He almost lifted Betty from her feet as he guided her. Her breath was coming in quick gasps. Her fingers were clutching him, and suddenly “X” cried out.
“The boat — there it is!”
The slender shadow of the craft had caught his eyes. It lay where he had left it, drawn up on the sand. But even as he saw it and came close, a harsh, bitter exclamation was wrenched from his throat.
Betty stopping beside him, exclaimed, too. For the boat at her feet was not as he had left it. Some one, the men, no doubt, who had imprisoned them in the shed, had been at work.
Rocks lay in the padded interior. Skeleton ribs showed. The boat was useless, shattered beyond repair even if there were time — and, in the blackness behind them, in that prison shed, Death was crouched on its haunches like a black beast waiting to spring.
Chapter VIII
THE Agent turned on Betty Dale and uttered quick, hoarse words. “We must swim, Betty — swim at once!” Even as he spoke, he reached down, ripped open his shoe laces, drew off his shoes. Betty, following suit, kicked off her pumps and stood in stockinged feet.
The Agent’s eyes were bleak. He hadn’t told her the nature of that bomb; hadn’t said that if the Terror’s boast were true the very soil under their feet would disintegrate. There was distance between the shed and themselves now. Betty appeared confident. She was sure they were all right. But Agent “X” knew differently.
The girl was running like a slim nymph toward the cold December water. She flung her wool coat off, tossed her blonde hair back. The rigors of the chill water didn’t terrify her. Her young, strong muscles could cope with that. She waded in knee-deep, flung herself down. With long, clean strokes she swam ahead. And the Agent followed. He came close, whispered hoarsely in her ear.
“As fast as you can, Betty! Swim as you never have before! If you get tired — I’ll help you.”
Her expression showed that she didn’t understand his worry. She had proved her swimming ability often before.
“X” didn’t try to explain. No time for that now, and no use frightening Betty. The cold water leaped about their bodies. It clung with a chill that almost made their muscles numb. But their long, sweeping strokes held the cold at bay.
Betty turned her spray-wet face. “X” could see the dim oval of it in the starlight, see the clustering blonde curls low on her white neck. He knew that she was good for miles, using her even, racer’s stroke that had won her cups in women’s championship meets. His own muscles had been trained to endure endlessly. He could stay in the water for hours, swimming on his back if he became tired, floating if necessary. He was as much at home as a seal.
But the dread knowledge of what lay behind them hung like a lead weight around his neck. He stayed close to Betty, with a sense of waiting. There was no telling what minute the bomb might go off. Fast as they were swimming, he wasn’t satisfied. He spoke once again, something of the dread he felt in his voice.
“Keep it up, Betty — as fast as you can! Every stroke counts.”
They were two hundred feet offshore now. The Agent wished it were two hundred yards. He could almost sense each passing second. He was counting in his mind, keeping track of the minutes. It must be almost twelve! The arch criminal would make it a point to stick closely to his schedule. Midnight sharp would be the deadline.
Far off across the water he saw faint lights twinkling. People were there in their peaceful homes, all unknowing of the danger that lurked so close at hand. Nearer by were the moving lights of boats. Police craft, no doubt, and others going about their accustomed routine.
Then, on a hilltop somewhere on shore, he heard the solemn tones of a great clock booming the hour. The Agent tensed. It must be past midnight. Sound traveled at eleven hundred feet per second. And he heard the clock just striking now — which meant the hour was past — or else the clock was wrong. Surely the dread moment was almost at hand. He had struggled, worked, done his best for Betty and himself. Still they were under the black shadow of doom. Only three hundred feet separated them from the island’s shores — only three hundred feet of water beneath them and shuddering death.
HE came close to Betty, reached out a hand to her wet shoulder, felt the warm play of muscles beneath.
“Steady, Betty. I think—”
He did not finish the sentence. He heard the small, frightened cry that Betty gave. It stabbed at his heart. The Agent’s eyes recorded the hellish white-hot flash that erased the glow of the stars and seemed to sweep over their very heads. He saw the outline of the island, illumined now. But not the island he had moved on a minute before. The black bulk mushroomed out, spread like a menacing Titan across the blinding whiteness of the light.
And then his ears, receiving impression later than his eyes, heard a sound that was like thunder multiplied a thousandfold. It was a sound that had bulk and substance, a crushing weight of tumbling, fearful reverberations, almost shattering his eardrums.
Instinctively Betty’s arms wrapped around him. He held her small, tense body close to his. They were alone in a world of blinding light, of terrible sound, and of earth and rocks that rose volcano-like, seeming to reach to the very sky above.
He got one look at Betty’s startled, staring face. He saw her eyes grow big, her teeth set. He could not speak, could not make her hear. He could only hold her with his arm, trembling to think what thing would shortly follow.
For the three hundred feet that separated them from the island seemed pitifully small now. Fringing the black pandemonium of sky-tossed earth, a white line of water showed — like froth rimming the angry, cavernous mouth of some great sea beast. It rose higher and higher — salt water lashed to a foam by the concussion. It mounted, curled and raced toward them, in a roaring tidal wave.
Betty saw it, screamed once, in a surge of fear that she could not choke down. The Agent, seeing that wall of water, believed that it was the end. One thing alone stayed clearly in his mind. He must keep hold of Betty. If it were possible to survive he must not let that fearsome, onrushing fury snatch her from his arms. His hands locked around her. He kept afloat with the scissors strokes of his feet.
But in an instant even swimming seemed futile. For the water was almost to them, curling like a mountain top. There was a trough before it. They slid down into this, and as they did so, Agent “X” cried in Betty’s ear:
“Breathe, Betty! Hold it!”
He filled his own lungs till they ached. The water seemed to lift them in a mighty surge. They were borne up, up toward the foaming crest. Then the boiling spray engulfed them. Like straws they were rolled over and over; weighed down, hurled about in a Niagara of churning, fearsome water. More tumultuous than the roughest surf, more exhausting than anything “X” had ever known.
Once he felt a vibration in the water, a compression as though some great weight had struck, and a black something seemed to rocket close at hand. He knew it was a rock, falling from the island, and that the bulk of water above them was all that was saving them from the raining destructing of countless missiles. But his lungs were almost bursting. He feared for Betty. And so, still holding her to him, he struggled upward. It seemed that he would never reach the surface. The boiling foam had subsided now. He appeared to be in still black depths. He held Betty with one arm, pushed with the other, forcing himself toward the surface before it was too late.
Then his head came out. The rumbling roar of the explosion had ceased. The white light had gone, and his half-blinded eyes could not see the stars. But there was still movement all about them — and noise. The water was surging in a vast, sweeping tide. Stones were dropping on its surface in a pattering shower. Debris of all kind was falling.