Part 18 (1/2)

After all that had passed, suffering intolerable anguish inof the wild capers the Ghost was cutting, I should have thought it impossible to sleep But my eyes must have closed the instant my head touched the pillow, and in utter exhaustion I slept throughout the night, the while the Ghost, lonely and undirected, fought her way through the storm

CHAPTER XVIII

The next day, while the stor itself out, Wolf Larsen and I crae's ribs Then, when the storm broke, Wolf Larsen cruised back and forth over that portion of the ocean where we had encountered it, and so repaired and new sails hted and boarded, most of which were in search of lost boats, andboats and crews they had picked up and which did not belong to them For the thick of the fleet had been to the ard of us, and the boats, scattered far and wide, had headed in e

Two of our boats, with men all safe, we took off the Cisco, and, to Wolf Larsen's huge delight and rief, he culled So So that, at the end of five days, we found ourselves short but four men-Henderson, Holyoak, Willia on the flanks of the herd

As we followed it north we began to encounter the dreaded sea-fogs Day after day the boats lowered and were sed up almost ere they touched the water, while we on board puular intervals and every fifteenlost and found, it being the custom for a boat to hunt, on lay, hatever schooner picked it up, until such time it was recovered by its own schooner But Wolf Larsen, as was to be expected, being a boat short, took possession of the first stray one and co thehted it I remember how he forced the hunter and his two men below, a riffle at their breasts, when their captain passed by at biscuit-toss and hailed us for inforely and pertinaciously clinging to life, was soon li his double duties of cook and cabin-boy Johnson and Leach were bullied and beaten as much as ever, and they looked for their lives to end with the end of the hunting season; while the rest of the crew lived the lives of dogs and orked like dogs by their pitilessfairly well; though I could not quite ridhim He fascinated me immeasurably, and I feared hi prone in death There was an endurance, as of perpetual youth, about him, which rose up and forbade the picture I could see hi and destroying, hi

One diversion of his, ere in the h to lower the boats, was to loith two boat-pullers and a steerer and go out hiht many a skin aboard under what the hunters ter conditions It see his life in his hands and struggling for it against trewe rarely encountered now-I had the satisfaction of running and handling the Ghost and picking up the boats myself Wolf Larsen had been smitten with one of his headaches, and I stood at the wheel fro across the ocean after the last lee boat, and heaving to and picking it and the other five up without coestion froain, for it was a raw and storion, and, in the middle of June, a typhoon es wrought through it upon ht nearly at the centre of this circular storm, and Wolf Larsen ran out of it and to the southward, first under a double-reefed jib, and finally under bare poles Never had I ireat a sea The seas previously encountered were as ripples compared with these, which ran a half-mile from crest to crest and which upreared, I areat was it that Wolf Larsen hi driven far to the southward and out of the seal herd

We must have been well in the path of the trans-Pacific steamshi+ps when the typhoon moderated, and here, to the surprise of the hunters, we found ourselves in the uard, they declared, and aBut it was ”Boats over!” the boo day

It was at this time that I was approached by Leach I had just finished tallying the skins of the last boat aboard, when he came to my side, in the darkness, and said in a low tone:

”Can you tell me, Mr Van Weyden, how far we are off the coast, and what the bearings of Yokohaladness, for I knehat he had in s-west-north-west, and five hundred miles away

”Thank you, sir,” was all he said as he slipped back into the darkness

NextThe water-breakers and grub-boxes fro, as were the beds and sea bags of the two men Wolf Larsen was furious He set sail and bore away into the west-north-west, two hunters constantly at thethe deck like an angry lion He knew too well my sympathy for the runaways to send me aloft as look-out

The as fair but fitful, and it was like looking for a needle in a haystack to raise that tiny boat out of the blue ih her best paces so as to get between the deserters and the land This accomplished, he cruised back and forth across what he knewof the third day, shortly after eight bells, a cry that the boat was sighted came down from Smoke at the masthead All hands lined the rail A snappy breeze was blowing from the ith the promise of more wind behind it; and there, to leeward, in the troubled silver of the rising sun, appeared and disappeared a black speck

We squared away and ran for it My heart was as lead I feltsick in anticipation; and as I looked at the gleam of triumph in Wolf Larsen's eyes, his form swaviolence to Leach and Johnson that my reason e in a daze, and that I was just beginning the ascent to the deck, a loaded shot-gun in my hands, when I heard the startled cry:

”There's five men in that boat!”

I supported , while the observation was being verified by the reave froain, but overcoe of what I had so nearly done Also, I was very thankful as I put the gun away and slipped back on deck

No one had reh for us toboat and built on different lines As we drew closer, the sail was taken in and the mast unstepped Oars were shi+pped, and its occupants waited for us to heave to and take them aboard

S by nificant way I looked at hiled

”What's wrong?” I deain he chuckled ”Don't you see there, in the stern-sheets, on the bottoain if that ain't a woman!”