"All hell's broke loose," he sneered, turning aside in the darkness and
heading for the beach. Lights were flashing from open doors, and tent,
cabin, and dance-hall let slip their denizens upon the chase. The clamor
of men and howling of dogs smote his ears and quickened his feet. He ran
on and on. The sounds grew dim, and the pursuit dissipated itself in
vain rage and aimless groping. But a flitting shadow clung to him. Head
thrust over shoulder, he caught glimpses of it, now taking vague shape on
an open expanse of snow, how merging into the deeper shadows of some
darkened cabin or beach-listed craft.
Fortune La Pearle swore like a woman, weakly, with the hint of tears that
comes of exhaustion, and plunged deeper into the maze of heaped ice,
tents, and prospect holes. He stumbled over taut hawsers and piles of
dunnage, tripped on crazy guy-ropes and insanely planted pegs, and fell
again and again upon frozen dumps and mounds of hoarded driftwood. At
times, when he deemed he had drawn clear, his head dizzy with the painful
pounding of his heart and the suffocating intake of his breath, he
slackened down; and ever the shadow leaped out of the gloom and forced
him on in heart-breaking flight.
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