fear i was alone i could hear no calls or cries � only the sound of the waves made hollow and by the fog a panic in a crowd which of a sort of community of interest is not so terrible as a panic when one is by and such a panic i now suffered whither was i drifting the red faced man had said that the tide was through the golden gate was i then being carried out to sea and the life in which i floated was it not liable to go to pieces at any moment i had heard of such things being made of paper and hollow rushes which quickly became and lost all and i could not swim a stroke and i was alone floating apparently in the midst of a gray i confess that a madness seized me that i shrieked aloud as the women had shrieked and beat the water with my hands how long this lasted i have no conception for a of which i remember no more than one remembers of troubled and painful sleep when i aroused it was as after centuries of time and i saw almost above me and emerging from the fog the bow of a vessel and three sails each the other and filled with wind where the bow cut the water there was a great foaming and and i seemed directly in its path i tried to cry out but was too exhausted the bow the sea wolf plunged down just missing me and sending a of water clear over my head then the long black side of the vessel began slipping past so near that i could have touched it with my hands i tried to reach it in a mad resolve to into the wood with my nails but my arms were heavy and lifeless again i strove to call out but made no sound the stern of the vessel shot by dropping as it did so into a hollow between the waves and i caught a glimpse of a man standing at the wheel and of another man who seemed to be doing little else than smoke a cigar i saw the smoke issuing from his lips as he slowly turned his head and glanced out over the water in my direction it was a careless glance one of those things men do when they have no immediate call to do anything in particular but act because they are alive and must do something but life and death were in that glance i could see the vessel being swallowed up in the fog i saw the back of the man at the wheel and the head of the other man turning slowly turning as his gaze struck the water and casually lifted along it toward me his face wore an absent expression as of deep thought and i became afraid that if his eyes did light upon me he would nevertheless not see me but his eyes did light upon me and looked into mine and he did see me for he sprang to the wheel thrusting the other man aside and whirled it round and round hand over hand at the same shouting orders of some sort the vessel seemed to go off at a to its former course and almost instantly from view into the fog i felt myself slipping into and tried with all the power of my will to fight above the the sea wolf ii and darkness that was rising around me a little later i heard the stroke of oars growing nearer and nearer and the calls of a man when he was very near i heard him crying in vexed fashion why in hell don t you sing out this meant me i thought and then the and darkness rose over me chapter ii i seemed swinging in a mighty through sparkling points of light and shot past me they were stars i knew and that peopled ray flight among the as i reached the limit of my swing and prepared to rush back on the counter swing a great struck and thundered for an period in the rippling of placid centuries i enjoyed and pondered my tremendous flight but a change came over the face of the dream for a dream i told myself it must be my grew shorter and shorter i was jerked from swing to counter swing with haste i could scarcely catch my breath so fiercely was i impelled through the heavens the thundered more frequently and more furiously i grew to await it with a nameless dread then it seemed as though i were being dragged over sands white and hot in the sun this gave place to a sense of intolerable anguish my skin was in the torment of fire the and the sparkling points of light flashed past me in an interminable stream as though the whole system were dropping into the void i gasped caught my breath painfully and opened my eyes two men were beside me working over me my mighty was the and forward plunge of a ship on the sea the terrific was a pan hanging the wall that rattled and with each leap t the sea wolf ij the ship the sands were a man s hard hands my naked chest i under the pain of it and half lifted my head my chest was raw and red and i could see tiny blood starting through the torn and that ll do one of the men said t yer see you ve well rubbed all the s skin the man addressed as a man of the heavy type ceased me and arose awkwardly to his feet the man who had spoken to him was clearly a with the clean lines and weakly pretty almost face of the man who has absorbed the sound of bow bells with his mother s milk a 