ut both arms and push them back. It was
impossible, that the rest could be beyond these walls of grey. The rest
was a dream, no more than the memory of a dream.

It was weird, strangely weird. I looked at Maud Brewster and knew that
she was similarly affected. Then I looked at Wolf Larsen, but there was
nothing subjective about his state of consciousness. His whole concern
was with the immediate, objective present. He still held the wheel, and
I felt that he was timing Time, reckoning the passage of the minutes with
each forward lunge and leeward roll of the _Ghost_.

"Go for'ard and hard alee without any noise," he said to me in a low
voice. "Clew up the topsails first. Set men at all the sheets. Let
there be no rattling of blocks, no sound of voices. No noise,
understand, no noise."

When all was ready, the word "hard-a-lee" was passed forward to me from
man to man; and the _Ghost_ heeled about on the port tack with
practically no noise at all. And what little there was,--the slapping of
a few reef-points and the creaking of a sheave in a block or two,--was
ghostly under the hollow echoing pall in which we were swathed.

We had scarcely filled away, it seemed, when the fog thinned abruptly and
we were again in the sunshine, the wide-stretching sea breaking before us
to the sky-line. But the ocean was bare. No wrathful _Macedonia_ broke
its surface nor blackened the sky with her smoke.

Wolf Larsen at once squared away and ran down along the rim of the
fog-bank. His trick was obvious. He had entered the fog to windward of
the steamer, and while the steamer had blindly driven on into the fog in
the chance of catching him, he had come about and out of his shelter and
was now running down to re-enter to leeward. Successful in this, the old
simile of the needle in the haystack would be mild indeed compared with
his brother's chance of finding him. He did not run long. Jibing the
fore- and main-sails and setting the topsails again, we headed back into
the bank. As we entered I could have sworn I saw a vague bulk emerging
to windward. I looked quickly at Wolf Larsen. Already we were ourselves
buried in the fog, but he nodded his head. He, too, had seen it--the
_Macedonia_, guessing his manoeuvre and failing by a moment in
anticipating it. There was no doubt that we had escaped unseen.

"He can't keep this up," Wolf Larsen said. "He'll have to go back for
the rest of his boats. Send a man to the