"I'm going to ring for half speed," he shouted. "We can't keep this up,
Sammy!"

"Let be, let be fer a whiles," the old man counselled again. "I knows
jist where I be. I'll not be runnin' ye ashore, lad."

And the yacht kept on for a long, long time, cleaving the grey water and
the fog, between which there was no difference now. It was really a
spooky thing, even if a sporting one, to be dashing at fifteen knots
through that wall of vapor. Our steam whistle was sounding constantly,
and old Sammy listened with his grey head cocked to one side, in a tense
attitude of constant attention.

"We's gettin' nigh," he said, quietly. "I knows the sound o' he."

Then, after a long, wailing blast, he suddenly lifted up his hand.

"Port a bit till I tells yer," he called. "That'll do. Keep her so."

The next sobbing cry of the siren brought a dull prolonged echo that
reverberated in the air.

"I knowed we must be gettin' close to un," he said; "now we'll be havin'
all open water again fer a whiles."

The captain was tremulous with the excitement he bravely sought to
suppress, and my own heart was certainly in my throat. We were all
straining our eyes at this moment, and all at once we dimly had revealed
to us something like the shadow of a great ghost-like mass that slipped