Reckoning he had got his offing, he swung the boat’s head due north and paddled gently against the run of the tide.
Time progressed; there was no sign of the ship or the land breeze that was to reveal her. For all he knew he might be four miles out to sea or one-half only. He had no landmarks, no means of measuring how far he had come except by experience of how long it had taken him to pull a dinghy from point to point at home in Monks Cove; yet somehow he felt he was about right.
Time went by. The fog pressed about him in walls of discolored steam, clammy, dripping, heavy on the lungs. Occasionally it split, revealing dark corridors and halls, abysses of Stygian gloom; rolled together again. A hundred feet overhead it was clear night and starry. Where was that breeze?
More time passed. Ortho began to think he had failed and made plans to cover the failure. It should not be difficult. He would land on the sands opposite the Bab Malka, overturn the boat, climb over the walls and see the rest of the night out among the Mussulman graves. In the morning he could claim his horse and ride into camp as if nothing had happened. As a slave he had been over the walls time and again; there was a crack in the bricks by the Bordj el Kbir. He didn’t suppose it was repaired; they never repaired anything. Puddicombe didn’t know who had hit him; there was no earthly reason why he should be suspected. The boat would be found overturned, the unknown sailor presumed drowned. Quite simple. Remained the Tangier scheme.
By this time, being convinced that the ship had passed, he slewed the boat about and pulled in. The sooner he was ashore the better.
The fog appeared to be moving. It twisted into clumsy spirals which sagged in the middle, puffed out cheeks of vapor, bulged and writhed, drifting to meet the boat. The land breeze was coming at last—an hour too late! Ortho pulled on, an ear cocked for the growl of the bar. There was nothing to be heard as yet; he must have gone further than he thought, but fog gagged and distorted sound in the oddest way. The spirals nodded above him like gigantic wraiths. Something passed overhead delivering an eerie screech. A sea-gull only, but it made him jump. Glancing at the compass, he found that he was, at the moment, pulling due south. He got his direction again and pulled on. Goodness knew what the tide had been doing to him. There might be a westward stream from the river which had pushed him miles out to sea. Or possibly he was well south of his mark and would strike the coast below Rabat. Oh, well, no matter as long as he got ashore soon. Lying on his oars, he listened again for the bar, but could hear no murmur of it. Undoubtedly he was to the southward. That ship was halfway to Fedala by now.
Then, quite clearly, behind a curtain of fog, an English voice chanted: “By the Deep Nine.”
Ortho stopped rowing, stood up and listened. Silence, not a sound, not a sign. Fichus and twisted columns of fog drifting towards him, that was all. But somewhere close at hand a voice was calling soundings. The ship was there. All his fine calculations were wrong, but he had blundered aright.
“Mark ten.”
The voice came again, seemingly from his left-hand side this time. Again silence. The fog alleys closed once more, muffling sound. The ship was there, within a few yards, yet this cursed mist with its fool tricks might make him lose her altogether. He hailed with all his might. No answer. He might have been flinging his shout against banks of cotton wool. Again and again he hailed.