The way was clear, and he ran at a pace which would not have disgraced a college sprinter.  Once, glancing back over his shoulder, he saw the Bahaman trying blasphemously to disentangle his legs from those of the prostrate and wriggling Davy.  He saw, too, Roke pawing at his cut face with both hairy hands, and heard him bellowing confused orders which nobody seemed to understand.

Arrived at the dock Gavin saw that Standish’s launch was gone.  So, too, was the gaudy little motorboat wherein Rodney Hade had come to the key.  Two battered and paintless motor-scows remained, and one or two disreputable rowboats.

It was the work of only a few seconds for Brice to cut loose the moorings of all these craft and to thrust them far out into the blue water, where wind and tide could be trusted to bear them steadily farther and farther from shore.

Into the last of the boats—­the speedier-seeming of the two launches—­Gavin sprang as he shoved it free from the float.  And, before the nearest of the island men could reach shore, he had the motor purring.  Satisfied that the tide had caught the rest of the fleet and that the stiff tradewind was doing even more to send the derelict boats out of reach from shore or from possible swimmers he turned the head of his unwieldy launch toward the mainland, pointing it northeastward and making ready to wind his course through the straits which laced the various islets lying between him and his destination.

“They’ll have a sweet time getting off that key tonight,” he mused in grim satisfaction.  “And, unless they can hail some passing boat, they’re due to stay there till Hade or Standish makes another trip out ....  Standish!”

At the name he went hot with wrath.  Now that he had achieved the task of winning free from his prison and from his jailors his mind swung back to the man he had rescued and who had sought his death.  Anger at the black infamy burned fiercely in Brice’s soul.  His whole brain and body ached for redress, for physical wild-beast punishment of the ingrate.  The impulse dulled his every other faculty.  It made him oblivious to the infinitely more important work he had laid out for himself.

No man can be forever normal when anger takes the reins.  And, for the time, Gavin Brice was deaf and blind to every motive or caution, and centered his entire faculties on the yearning to punish Milo Standish.  He had fought like a tiger and had risked his own life to save Standish from the unknown assailant’s knife thrust.  Milo, in gross stupidity, had struck him senseless.  And now, coldbloodedly, he had helped to plan for him the most terrible form of death by torture to which even an Apache could have stooped.  Small wonder that righteous indignation flared high within the fugitive!

Straight into the fading glory of the sunset.  Brice was steering his wallowing and leaky launch.  The boat was evidently constructed and used for the transporting of fruit from the key to the mainland.  She was slow and of deep draught.  But she was cutting down the distance now between Gavin and the shore.