great elemental and relentless forces, the impenetrable fog, cutting off
all our communications, and the strong ocean current sweeping us away
into the uninhabited waste of waters. From my experience of the year
before, I knew what it meant to be lost in the fog on the Banks,
practically in mid-ocean; I understood that if the fog lasted for a week
or ten days as it sometimes did, especially at that season of the year,
it was a fight for our lives. I soon realized that we were lost and that
the fight was on.

We were certainly stripped for it, without impedimenta, no anchor,
compass, provisions, water, no means of catching fish or fowl, and with
rather light clothing, as we were dressed for work and not for
protection against cold. But youth is optimistic and claims what is
coming to it, with a margin for luck, and we started on our new voyage
of discovery with good courage and a cheerful disregard of the
hardships, dangers and possible death in the fog, with which and into
which we were drifting.

It would not be strictly accurate to say that we saw nothing during all
the time we were adrift, but the things we saw were of the same stuff
that the fog was made of. Early in the first day I saw a sail dimly
outlined in the misty air. I called John's attention to it with a shout,
and he saw it too, but, as we rowed toward it, the sail retreated and
then disappeared. We thought that this was strange, for the wind was not
strong enough to take a vessel away from us faster than we could row,
and we were near enough to make ourselves heard. Soon, the sail appeared
again, and again we shouted and rowed toward it, and again it glided
away from us and disappeared, and again, and again, through the
seemingly endless procession of the slow-moving hours of that first day,
we chased the phantom ship.