Thereat we laughed, for Beorn's jealousy was a sport to us when we thought of it, which was seldom enough.
So these two went to Thetford, and in the last week of August I sailed for London, with a fair breeze over the quarter, from our haven.
[CHAPTER III. WHAT CAME IN A NORTH SEA FOG.]
Night saw our ship off Orfordness, and there the breeze failed us, and a thick fog, hiding the land and its lights, crept up from seaward and wrapped us round. But before it came, on Orfordness a fire burnt redly, though what it was, unless it might be some fisher's beacon, we could not tell.
The fog lifted as we drifted past the wide mouth of Stour and Orwell rivers with a little breeze, and the early daylight showed us the smoke of a fire that burnt on the higher land that shuts in the haven's mouth on its southern shores. But even as we saw it, the fog closed round us again and the wind died away, so that we lowered the sail, and the men got out the oars, and slowly, while Kenulf swung the lead line constantly, we crept on among the sand banks down the coast.
Presently the tide turned against us, and Kenulf thought well that we should drop anchor and wait for its turning again. The men gladly laid in the oars, and the anchor rattled out and held. The ship swung to her cable, and then there seemed deep silence after the even roll and creak of the great sweeps in their rowlocks. The fog was very dense, and beyond our stem head I could see nothing.
Then to break the silence came to us, over no great stretch of water as it seemed, the sound of a creaking block, the fall of a yard on deck, and a voice raised in some sharp order. Then I thought I heard an anchor plunge, and there was silence. Very ghostly it seemed to hear these familiar sounds and to see naught, and it was the more so that we might by no means judge from which side of us, or fore or aft, the noises came, for fog will confuse all things, and save a driving snowstorm, I dread nothing more at sea.
Now the men began to speak in whispers, for the silence and weirdness of the fog quieted us all. And, moreover, when the fog lifted we had seen no ship, though there must be one close to us now, and we wondered.
But Kenulf came to me presently with a scared face, and waiting till the men had gone forward to find their food, he asked me if I heard the voice that spoke.