'They 'll probably catch us up in the next hundred yards,' said Purvis. 'I should think that they are armed, and the day is breaking.' He turned round in his seat as he spoke, for there was a broad straight piece of river before them; and as the boat came on he pointed his revolver uncertainly in the mist and fired. 'Confound you!' roared Peter, 'don't draw their fire yet! Probably our best chance is that they don't know for certain where we are.' But Purvis had fired again. There were some uncertain shots in return, and one struck the gunwale of the boat by Peter's side. 'That was a near thing,' he said to himself under his breath. And then the old feeling of protection for the 'young un'--the delicate boy who had been his fag at Eton--stopped his grim smiling, and as another shot whizzed past them he yelled out suddenly, 'Lie down, Toffy! Get down into the bottom of the boat!' And quite suddenly Toffy did as he was told. Peter rowed then like two men, but the river ran more quickly now, and the shallows were more dangerous, and the steering was more difficult. By Jove, how well Purvis knew the navigation of it! He had the tiller-ropes in his hands again. He made a feint to go under the bank as though to land, and then shot suddenly into midstream. The other boat followed in their wake. Purvis's knowledge of the currents was probably well known, and it was safe to follow his lead: the boat and the men in it were clear enough to see now. But what in the name of Heaven was Purvis doing! It positively seemed as though he was trying to lose the little bit of way that they had gained in advance of the others, and for one moment a horrible sense of the man's unscrupulousness came over Peter Ogilvie, and he wondered even now, in the midst of the chase, whether it might not be that Purvis was playing them false. 'I 'll shoot him before he can sing out if he is!' thought Peter to himself as the boat was steered on to the very edge of a shallow again, and then made off into the middle of the stream. 'Look out what you are about!' he cried, seeing in the wake of the boat the uneven, circuitous route by which they had come. 'For God's sake steer straight if you can!' And then he saw a smile on Purvis's face--the usual watery, mirthless smile, and the pale, wide-open blue eyes; and, looking back, Peter saw that the boat behind them was overturned in the stream, and that the men who had been in it were struggling to the bank, while the boat itself was being carried rapidly down with the current. He eased his rowing then, and getting his breath he laughed out aloud. The spirit and excitement of the chase had been good, and it was successfully over. 'Look here, you can get up now, Toffy,' he said. He turned round in his seat and shipped his oars with a jerk. '_You devil!_' he said slowly; '_you must have seen him hit!_'