For an hour they sailed, the only sounds being the flap of the canvas, the creaking of the tiller ropes, and the drip of the fog. Tanner was about to give the word to let go the anchor when, without warning, they suddenly burst clear of the fog and came out into the vast gray welter of the open sea.
Tanner suddenly straightened up, and slipping the wheel swiftly into the becket, he ran to the taffrail and looked over the side.
“Good God!” he cried. “What’s this?”
Not fifty feet away lay a blue dory, heavy and loggy with water, and in the bottom the unconscious figure of a man.
A second look at the face of the man and Tanner cried:
“Wheelan and Markle, overside with the starboard dory. Here’s Code Schofield adrift! Lively now!”
There was a rush aft, but Tanner met the crew and drove them to the nested boats amidships.
“Over, I say!” he roared.
The men obeyed him, and Wheelan and Markle were soon pulling madly to the blue dory astern.