Presently, from the starboard, came the sound of a bell. Then from ahead came the muffled roar of a horn, and soon, from all directions, there were warnings issuing from the fog.
“Golly, there are boats all around us!” cried Tom. “Look! See there, Jim.”
Jim turned in time to see a ghostly phantomlike shape appear as if by magic—a schooner with all sails set, and seemingly within a dozen yards of the Narwhal. But almost before he could grasp the fact that it was a vessel, it had vanished as weirdly as it had appeared.
For an hour or more the schooner picked her way through the fog, often swinging sharply to port or starboard at the skipper’s hoarsely bellowed orders, a dozen times avoiding collision with a smack by a few feet and twice swerving just in time to avoid running down the tiny bobbing dories.
At last the bells and horns grew faint. The captain breathed more freely and declared he must have left the fleet astern. As the fog began to lift and a wider expanse of sea and the upper sails became visible, the boys decided all danger was over and prepared to go to the cabin and dress properly.
Then, from the lookout, a frightened yell rang out. A shrieking bellow roared from the fog ahead. With a bound Captain Edwards leaped to the wheel. “Hard aport!” he screamed, as he grasped the spokes and strained with the steersman at the helm. Startled, realizing that imminent unknown peril threatened, confused by the shouts, orders and rush of men, the boys stood gazing helplessly about.
Then once more that ear-splitting, terrific bellow thundered from the fog. As the Narwhal’s head swung slowly to starboard, a vast, towering, mountainous shape came tearing, rushing, through the fog. Dimly through the opaque gray mist, the terror-stricken boys saw the tremendous fabric bearing down upon them. Far above the schooner’s crosstrees reared the lofty stem of a gigantic steamship. Within a cable’s length of the Narwhal, the billowing mass of foam about the keen steel stem roared with the sound of surf. Each second the boys expected to hear the crashing blow, to feel the splintering, terrific impact that would spell their doom. Paralyzed with fright, they stood motionless and speechless. Nothing, they felt, could save them. The great, shearing prow of the steamer seemed to overhang their heads. Their staring eyes glimpsed dim, tiny figures leaning over the rails far above, shouting, gesticulating, life rings in hand.
And then, with a hissing roar like a passing train, the huge liner swept by. Endless rows of port holes filled with white faces rushed past the terror-stricken boys. The next second the Narwhal was bobbing and jumping like a cork on the tumbling heaving wake, with only the pall of smoke and the churning foam to mark the liner’s passage.
Leaping upon the schooner’s wildly tossing taffrail, Captain Edwards shook his fist at the spot where the liner had disappeared in the fog. Cap’n Pem, unable to stand on the rail, seized a belaying pin, hurled it after the liner and, throwing his cap on the deck, fairly danced with rage.