ultramarine, under a sky
to match, should have seen it then. The colouring was all of grays and
whites, with here and there a slab of cold clear green, where a big
wave heaved up sheer. It was awfully wild. The sea was running higher
than ever, and the gale had not slackened one bit. The brine-smoke was
hissing through our cross-trees in dense white clouds.

Haigh greeted me with a nod and a grin. His hat had gone, and the dank
wisps of his hair were being fluttered about like black rags; his
narrow slits of eyes were heavily bloodshot; his face was grimy and
pale, his hands grimy and red; his clothing was a wreck. He looked very
unpleasant, but he was undoubtedly very broad awake. He resigned the
tiller and rope, and began gingerly to stretch his cramped limbs,
talking the while.

"D'ye see that steamer, broadish on the weather-bow?"

I looked, and saw on the gray horizon a thin streak of a different
gray.

"I rose her a quarter of an hour ago," he went on, "and bore away a
couple of points so as to cut her off. I'm thinking it wouldn't be a
bad idea to speak her if it could be managed, and find out where we
are. As we haven't been able to rig a log-ship and line, and as the
steering has been, to say the least of it, erratic, our dead reckoning
has been some of the roughest. Personally, I wouldn't bet upon our
whereabouts to quite a hundred miles. Ta-ta."

He went below to smoke, leaving me fully occupied with the steering. We
rose the steamer pretty fast, and in half an hour could see her
water-line when she lifted. She was a fine screw boat of three thousand
tons, racing along at eighteen knots, and rolling with the beam sea up
to her rails, in spite of the fore and aft canvas they had set to
steady her.

Haigh came back to deck, blinking like an owl at the growing day. "Look
at the gray-backs chivying her," said he. "Aren't the passengers just
sorry for themselves now? And won't they have some fine yarns to pitch
when they get ashore about the hardest gale the captain ever knew, and
their own heroic efforts (down below), and all the rest of it? I've
listened to those tales of desperate adventure by the hour together.
Passengers by Dover-Calais packets are great at 'em."

All this while we were closing up. The steamer's decks were tenantless
save for a couple of lookouts forward in oilskins, bright varnished by
the spin-drift, and a couple of officers crouched behind the canvas
dodgers of the bridge, and ho