e news to Wolf Larsen by waving my arm. He
changed the course, and I signalled affirmation when the speck showed
dead ahead.

It grew larger, and so swiftly that for the first time I fully
appreciated the speed of our flight. Wolf Larsen motioned for me to come
down, and when I stood beside him at the wheel gave me instructions for
heaving to.

"Expect all hell to break loose," he cautioned me, "but don't mind it.
Yours is to do your own work and to have Cooky stand by the fore-sheet."

I managed to make my way forward, but there was little choice of sides,
for the weather-rail seemed buried as often as the lee. Having
instructed Thomas Mugridge as to what he was to do, I clambered into the
fore-rigging a few feet. The boat was now very close, and I could make
out plainly that it was lying head to wind and sea and dragging on its
mast and sail, which had been thrown overboard and made to serve as a
sea-anchor. The three men were bailing. Each rolling mountain whelmed
them from view, and I would wait with sickening anxiety, fearing that
they would never appear again. Then, and with black suddenness, the boat
would shoot clear through the foaming crest, bow pointed to the sky, and
the whole length of her bottom showing, wet and dark, till she seemed on
end. There would be a fleeting glimpse of the three men flinging water
in frantic haste, when she would topple over and fall into the yawning
valley, bow down and showing her full inside length to the stern upreared
almost directly above the bow. Each time that she reappeared was a
miracle.

The _Ghost_ suddenly changed her course, keeping away, and it came to me
with a shock that Wolf Larsen was giving up the rescue as impossible.
Then I realized that he was preparing to heave to, and dropped to the
deck to be in readiness. We were now dead before the wind, the boat far
away and abreast of us. I felt an abrupt easing of the schooner, a loss
for the moment of all strain and pressure, coupled with a swift
acceleration of speed. She was rushing around on her heel into the wind.

As she arrived at right angles to the sea, the full force of the wind
(from which we had hitherto run away) caught us. I was unfortunately and
ignorantly facing it. It stood up against me like a wall, filling my
lungs with air which I could not expel. And as I choked and strangled,
and as the _Ghost_ wallowed for an instant, broadside on and rolling
straight over and far into the w