VI + 

“Those Damned Horns!” + 

Semiconsciousness! I found myself mechanically keeping afloat somehow and trying to get out of my overcoat. The back of my head throbbed devilishly. My eyes burned. I felt heavy and logged, as if I had swallowed gallons of water. + 

The fog hung low and thick on the water⁠—there was nothing else to be seen anywhere. By the time I had freed myself of the encumbering overcoat my head had cleared somewhat, but with returning consciousness came increased pain. + 

A light glimmered mistily off to my left, and then vanished. From out of the misty blanket, from every direction, in a dozen different keys, from near and far, foghorns sounded. I stopped swimming and floated on my back, trying to determine my whereabouts. + 

After a while I picked out the moaning, evenly spaced blasts of the Alcatraz siren. But they told me nothing. They came to me out of the fog without direction⁠—seemed to beat down upon me from straight above. + 

I was somewhere in San Francisco Bay, and that was all I knew, though I suspected the current was sweeping me out toward the Golden Gate. + 

A little while passed, and I knew that I had left the path of the Oakland ferries⁠—no boat had passed close to me for some time. I was glad to be out of that track. In this fog a boat was a lot more likely to run me down than to pick me up. + 

The water was chilling me, so I turned over and began swimming, just vigorously enough to keep my blood circulating while I saved my strength until I had a definite goal to try for. + 

A horn began to repeat its roaring note nearer and nearer, and presently the lights of the boat upon which it was fixed came into sight. One of the Sausalito ferries, I thought. + 

It came quite close to me, and I halloed until I was breathless and my throat was raw. But the boat’s siren, crying its warning, drowned my shouts. + 

The boat went on and the fog closed in behind it. + 

The current was stronger now, and my attempts to attract the attention of the Sausalito ferry had left me weaker. I floated, letting the water sweep me where it would, resting. + 

Another light appeared ahead of me suddenly⁠—hung there for an instant⁠—disappeared. + 

I began to yell, and worked my arms and legs madly, trying to drive myself through the water to where it had been. + 

I never saw it again. + 

Weariness settled upon me, and a sense of futility. The water was no longer cold. I was warm with a comfortable, soothing numbness. My head stopped throbbing; there was no feeling at all in it now. No lights, now, but the sound of foghorns⁠ ⁠… foghorns⁠ ⁠… foghorns ahead of me, behind me, to either side; annoying me, irritating me. + 

But for the moaning horns I would have ceased all effort. They had become the only disagreeable detail of my situation⁠—the water was pleasant, fatigue was pleasant. But the horns tormented me. I cursed them petulantly and decided to swim until I could no longer hear them, and then, in the quiet of the friendly fog, go to sleep.⁠ ⁠… + 

Now and then I would doze, to be goaded into wakefulness by the wailing voice of a siren. + 

“Those damned horns! Those damned horns!” I complained aloud, again and again. + 

One of them, I found presently, was bearing down upon me from behind, growing louder and stronger. I turned and waited. Lights, dim and steaming, came into view. + 

With exaggerated caution to avoid making the least splash, I swam off to one side. When this nuisance was past I could go to sleep. I sniggered softly to myself as the lights drew abreast, feeling a foolish triumph in my cleverness in eluding the boat. Those damned horns.⁠ ⁠… + 

Life⁠—the hunger for life⁠—all at once surged back into my being. + 

I screamed at the passing boat, and with every iota of my being struggled toward it. Between strokes I tilted up my head and screamed.⁠ ⁠… + 