wide."

By this time the rest of the party were gathered behind us on the high
side of the boat, in different stages of excitement, scrutinizing the
smoke. Mr. Cooke had the glasses glued to his eyes again, his feet
braced apart, and every line of his body bespeaking the tension of his
mind. I imagined him standing thus, the stump of his cigar tightly
clutched between his teeth, following the fortunes of some favorite on
the far side of the Belmont track.

We waited without comment while the smoke crept by degrees towards the
little white spindle on the tip of the point, now and again catching a
gleam of the sun's rays from off the glass of the lantern. And
presently, against the white lather of the lake, I thought I caught sight
of a black nose pushed out beyond the land. Another moment, and the tug
itself was bobbing in the open. Barely had she reached the deep water
beyond the sands when her length began to shorten, and the dense cloud of
smoke that rose made it plain that she was firing. At the sight I
reflected that I had been a fool indeed. A scant flue miles of water lay
between us and her, and if they really meant business back there, and
they gave every sign of it, we had about an hour and a half to get rid of
the Celebrity. The Maria was a good boat, but she had not been built to
try conclusions with a Far Harbor tug.

My client, in spite of the ominous condition of his opal, was not slow to
make his intentions exceedingly clear. For Mr. Cooke was first and last,
and always, a gentleman. After that you might call him anything you
pleased. Meditatively he screwed up his glasses and buckled them into
the case, and then he descended to the cockpit. It was the Celebrity he
singled out of the party.