f that for some seconds I thought she would never reappear. Even
the wheel, quite a deal higher than the waist, was covered and swept
again and again. At such moments I felt strangely alone with God, alone
with him and watching the chaos of his wrath. And then the wheel would
reappear, and Wolf Larsen's broad shoulders, his hands gripping the
spokes and holding the schooner to the course of his will, himself an
earth-god, dominating the storm, flinging its descending waters from him
and riding it to his own ends. And oh, the marvel of it! the marvel of
it! That tiny men should live and breathe and work, and drive so frail a
contrivance of wood and cloth through so tremendous an elemental strife.

As before, the _Ghost_ swung out of the trough, lifting her deck again
out of the sea, and dashed before the howling blast. It was now
half-past five, and half-an-hour later, when the last of the day lost
itself in a dim and furious twilight, I sighted a third boat. It was
bottom up, and there was no sign of its crew. Wolf Larsen repeated his
manoeuvre, holding off and then rounding up to windward and drifting down
upon it. But this time he missed by forty feet, the boat passing astern.

"Number four boat!" Oofty-Oofty cried, his keen eyes reading its number
in the one second when it lifted clear of the foam, and upside down.

It was Henderson's boat and with him had been lost Holyoak and Williams,
another of the deep-water crowd. Lost they indubitably were; but the
boat remained, and Wolf Larsen made one more reckless effort to recover
it. I had come down to the deck, and I saw Horner and Kerfoot vainly
protest against the attempt.

"By God, I'll not be robbed of my boat by any storm that ever blew out of
hell!" he shouted, and though we four stood with our heads together that
we might hear, his voice seemed faint and far, as though removed from us
an immense distance.

"Mr. Van Weyden!" he cried, and I heard through the tumult as one might
hear a whisper. "Stand by that jib with Johnson and Oofty! The rest of
you tail aft to the mainsheet! Lively now! or I'll sail you all into
Kingdom Come! Understand?"

And when he put the wheel hard over and the _Ghost's_ bow swung off,
there was nothing for the hunters to do but obey and make the best of a
risky chance. How great the risk I realized when I was once more buried
beneath the pounding seas and clinging for life to the pinrail at the
foot of the foremast.