On--on--and now I shouted to Hilliard to go beneath to the cruiser's motor room. He moved down toward them while I gripped the wheel tightly, standing there alone in the bridge-room of the long great cruiser that had but Hilliard and I inside it. And, while we hurtled on at our maximum terrible speed, as the cruisers behind drove steadily after us, we realized that we and our pursuers were outracing the sun around the earth! We saw by the growing light that we were high above the sea instead of land. The sea that we saw through breaks in the vapor-layer, gleamed to the west of us with sunset lines. We were over the Atlantic, and now, as hope of escape from our pursuers burned stronger within me, there came a sudden faltering in the steady drone of our great motors! I felt our cruiser lose speed in that moment, knew that faltering to be caused by the circuit-breakers tripping at the tremendous power we were using. But then after an awful moment of hesitation the motors were droning as loudly as ever as Hilliard, beneath, had thrown back the circuit-breakers in the connections that conveyed the static electricity from the atmospheric charge about us to our transformers. Only a moment had we faltered thus; but in that moment the hundred pursuers behind had come swiftly closer! Onward still, like some phantom, we rushed, minute after minute of droning, racing flight, with the sunset ahead flaming brilliant now, as we overtook it. Steadily, the long gleaming ships behind us were creeping closer while the sun rose in the western sky. Though Hilliard was working like a madman in the motor-room beneath, tending the motors as a mother anxiously watches her child, he was but one and could not do the work of a dozen. And so, on after us, they came; drawing toward us so close that at last I knew that we could not win free of them in our frenzied flight. For, although we had rushed on for a time that seemed endless to us, and a few hundred miles remained between us and the American coast, their leaders were so near now that another minute, I knew, would find them using their bow-guns upon us. Even as the thought came to me, there was a thundering detonation behind us and then but a few feet to either side, a shining heat-shell flashed past us. Another detonation, and another followed, and I knew that not for long could we escape them thus; since with each moment the shooting was becoming more accurate. So, just as a dozen of their bow guns thundered again, I suddenly drove the cruiser downward in a flying headlong plunge down through the vapor-layer beneath us; and, as the pursuing ships plunged straight down after us, I sent our own cruiser instantly whirling upward and through that layer once more!