“I’ll go without my sleep this once,” said Harvey. “Here, Joe, hold her a minute. I’ll get a bit of rest right here on deck, with one eye open.” It was growing light fast now, and they strained their eyes for a sail. “I guess we are in time,” said Harvey, as they came abreast of Tom’s Island. “He is not in sight. We’ll head out to sea a bit more, and cut into the Thoroughfare farther down, for the tide will be high in an hour, and we can cross Pine Island Bar. Then, if he has taken the channel on the other side of Tom’s Island, we can still head him off,—unless he went through in the night.” And Harvey, having relinquished the tiller to Joe, stretched himself out at full length on the seat to rest. Thus they sailed for a short cut into the Thoroughfare at a point where they could command the farther of the two channels. And, as they sailed, so sailed another and a larger sloop, beating its way out to sea through the farther channel. A man, powerfully built, and with a hard, desperate look in his eyes, sat at the wheel,—and he was all alone. The yacht cut a clean path through the smooth waters of the Thoroughfare, and, as the man looked at the coast-line along which he was passing rapidly, he muttered: “It’s a clear passage; a safe run to sea. And, once there, who’s to say I was ever in these waters? I said I’d have revenge on this town for what I’ve lost, if it took all summer, and I’ve done it. The blaze did me good as it lit the sky. Twenty minutes more and I’ll be clear of this, and good-bye to this coast for ever.” But even as he said it a smaller sloop turned the head of an island half a mile ahead, and came down the Thoroughfare, running off the wind. CHAPTER XIX. THE PURSUIT Great was the rage of Colonel Witham and Squire Brackett when they discovered that the boys had escaped. “But it will be only so much the worse for them in the end,” said the squire. “The fact of their running away is a confession of guilt, and will count hard against them when we once get them into court. “Colonel,” he continued, gazing off on to the bay, “I believe that’s them now, about two miles down along the shore. Cap’n Sam, you’re a sure judge of a sail. Isn’t that the _Spray_ beating down along the island, just off Billy Jones’s beach?” Captain Sam took a most deliberate observation, turned a chew of tobacco twice in his cheek, and then remarked, laconically: “That’s the _Spray_, sure’s a gun. There is no mistaking the queer set of that gaff-topsail. It always was a bad fit, and it sticks out just as crooked like, two miles away, as it does close on. Y-a-a-s, there’s the youngsters, and no mistake.”