To starboard, thinning lights told the Master they were breasting Spuyten Duyvil.  To port, only a few scattered gleams along the base of the cliff or atop it, showed that the sparsely settled Palisades were drawing abeam.  The ceaseless, swarming activities of the metropolis were being left behind.  Silence was closing in, broken only by vagrant steamer-whistles from astern.

A crawling string of lights, on the New York shore, told that an express was hurling itself cityward.  Its muffled roar began to echo out over the star-flecked waters.  The Master threw a scornful glance at it.  He turned in his seat, and peered at the shimmer of the city’s lights, strung like a luminous rosary along the river’s edge.  Then he looked up at the roseate flush on the sky, flung there by the metropolis as from the mouth of a crucible.

“Child’s play!” he murmured.  “All this coming and going in crowded streets, all this fighting for bread, and scheming over pennies—­child’s play.  Less than that—­the blind swarming of ants!  Tomorrow, where will all this be, for us?”

He turned back and thrust over the spokes.  The launch drew in toward the Jersey shore.

“Let the engines run at half-speed,” he directed, “and control her now with the clutch.”

“Yes, sir!”

The aviator’s voice was sharp, precise, determined.  The Master nodded to himself with satisfaction.  This man, he felt, would surely be a valued member of the crew.  He might prove more than that.  There might be stuff in him that could be molded to executive ability, in case that should be necessary.

The launch, now at half-speed, nosed her way directly toward the cliff.  Sounds from shore began to grow audible Afar, an auto siren shrieked.  A dog barked, irritatingly.  A human voice came vaguely hallooing.

Off to the right, over the cliff brow, a faint aura of light was visible.  The eyes of the Master rested on this a moment, brightening.  He smiled again; and his hand tightened a little on the wheel.  But all he said was: 

“Dead slow, now, Captain Alden!”

As the cliff drew near, its black brows ate across the sky, devouring stars.  The Master spoke in Arabic to Rrisa, who seized a boat hook and came forward.  Out of the gloom small wharf advanced to meet the launch.  The boat-hook caught; the launch, easing to a stop, cradled against the stringpiece.

Rrisa held with the hook, while Bohannan and Alden clambered out.  Before the Master left, he bent and seemed to be manipulating something in the bottom of the launch.  Then he stepped to the engine.

“Out, Rrisa,” he commanded, “and hold hard with the hook, now!”

The Arab obeyed.  All at once the propeller churned water, reversed.  The Master leaped to the wharf.

“Let go—­and throw the hook into the boat!” he ordered.

While the three others stood wondering on the dark wharf, the launch began to draw slowly back into the stream.  Already it was riding a bit low, going down gradually by the bows.