The hope for the _Ghost_ lay in that she should pass that point before the _Macedonia_ arrived at it.
Wolf Larsen was steering, his eyes glistening and snapping as they dwelt upon and leaped from detail to detail of the chase.

Now he studied the sea to windward for signs of the wind slackening or freshening, now the _Macedonia_; and again, his eyes roved over every sail, and he gave commands to slack a sheet here a trifle, to come in on one there a trifle, till he was drawing out of the _Ghost_ the last bit of speed she possessed.

All feuds and grudges were forgotten, and I was surprised at the alacrity with which the men who had so long endured his brutality sprang to execute his orders.

Strange to say, the unfortunate Johnson came into my mind as we lifted and surged and heeled along, and I was aware of a regret that he was not alive and present; he had so loved the _Ghost_ and delighted in her sailing powers.
"Better get your rifles, you fellows," Wolf Larsen called to our hunters; and the five men lined the lee rail, guns in hand, and waited.
The _Macedonia_ was now but a mile away, the black smoke pouring from her funnel at a right angle, so madly she raced, pounding through the sea at a seventeen-knot gait--"'Sky-hooting through the brine," as Wolf Larsen quoted while gazing at her.

We were not making more than nine knots, but the fog-bank was very near.
A puff of smoke broke from the _Macedonia's_ deck, we heard a heavy report, and a round hole took form in the stretched canvas of our mainsail.