were not all wild—­one struck, with a curious singing sound, on some piece of metal a foot from his elbow.  Closer to the shore, running now parallel with the head of the point, Jimmie Dale again edged in the boat, his jaws, clamped, working in little twitches.

And then suddenly, with a swift, appraising glance behind him, he swerved the boat from her course and headed for the shore—­not directly, but diagonally across the little bay that, on the farther side of the point, had now opened out before him.  He was close in with the edge of the point, ten yards from it, sweeping past it—­the point itself came between the two boats, hiding them from each other—­and Jimmie Dale, with a long spring, dove from the boat’s side to the water.