It all happened very swiftly, and the smoke closed in, curtaining Foulweather, with a greater density. Bates, who was on the bridge, had seen that the yacht carried no headlight, and he had recognized clearly, one of the two men who sailed her. The face of the first was hidden, for he leaned, straining every muscle, on the stumbling helm; but the second stood on the slanting deck, bracing his back on the canting cabin, alert, watchful, like a man on guard. His glance was raised to the steamer’s bridge, and fixing his eyes on the inspector, his right hand crept to his hip pocket. There was no doubt; he was Stratton. And even while the little vessel hovered on the edge of the maelstrom, the officer gave the command to back, turn, go ahead. The cutter was in hot pursuit. Directly the gun on her port bow boomed through the thick atmosphere. No response. Again the report rang peremptory, threatening. And still no answer. At daybreak the steamer doubled back on her course and headed for the lower end of Whidby Island, which divides the Sound into two long broad channels. She patrolled this point for a long interval, and finally the lookout saw the bowsprit and rigging of a small yacht detach from the gray pall that shrouded the west passage. But instantly she swung away from the cutter and vanished like a phantom in the smoke. Once more the gun thundered a halt; and once more the silence was broken only by the noise of the ship’s machinery, and the breaking of the sea on the cutwater. The revenue vessel steamed on under slow bells toward Seattle. *CHAPTER XXII* *FOR LITTLE SILAS* The lamps across the harbor began to show red spots through the smoke; the nearer lights on the landings of the mills, and at the ends of the wharves, shone with pale rings around their disks. With twilight a fog was creeping in. The burning slab-pile sent up its great tongues of flame against the blackness of the bluff, and became a beacon for such craft as groped along the Head, feeling a way to the city. It illuminated the usual groups of workmen, and singled out the old watchman’s square figure. He was seated on a block, shaping a miniature boat for little Silas, and the child, standing by his knee, with his hands clasped loosely behind him, awaited the results with grave interest.