The Sea-girt Fortress: A Story of Heligoland

Where are we now? asked Oswald Detroit, emerging from the cabin of the Diomeda .
Ask me another, replied his chum, Jack Hamerton, with a merry laugh. We may be here, we may be there, for all I know. One thing I am certain of: I have just hove the lead, and found that we are in twenty-two fathoms, with a gravelly bottom. That's good enough for me. Also, by dead reckoning, we are three hundred and seventy-eight miles from Lowestoft, and I can't take an observation because of this fog.
You don't seem at all anxious, remarked Detroit, who regarded the wall of thick white mist with evident mistrust.
Why should I? The yacht's as sound as anyone could desire, and we've plenty of sea room. Now, if we were anywhere in the neighbourhood of the sandbanks at the mouth of the Elbe, I might feel jumpy. Take the helm, old man; north, eighty east, is the course. I'll get breakfast.
Jack Hamerton was a tall, broad-shouldered fellow of twenty years of age. He might well be described as thick-set, for his head was set upon his square shoulders by a short, thick neck, his arms were brawny, while his legs would have caused many a professional footballer to turn green with envy. His features were inclined towards heaviness, the bushy eyebrows and square jaw denoting force of character amounting to stubbornness.
He was a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and had lately been paid off from H.M.S. Blazer after an arduous commission in the Persian Gulf. Owing to the particular circumstances My Lords had granted Hamerton three months' leave, and the Sub, with an innate love for the salt seas, had chartered an eight-ton yacht, and with Detroit for company had started on a cruise to Kiel.
Oswald Detroit was physically different from Hamerton. He was tall, but slenderly built, yet there was a suppleness in his muscular limbs that had stood him in good stead in the athletic world. His features were clean-cut and regular, his hair of a light-brown hue and inclined to curliness, while his fair skin, in spite of exposure to the wind and sun, contrasted forcibly with Hamerton's almost swarthy complexion.