With one boy at each oar the boat did get through the mist faster. They pulled till they were fairly exhausted, but at last Jack paused.
“If we are coming in the right direction the White Shark must be close at hand now,” he declared. “Let’s try shouting.”
The boys yelled and shouted with full lung power, but no answering shout came back out of the mist. At last they were compelled to give in. Their throats were raw and cracked from their vocal exercise.
They exchanged blank looks.
“Well?” demanded Tom flatly.
“There’s no use blinking the fact, Tom,” was Jack’s rejoinder, “we are lost.”
“Can’t we do anything?”
“Nothing, except make the best of it, like the Indian who was found wandering about by a party of hunters. ‘Are you lost?’ they asked him. ‘No,’ replied the noble red man, ‘me not lost, wigwam lost.’ That’s about the way we’ve got to look at our situation, Tom, old boy.”
Jack tried hard to make his voice cheerful and confident, but somehow Tom did not smile at his companion’s story. And all about them the fog shut in ever closer and closer.