The sea looked red out toward the west.

I think it will clear away to-night." He was in no mood to say more.

And the raft drifted on, while the gray fog settled round them, and its chill and gloominess seemed to go to their very hearts.
But as Merriwell had predicted, the fog lifted again, and at the end of another hour of an experience as terrible as either had ever been called to undergo, the gray bank again swung up toward the sky.

The sun was sinking redly into the sea, and night was at hand--and what night might mean in their weakened and chilled condition, adrift on the great ocean toward which they seemed to be so resistlessly borne, they dared not think.
"The sloop!" Bart cried, rousing himself.
Merriwell lifted himself and looked.

It was the sloop, sure enough.