The man at the wheel was afraid. He was running frantically now and letting the wheel go all by itself. Another man was running about. He had red hair and a plaid suit. He seemed more scared than the man with the dark mustache. "I'm going to jump," he called to the other. "I'm not going to stay here and be caught like a rat in a trap. Come on. We can swim. Dive. Let 'em think we're drowned. We can make the shore anywhere along here. You can stay if you want to. I'm going." He sprang up on the rail and plunged into the water. The other man did the same. Mollie and the children were alone! When the bullets commenced to fly at the cross-roads and the tires were punctured, one after another, bringing their car to a halt Peter Grimes had leaped from the running board and run, as fast as his withered leg would let him, back along the river road in the direction he had come. But the men in the other car were jumping out to pursue the kidnappers. They were running down the lane to the pier. And they hadn't seen him! But they might, any minute. He parted a clump of bushes and ran down a slight embankment. The swamps came in around here, somewhere, but there was nothing dangerous, so far as he knew, such as the bog that lay at his door. A shot whistled past his ears, so close as to make him dodge. Were they shooting at random or had they seen him? He cowered and shivered in terror. He gave no thought to his footsteps. Let them lead him anywhere--anywhere so long as it was away from danger of death out there in the open road. He plunged, he floundered. He drew forth his lame leg with difficulty, only to find that the other leg was going deeper into the mud. A frenzy of terror seized him. He lifted up his voice and shouted with all his strength: "Help! Help!" But the only other sound that broke the summer stillness was the boom of a gun out on the river where the police boat, Mary Ann, was chasing a motor launch that was apparently running amuck. CHAPTER XXVI THE PIT OF DEATH "It is appointed to all men once to die, and after death, the judgement."--Heb. ix, 27 The sun was high in the heavens but the air was hot and sultry. Occasionally there were far distant mutterings of thunder. A storm was brewing. It was nearly noon, the time appointed for the paying of the ransom. At the cross-roads the sound of shooting had died away. The air was still with that ominous, pregnant stillness which precedes a storm. There was no twitter of bird nor hum of insect. A brooding silence seemed to have suddenly descended over all the landscape.