er run into any big craft. They'll
all be standin' out to sea."

I could see that the captain was torn between his keen desire to keep on
speeding and his fear for the safety of his beautiful ship. He was
utterly unable to keep still more than a minute at a time, but the old
fisherman looked as cool and collected as if he had been puffing at his
rank old pipe within the four walls of a house.

And those minutes seemed very long, then, as they always do when men are
laden with the weight of constant suspense. Presently even the grey and
blue waters our sharp bow was cleaving lost their color and the whole
world was dismal, and grey, and dripping.

This went on for long hours, as it seemed to me, and finally the captain
could stand it no longer.

"I'm going to ring for half speed," he shouted. "We can't keep this up,
Sammy!"

"Let be, let be fer a whiles," the old man counselled again. "I knows
jist where I be. I'll not be runnin' ye ashore, lad."

And the yacht kept on for a long, long time, cleaving the grey water and
the fog, between which there was no difference now. It was really a
spooky thing, even if a sporting one, to be dashing at fifteen knots
through that wall of vapor. Our steam whistle was sounding constantly,
and old Sammy listened with his grey head cocked to one side, in a tense
attitude of constant attention.

"We's gettin' nigh," he said, quietly. "I knows the sound o' he."

Then, after a long, wailing blast, he suddenly lifted up his hand.

"Port a bit till I tells yer," he called. "That'll do. Keep her so."

The next sobbing cry of the siren brought a dull prolonged echo that
reverberated in the air.

"I knowed we must be gettin' close to un," he said; "now we'll be havin'
all open water again fer a whiles."

The captain was tremulous with the excitement he bravely sought to
suppress, and my own heart was certainly in my throat. We were all
straining our eyes at this moment, and all at once we dimly had revealed
to us something like the shadow of a great ghost-like mass that slipped
by us, very fast, with a roar of the great swells bursting loudly at its
foot.

"Thunder! you Sammy!" shrieked the skipper. "I won't have you taking such
chances. I'm just as crazy to get there as you are but I'll be hanged if
I'm going to smash my ship."

"We's all right now, Cap'en," answered the old man, quietly; "I sure
knows all right what we is doin'."

The captain had taken the wheel, and he glare