"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.
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