I was still weak from my prolonged immersion.

A puff of wind caught me,--and I staggered across the moving deck to a corner of the cabin, to which I clung for support.

The schooner, heeled over far out from the perpendicular, was bowing and plunging into the long Pacific roll.

If she were heading south-west as Johnson had said, the wind, then, I calculated, was blowing nearly from the south.

The fog was gone, and in its place the sun sparkled crisply on the surface of the water, I turned to the east, where I knew California must lie, but could see nothing save low-lying fog-banks--the same fog, doubtless, that had brought about the disaster to the _Martinez_ and placed me in my present situation.