"Oh, hell! Right, captain," he says. "Heave up and I'll give you a lead out to clear weather!"
'IN EXECUTION OF PREVIOUS ORDERS'
We are Number Four in the line; Vick—beer—code is our address, and we steam somewhat faster than the fog warrants to keep touch with our next ahead. She, in turn, is packing close up on the leader, and if, in the strict ruling of a 'line ahead,' we are stepping out a trifle wide, at least we keep in company. The farthest we can see is the thrash of foam, white in the grey, of War Ordnance's propeller—a good moving mark, that, though faint, draws the eye by the lead of broken water. Nearer, we have a steering-guide in her hydroplane, cutting and dancing under the bows and throwing a sightly feather of spray. The sea is flat calm, save for our leader's wake—a broad ribbon of troubled water through which we steer. Our eyes, now limited in range by the fog, seem to focus readily on trifles; for want of major objects, roving glances take in driftwood and ship-litter, and turn on minute patches of seaweed with an interest that a wider range would dissipate. Spurring, black-crested puffins come at us from under the misty pall, floating still, as if set in glass, till our bow wash plays out and sets them, squawking in distress, to an ungainly splutter on the surface, or dipping swiftly to show white under-feathers and the widening rings of their dive.
Astern of us, a medley of sound and steering-signals marks the gateway of the harbour where our followers are striving to drop their pilots and join in convoy; one loud trumpeter is drawing up at speed and showing, by the frequency of her whistle-blasts, anxiety to sight our wake. The lighthouse syren roars a warning of shoal-water out on the landward beam, a raucous discord of two weird notes. These, with the rare mournful wail of our leader, are our guiding sounds, but we have sight now and then of the destroyer escort passing and turning mistily on the rim of our narrowed vision, like swift sheep-dogs folding the stragglers of a scattered flock.
The fog, that settled dense and deep as we got under way, shows a little sign and promise of thinning, a small portent that draws our eyes to the lift above the funnel. There is no wind, but our smoke-wrack, after curving with our speed to masthead height, seems turned by light upper draughts to the eastward. The sun has risen and peers mistily over the top of the grey curtain that surrounds us. The day is warming up. Pray fortune, a stout west wind may come out of it all, to clear the muck and give us one good honest look at one another, when we are due for that 'six-point' turn to the south'ard!
To keep in station on our pacemaker, we call for constant alterations in the speed—a range of revolutions that rattles up scale and down, like first lessons on the piano, and sets the engineers below to a plaintive verge of tears. The junior officer at the voice-pipe looks reflective, after each order he passes, as though comparing the quality of the reply with the last sulphurous rejoinder. The fog has added to our starting vagaries and postponed a happy understanding, but we shall do better later on when we have gauged and discovered—and pitied—the tiresome vacillations of the other ships!
Meantime, as best we can, we chase the sheering hydroplane ahead that seems endowed with every chameleon gift of the classic gods. It vanishes, invisible, in a drift of fog, and though we con a course as steady as a cat on eggs, a clearing comes to show us its white feather broad on the bows and edging off at an angle to dip under the thick of the mist! It drops down to us; we sheer aside and slow a pace, and it lingers and dallies sportively abeam. It slips suddenly ahead, with a rush and a rip, as though, like a child among the daisies, it recalls a parent in advance.
The trumpeter astern has come up and sighted our wake and fog-buoy, and the clamour of her questing syren is stilled. She looms up close on our quarter, a huge menacing bulk of sheering steel with the foam thundering under her bows and curling and shattering on her grey hull. They have great difficulty in adjusting to our speed. She slows and fades back into the mist, grows again from gloomy shadow to threatening detail, steadies at a point for a few minutes, and resumes the round of her previous motions in irritating cycle. "Whatever can be the matter with them?" (We take the stout point of a position as steady as the Rock, and grow scornful of their clumsy efforts to keep station.) "Huh! These gold-laced London men! Why can't they steady up a bit? Why can't they——" We note that our steering-mark and the wash of War Ordnance's propeller are no longer in sight ahead, and set in to count the beats of the screw. ". . . t'-one, t'-two, t'-three, t'— Hell! Didn't we order seventy? Go full speed!" Jumping to the tube, the junior attends. "I said seven-owe, sir, but he thought I said six-four! Says th' bl—, th' engines working, sir—can't hear properly!"
Grudgingly, as though loath to give us our sight again, the fog clears. The first of the tantalizing rift in the curtain is signalled by the high look-out, who calls that he can see the topmasts of our near neighbours piercing the low-lying vapours. The sun shines through, showing now and then a clear-cut limb in place of the luminous misshapen brightening that has been with us since sunrise. In fits and starts the fog thins, and thickens again, at the will of wandering airs.
A west wind comes away, freshens, and stirs the vapour till it whips close overhead in wraiths and streamers, raises here and there a fold on the distant horizon, then dies again. Growing in vigour, the breeze returns; a gallant breath that ruffles the smooth of the sea and sweeps the round of it, routing the lingering flurries that settle, dust-like, when the mass is cleared.