coming in.'

He did see it indeed; in it rolled upon him in columns, a soft silvery
cloud enveloping everything, the sunshine, the shore, and the water,
so that he paddled at random, and knew not whither he went, or rather
saw not, since knowing was long since out of the question. 'This is
pleasant,' he said to himself when the morning had turned to afternoon
and the afternoon to night, 'and it is certainly new. A stratus of
tepid cloud a thousand miles long and a thousand miles deep, and a man
in a dug-out paddling through! Sisyphus was nothing to this.' But he
made himself comfortable in a philosophic way, and went to the only
place left to him,--to sleep.

At dawn the sunshine colored the fog golden, but that was all; it was
still fog, and lay upon the dark water thicker and softer than ever.
Waring eat some dried meat, and considered the possibilities; he had
reckoned without the fog, and now his lookout was uncomfortably misty.
The provisions would not last more than a week; and though he might
catch fish, how could he cook them? He had counted on a shore
somewhere; any land, however desolate, would give him a fire; but this
fog was muffling, and unless he stumbled ashore by chance he might go
on paddling in a circle forever. 'Bien,' he said, summing up,
'my part at any rate is to go on; I, at least can do my duty.'

'Especially as there is nothing else to do,' observed the Spirit.

Having once decided, the man kept at his work with finical precision.
At a given moment he eat a lunch, and very tasteless it was too, and
then to work again; the little craft went steadily on before the
stroke of the strong arms, its wake unseen, its course unguided.