lose her if there's any way of stopping it."

The advance guard of the fog was in upon them by the time that Joe
went once more to his sending table in the forward end of the cabin.
The light mist extended to the shore, though it did not altogether
screen it. But the lookout on the Drab's deck appeared wholly watchful
at the weather side of the craft.

"Not in touch with any other wireless boat yet," reported Dawson,
coming on deck, presently.

"Look at that heavier white curtain rolling in," uttered Powell
Seaton, in a tone near to anguish.

Whoever was in the drab boat's pilot house took occasion to toot
derisively twice on the auto whistle.

"That's as much as warning us that their turn is coming," declared Mr.
Seaton, wrathfully.

Their faces were wet, now, with the fog as it rolled in. Slowly the
nearby shore faded, wrapped in the mist.

"We'd better get up anchor," decided Skipper Tom. "Come along, Hank,
and you, Hepton."

As the anchor came up and was stowed, Captain Halstead moved the deck
speed control ever so little. The "Restless" began to barely move
through the water. They overhauled the seventy-footer, passing within
a hundred feet of her starboard rail. Yet only the same deck watch
appeared in sight. He favored those on the bridge deck of the
"Restless" with a tantalizing grin.

Halstead slowly circled the drab seventy-footer, Mr. Seaton keeping
ever a watchful eye on the stranger.

"There! They're hoisting anchor!" muttered the charter-man, at last.

"I saw 'em start," nodded the young skipper. "And the fog is growing
thicker every minute."

"How are you going to beat them, if they try hard to get away?"

"I don't know," confessed Halstead, honestly. "We may keep 'em in
trail, but the chances are all in favor of the drab boat."

Presently the seventy-footer slipped slowly away from her anchorage.
Halstead promptly closed in, keeping not more than a hundred feet
behind her drab stern. If the fog grew no heavier, and the enemy's
speed no greater, he could maintain his position.

But the sea-born fog continued to come, looking as though it arrived
in ever-increasing billows.

Once the seventy-footer's stern vanished for a moment or two. Tom,
cautiously increasing the speed, soon came in sight of that drab stern
once more.

"I don't want to croak, sir," warned the young motor boat skipper,
"but, luck aside, it looks as though we're about done for in this salt
water blindman's buff."