Brave winds, blowing fair, swiftly drove the _Ghost_ northward into the seal herd.

We encountered it well up to the forty-fourth parallel, in a raw and stormy sea across which the wind harried the fog-banks in eternal flight.

For days at a time we could never see the sun nor take an observation; then the wind would sweep the face of the ocean clean, the waves would ripple and flash, and we would learn where we were.

A day of clear weather might follow, or three days or four, and then the fog would settle down upon us, seemingly thicker than ever.
The hunting was perilous; yet the boats, lowered day after day, were swallowed up in the grey obscurity, and were seen no more till nightfall, and often not till long after, when they would creep in like sea-wraiths, one by one, out of the grey.

Wainwright--the hunter whom Wolf Larsen had stolen with boat and men--took advantage of the veiled sea and escaped.
He disappeared one morning in the encircling fog with his two men, and we never saw them again, though it was not many days when we learned that they had passed from schooner to schooner until they finally regained their own.
This was the thing I had set my mind upon doing, but the opportunity never offered.