he wheel,
and of another man who seemed to be doing little else than smoke a cigar.
I saw the smoke issuing from his lips as he slowly turned his head and
glanced out over the water in my direction. It was a careless,
unpremeditated glance, one of those haphazard things men do when they
have no immediate call to do anything in particular, but act because they
are alive and must do something.

But life and death were in that glance. I could see the vessel being
swallowed up in the fog; I saw the back of the man at the wheel, and the
head of the other man turning, slowly turning, as his gaze struck the
water and casually lifted along it toward me. His face wore an absent
expression, as of deep thought, and I became afraid that if his eyes did
light upon me he would nevertheless not see me. But his eyes did light
upon me, and looked squarely into mine; and he did see me, for he sprang
to the wheel, thrusting the other man aside, and whirled it round and
round, hand over hand, at the same time shouting orders of some sort.
The vessel seemed to go off at a tangent to its former course and leapt
almost instantly from view into the fog.

I felt myself slipping into unconsciousness, and tried with all the power
of my will to fight above the suffocating blankness and darkness that was
rising around me. A little later I heard the stroke of oars, growing
nearer and nearer, and the calls of a man. When he was very near I heard
him crying, in vexed fashion, "Why in hell don't you sing out?" This
meant me, I thought, and then the blankness and darkness rose over me.

CHAPTER II

I seemed swinging in a mighty rhythm through orbit vastness. Sparkling
points of light spluttered and shot past me. They were stars, I knew,
and flaring comets, that peopled my flight among the suns. As I reached
the limit of my swing and prepared to rush back on the counter swing, a
great gong struck and thundered. For an immeasurable period, lapped in
the rippling of placid centuries, I enjoyed and pondered my tremendous
flight.

But a change came over the face of the dream, for a dream I told myself
it must be. My rhythm grew shorter and shorter. I was jerked from swing
to counter swing with irritating haste. I could scarcely catch my
breath, so fiercely was I impelled through the heavens. The gong
thundered more frequently and more furiously. I grew to await it with a
nameless dread. Then it seemed as though I were being drag