ted in her sailing powers.

"Better get your rifles, you fellows," Wolf Larsen called to our hunters;
and the five men lined the lee rail, guns in hand, and waited.

The _Macedonia_ was now but a mile away, the black smoke pouring from her
funnel at a right angle, so madly she raced, pounding through the sea at
a seventeen-knot gait--"'Sky-hooting through the brine," as Wolf Larsen
quoted while gazing at her. We were not making more than nine knots, but
the fog-bank was very near.

A puff of smoke broke from the _Macedonia's_ deck, we heard a heavy
report, and a round hole took form in the stretched canvas of our
mainsail. They were shooting at us with one of the small cannon which
rumour had said they carried on board. Our men, clustering amidships,
waved their hats and raised a derisive cheer. Again there was a puff of
smoke and a loud report, this time the cannon-ball striking not more than
twenty feet astern and glancing twice from sea to sea to windward ere it
sank.

But there was no rifle-firing for the reason that all their hunters were
out in the boats or our prisoners. When the two vessels were half-a-mile
apart, a third shot made another hole in our mainsail. Then we entered
the fog. It was about us, veiling and hiding us in its dense wet gauze.

The sudden transition was startling. The moment before we had been
leaping through the sunshine, the clear sky above us, the sea breaking
and rolling wide to the horizon, and a ship, vomiting smoke and fire and
iron missiles, rushing madly upon us. And at once, as in an instant's
leap, the sun was blotted out, there was no sky, even our mastheads were
lost to view, and our horizon was such as tear-blinded eyes may see. The
grey mist drove by us like a rain. Every woollen filament of our
garments, every hair of our heads and faces, was jewelled with a crystal
globule. The shrouds were wet with moisture; it dripped from our rigging
overhead; and on the underside of our booms drops of water took shape in
long swaying lines, which were detached and flung to the deck in mimic
showers at each surge of the schooner. I was aware of a pent, stifled
feeling. As the sounds of the ship thrusting herself through the waves
were hurled back upon us by the fog, so were one's thoughts. The mind
recoiled from contemplation of a world beyond this wet veil which wrapped
us around. This was the world, the universe itself, its bounds so near
one felt impelled to reach o