"Humph! If hens would only lay eggs of solid gold," snorted Mr. Baldwin, "there'd be no sense in a bank cashier running away with the stuffing of the bank's vault! Captain Halstead, we won't pick that steam yacht up again in this fog."
"Then, sir, we may do it when the fog lifts," predicted Halstead, hopefully.
Baldwin shook his head.
"All we can do, young man, is to keep on in a general course toward San Francisco, as we're doing. This fog will probably hang to us all the way to our anchorage off Market Street. If the fog should lift before that, there isn't one chance in a thousand that we'll find the 'Victor' in sight."
"I'm on this cruise, sir," rejoined the young captain, "with the notion that the cruise can't end until we've run alongside the 'Victor' somewhere. It may be that we'll sight some other vessel that has seen the steam yacht. In that way we may get the news that will send us hustling down the coast to Mexico, or across the ocean to Japan."
Joseph Baldwin grinned wistfully.
"Well, one thing, Captain; we have enough gasoline to go 'most anywhere. My friends thought I was almost crazy to have such big tanks put aboard to hold gasoline. But I replied that, when we didn't need the extra oil, it would serve as ballast. If we have to burn that oil we can fill the tanks with salt water and still keep ballasted."
"In any clear weather we can use the sails a good deal, and save oil at that, sir," suggested the young skipper.
However, they continued on through the fog the rest of that afternoon, and through the night, without discovering a sign of any other craft. The loneliness of that great ocean about them began to get somewhat on the nerves of some of the passengers. Gaston Giddings, suffering infernal tortures for want of the drug to which he had become such a pitiful slave, kept to the cabin.
Through the long night the "Panther" kept plodding on her way, rolling a good deal in the sea. Tom spent much of his time on the bridge with the watch officer. So morning came around again, and it was Third Mate Costigan's deck watch.