It was extraordinary! Here was a man who, a few minutes before, might, with all of us, have been struggling for his life!
Dawn broke and lightened the mist about us, but the pall hung thick as ever over the water. At times we could hear the distant note of a steamer's whistle; once we marked a sailing vessel, by sound of her horn, as she worked slowly across our bows, giving the three mournful wails of a running ship. Now and again we cast the lead, and it was something to see the Channel bottom—grains of sand, broken shell-pebbles—brought up on the arming. Fog or no fog, we were, at least, dunting the 'blue pigeon' on English ground, and we felt, as day wore on and the fog thinned and turned to mist and rain, that a landfall was not yet beyond hope.
A change of weather was coming, a change that neither the Old Man nor the Mate liked, to judge by their frequent visits to the barometers. At noon the wind hauled into the sou'-west and freshened, white tops curled out of the mist and broke in a splutter of foam under the quarter, Channel gulls came screaming and circling high o'er our heads—a sure sign of windy weather. A gale was in the making; a rushing westerly gale, to clear the Channel and blow the fog-rack inland.
"I don't like the looks o' this, Mister." The Old Man was growing anxious; we had seen nothing, had heard nothing to make us confident of our reckoning. "That aneroid's dropped a tenth since I tapped it last, an' th' mercurial's like it had no bottom! There's wind behind this, sure; and if we see naught before 'four bells,' I'm goin' out t' look for sea-room. Channel fogs, an' sou'-westers, an' fifteen-knot liners in charge o' b——y lunatics! Gad! there's no room in th' English Channel now for square sail, an' when ye——"
"Sail O! On the port bow, Sir!" Keen, homeward-bound eyes had sighted a smudge on the near horizon.
"Looks like a fisherman," said the Mate, screwing at his glasses. "He's standing out."
"Well, we'll haul up t' him, anyway," answered the Old Man. "Starboard a point—mebbe he can give us the bearin' o' th' Lizard."
Bearing up, we were soon within hailing distance. She was a Cardiff pilot cutter; C.F. and a number, painted black on her mains'l, showed us that. As we drew on she hoisted the red and white of a pilot on station.
"The barque—ahoy! Where—are—'oo—bound?" A cheering hail that brought all hands to the rails, to stare with interest at the oilskin-clad figures of the pilot's crew.
"Falmouth—for orders!"