Our course was with the wind, and nature worked with us all that eighth
day and on into the night, as the pressure on me drove us toward our
goal.

About the middle of the eighth night I realized that I had reached the
limit of my fighting strength. John was in worse condition than I, for I
still had hope, but my hope was not in myself. Then I talked the
situation over with the Pilot. We had nowhere else to go; we had come as
far as we could; our time was nearly up--what of the night? and what of
the morning? John was asleep; the world was a long way off: the sea and
the mist seemed to have rolled over us and to have buried us ten
thousand fathoms deep. But "out of the depths I cried," and I found the
communication open.

Between midnight and dawn the fog lifted and from the overhanging clouds
the rain fell gently through the remainder of the night. John lay in his
end of the boat, but I sat watching. Finally, as if in response to some
secret signal, the darkness began its inevitable retreat and, as the
night horizon receded, out of the gray of the morning, growing more and
more distinct as the shadows fell away, appeared a dark object less than
two miles distant, nebulous at first, then unmistakable in its
character. It was a solitary fishing vessel lying at anchor, toward
which we had been rowing and drifting unerringly all through the night
and the day before.

There it was! only a clumsy old fisherman, but it was the best thing in
all the world to us, and it was anchored and could not get away!

I do not recall the experience of any tumultuous emotion as this
messenger of hope appeared on our horizon, but we knew that we were