"Quick! Take him! Now cast off!" The arms of men reached up and caught the inanimate body of Von Hertzwohl. It was dropped urgently into the bottom of the boat. Then, to the accompaniment of scrambling feet, the boat was vigorously propelled backwards into the ebbing tide. The headlight was extinguished, and the boat vanished like a ghost into the blackness of the gaping cove. A moment later the racing engine pulsated with a confusion of echoes, and a group of men stood at the water's edge searching for the direction in which the speeding craft was moving. It was hopeless. Then came a voice--the authoritative voice of a leader. "Don't fire. Not a shot. You can't be certain who you'll hit. They won't get far." CHAPTER XXIX THE CLOSE OF THE WEEK-END A sensation of dreadful pain swept through an eternity of obscurity, impenetrable to all but a subconscious emotion. Horror floated through a world unseen, unknown. Terror thrilled senses dead to all reality. An abyss yawned on every hand, a black abyss in which stirred, all unseen, a threat so overwhelming that the victim remained passive, defenceless; waiting, waiting for the final crushing torture. The blackness changed. It gave place to a deep, ruddy light. It was a light which inspired a sensation of fierce burning. The scorch of it was devastating, yet the torture went on as if the limit could never be reached. The ruddy light faded to a grey twilight, through which shot tongues of forked flame, and, with each rift in the grey, pain shot a hundredfold more intense for its broken continuity. A terrified shrinking resulted. The moments of respite became a period of mental torture greater than the reality of the stabs of blinding light. It seemed that no suffering could ever equal such agony again. It was living death. Again it all changed. The bodily suffering no longer broke intermittently. Terror had given place to a grinding physical burden of agony in which something approaching consciousness had place. It came with a hammering upon the straining brain, and beat its way through the body, right down to the very depths of the tortured soul. It was unbearable, yet its burden seemed inevitable, and complaint seemed hushed by an irresistible power. Then in the midst of all the torture a sound reached the victim. It was the sound of a voice, of voices. Harsh, jarring voices, carrying threat in every tone. It was the magic touch which brought about a vague semi-consciousness, and Vita's eyes slowly opened. The pain went on, burning, throbbing pain, but she did not mind it. She was scarcely aware of it. The voices held her, and she struggled with all her power to grasp and hold their meaning. But the effort was beyond her. Only the words came, and with them a growing, unaccountable fear inspired by the violence of their intonation. "Trapped like rats in a pit," she heard a voice cry out in thick tones.