I
mean, but what the Wolf 'll mean. The Wolf, I said, the Wolf!"

"If trouble comes, will you stand by?" I asked impulsively, for he had
voiced my own fear.

"Stand by? 'Tis old fat Louis I stand by, an' trouble enough it'll be.
We're at the beginnin' iv things, I'm tellin' ye, the bare beginnin' iv
things."

"I had not thought you so great a coward," I sneered.

He favoured me with a contemptuous stare. "If I raised never a hand for
that poor fool,"--pointing astern to the tiny sail,--"d'ye think I'm
hungerin' for a broken head for a woman I never laid me eyes upon before
this day?"

I turned scornfully away and went aft.

"Better get in those topsails, Mr. Van Weyden," Wolf Larsen said, as I
came on the poop.

I felt relief, at least as far as the two men were concerned. It was
clear he did not wish to run too far away from them. I picked up hope at
the thought and put the order swiftly into execution. I had scarcely
opened my mouth to issue the necessary commands, when eager men were
springing to halyards and downhauls, and others were racing aloft. This
eagerness on their part was noted by Wolf Larsen with a grim smile.

Still we increased our lead, and when the boat had dropped astern several
miles we hove to and waited. All eyes watched it coming, even Wolf
Larsen's; but he was the only unperturbed man aboard. Louis, gazing
fixedly, betrayed a trouble in his face he was not quite able to hide.

The boat drew closer and closer, hurling along through the seething green
like a thing alive, lifting and sending and uptossing across the
huge-backed breakers, or disappearing behind them only to rush into sight
again and shoot skyward. It seemed impossible that it could continue to
live, yet with each dizzying sweep it did achieve the impossible. A
rain-squall drove past, and out of the flying wet the boat emerged,
almost upon us.

"Hard up, there!" Wolf Larsen shouted, himself springing to the wheel and
whirling it over.

Again the _Ghost_ sprang away and raced before the wind, and for two
hours Johnson and Leach pursued us. We hove to and ran away, hove to and
ran away, and ever astern the struggling patch of sail tossed skyward and
fell into the rushing valleys. It was a quarter of a mile away when a
thick squall of rain veiled it from view. It never emerged. The wind
blew the air clear again, but no patch of sail broke the troubled
surface. I thought I saw, for an instant, the boat's bot