Several times he might have gained on the fugitive had he trusted to his
instinct; but he bided his time, renouncing a stroke of genius, in order
to be certain of committing no error, awaiting the moment when
Greenfield would pause and he might overtake him. But the fugitive, as
though stung by a gad-fly, continued to plunge madly over sea and
continent. Four months, five months behind, Frawley continued the
tireless pursuit.
From Stockholm the chase led to Copenhagen, to Christiansand, down the
North Sea to Rotterdam. From thence Greenfield had rushed by rail to
Lisbon and taken steamer to Africa, touching at Gibraltar, Portuguese
and French Guinea, Sierra Leone, and proceeding thence into the Congo.
For a month all traces disappeared in the veldt, until by chance, rather
than by his own merits, Frawley found the trail anew in Madagascar,
whither Greenfield had come after a desperate attempt to bury his trail
on the immense plains of Southern Africa.
From Madagascar, Frawley followed him to Aden in Arabia and by steamer
to Melbourne. Again for weeks he sought the confused track vainly
through Australia, up through Sydney, down again to Tasmania and New
Zealand on a false clue, back to Queensland, where at last in Cooktown
he learned anew of the passing of his man.
The third year began without appreciable gain. Greenfield still was
three months in advance, never pausing, scurrying from continent to
continent, as though instinctively aware of the progress of his pursuer.
In this year Frawley visited Sumatra, Java, and Borneo, stopped at
Manila, jumped immediately to Korea, and hurried on to Vladivostok,
where he found that Greenfield had procured passage on a sealer bound
for Auckland. There he had taken the steamer by the Straits of Magellan
back to Buenos Ayres.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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