The _Glarus_ could stir no boat in any direction; we
were chained to the spot. Nobody had thought to put out our lights, and
they still burned on through the dawn, strangely out of place in their
red-and-green garishness, like maskers surprised by daylight.
And in the silence of that empty ocean, in that queer half-light between
dawn and day, at six o'clock, silent as the settling of the dead to the
bottomless bottom of the ocean, gray as fog, lonely, blind, soulless,
voiceless, the Dead Ship crossed our bows.
I do not know how long after this the Ship disappeared, or what was the
time of day when we at last pulled ourselves together. But we came to
some sort of decision at last. This was to go on--under sail. We were
too close to the island now to turn back for--for a broken shaft.
The afternoon was spent fitting on the sails to her, and when after
nightfall the wind at length came up fresh and favourable, I believe we
all felt heartened and a deal more hardy--until the last canvas went
aloft, and Hardenberg took the wheel.
We had drifted a good deal since the morning, and the bows of the
_Glarus_ were pointed homeward, but as soon as the breeze blew strong
enough to get steerageway Hardenberg put the wheel over and, as the
booms swung across the deck, headed for the island again.
We had not gone on this course half an hour--no, not twenty
minutes--before the wind shifted a whole quarter of the compass and took
the _Glarus_ square in the teeth, so that there was nothing for it but
to tack.
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