Pagina 173 van 416

Under headsails and riding sail the Rosan swung into the light

air that stirred the fog and began to crawl forward while the men

were still cat-heading the anchor. The youth who had been ringing

the bell now substituted the patent fog-horn, as marine law

requires when vessels are under way.

With his eyes on the compass, Turner guided the ship himself.

They seemed to move through an endless gray world.

For an hour they sailed, the only sounds being the flap of the

canvas, the creaking of the tiller ropes, and the drip of the

fog. Tanner was about to give the word to let go the anchor when,

without warning, they suddenly burst clear of the fog and came

out into the vast gray welter of the open sea.

Tanner suddenly straightened up, and slipping the wheel swiftly

into the becket, he ran to the taffrail and looked over the side.

"Good God!" he cried. "What's this?"

Not fifty feet away lay a blue dory, heavy and loggy with water,

and in the bottom the unconscious figure of a man.