he boards, and Bart,
who was terribly benumbed and chilled from long exposure to the cold
water, held him thus while he rested.

"It was too much for you, old man!" he said consolingly.

"I had to try it!" was Merriwell's answer.

"The fog is shutting down again," said Bart.

"But it won't stay down. The sea looked red out toward the west. I think
it will clear away to-night."

He was in no mood to say more. And the raft drifted on, while the gray
fog settled round them, and its chill and gloominess seemed to go to
their very hearts.

But as Merriwell had predicted, the fog lifted again, and at the end of
another hour of an experience as terrible as either had ever been called
to undergo, the gray bank again swung up toward the sky. The sun was
sinking redly into the sea, and night was at hand--and what night might
mean in their weakened and chilled condition, adrift on the great ocean
toward which they seemed to be so resistlessly borne, they dared not
think.

"The sloop!" Bart cried, rousing himself.

Merriwell lifted himself and looked. It was the sloop, sure enough. A
little to the southward of east, with its dingy sails furled and their
bulging shapes turned to great lumps of gold, with the mast standing out
in dark tracery against the red skyline, lay the fishing-sloop.

"It's the same!" Merry exclaimed.

"Sure! There can't be any doubt about it."

"And she has cast anchor."

"What does that mean?"

"She is a fishing-sloop, and I've an idea we must be on the
fishing-grounds off the Jersey or New York coast. There is no other
explanation. She is out here on a fishing-trip."

"And Inza?"

"We'll have to wait for her to clear that mystery away."

"What will we do? If those fellows are deaf, there is no use in
shouting."

"We are drifting toward her, you see. We'll be alongside before dark, if
this continues."

"Then we'll get on board of her!"

"And we'll find out a few things, if we have to knock those fellows on
the head."

The thought was so exhilarating that the warm blood was again driven
through their veins, and the numbness seemed in a measure to go out of
their chilled bodies. Nothing is so reviving as hope. And hope was
theirs again. The raft drifted so slowly and Bart was so eager that he
wanted to leap into the sea and swim to the vessel.

"Let us save our strength," was Merriwell's advice. "We are going
straight there. We will probably need all the strength we have."

"I see