The _Macedonia_, belching the blackest of smoke from her funnel, was charging down upon us from out of the north-east.

Neglecting the boats that remained to her, she had altered her course so as to anticipate ours.

She was not running straight for us, but ahead of us.

Our courses were converging like the sides of an angle, the vertex of which was at the edge of the fog-bank.

It was there, or not at all, that the _Macedonia_ could hope to catch us.