Denser it grew, that deep, terrifying wall that shut us off, shipmate from shipmate. Overhead, only the black shadow of the lower sails loomed up; forward, the ship was shrouded ghostly, unreal. Trailing wreaths of vapour passed before and about the side-lamps, throwing back their glare in mockery of the useless rays. All sense of distance was taken from us: familiar deck fittings assumed huge, grotesque proportions; the blurred and shadowy outlines of listening men about the decks seemed magnified and unreal. Sound, too, was distorted by the inconstant sea-fog; a whisper might carry far, a whole-voiced hail be but dimly heard.
Lifting lazily over the long swell, under easy canvas, we sailed, unseeing and unseen. Now and on, the hand fog-trumpet rasped out a signal of our sailing, a faint, half-stifled note to pit against the deep reverberation of a liner's siren that seemed, at every blast, to be drawing nearer and nearer.
The Old Man was on the poop, anxiously peering into the void, though keenest eyes could serve no purpose. Bare-headed, that he might the better hear, he stepped from rail to rail—listening, sniffing, striving, with every other sense acute, to work through the fog-banks that had robbed him of his sight. We were in evil case. A dense fog in Channel, full in the track of shipping—a weak wind for working ship. Small wonder that every whisper, every creak of block or parrel, caused him to jump to the compass—a steering order all but spoken.
"Where d'ye mark that, now?" he cried, as again the liner's siren sounded out.
"Where d'ye mark ... d'ye mark ... mark?" The word was passed forward from mouth to mouth, in voices faint and muffled.
"About four points on th' port bow, Sir!" The cry sounded far and distant, like a hail from a passing ship, though the Mate was but shouting from the bows.
"Aye, aye! Stan' by t' hand that foresheet! Keep the foghorn goin'!"
"... Foresheet ... 'sheet ... th' fog'orn ... goin'!" The invisible choir on the main-deck repeated the orders.
Again the deep bellow from the steamer, now perilously close—the futile rasp of our horn in answer.
Suddenly an alarmed cry: "O Chris'! She's into us! ... The bell, you! The bell! ..." A loud clanging of the forward bell, a united shout from our crew, patter of feet as they run aft, the Mate shouting: "Down hellum, Sir—down hellum, f'r God's sake!"