Joey had heard of the sea-roke in books, but that didn't make her very clear about it now she met it. She couldn't think how such a thick, dead-white fog could have come up without her noticing it; but here it was, that was very certain. She began to wish that she had kept to the high road, or left the composition of that difficult letter till she got back to Redlands. However, the roke was here, and she was on the Deeps and not the road; there was nothing for it but to keep as straight on as possible—or better still, turn to her left and strike the road.
Joey settled that would be the wisest thing to do, even if it took her out of her way at first; she turned to the left and went as straight as she could.
The road seemed to take a very long time to be reached; Joey couldn't think how she could have come so far from it. She stumbled on and on, finding the ground very quaggy, and walking exceedingly difficult. And then she jumped back only just in time, for she had all but walked into one of those deep ditches with slanting sides that drain the Deeps at intervals, and are a very real danger, with their thick ooze of mud below the water, and their slippery banks. Joey knew that she had crossed no ditch on her way down from the road; she began to feel a little pricking of uneasiness. She was very, very tired; her legs ached, and she seemed to herself to have walked miles and miles through this cold, clammy, white wall. And if she couldn't strike the road; how much farther might she not have to go? And was all this struggling getting her any nearer to Redlands?
Joey was not a nervous person, but she sat down at the side of the dyke to try and get her bearings, with rather a sinking heart. She had just remembered that in a fog you tend to wander in a circle; could she have been doing that all this long time when she hoped that she was at least getting on a little?
"What a bally nuisance!" she said aloud. Of course one couldn't acknowledge, even to oneself, that it was anything worse than that.
"I suppose I had better wait till the fog lifts," she said, wondering whether it were the close, white wall or the sinking sensation under her belt that made her voice so hollow. And just as she said it there came a little breeze, and the roke lifted for a minute, hanging around like cotton-wool clouds that wanted to settle on the earth and couldn't quite make up their minds to do so; and Joey saw, some thirty yards away from her—not the road—there was no sign of that—but a narrow plank bridge that crossed the dyke and, straight in a line with it, the mysterious Round Tower.
Joey did not waste a minute. She ran for her life, and was over the bridge before the roke came down again—baffling, clinging, frightening. But the tower was so near, and there was no dyke between; she had seen that. She ran straight on in the white darkness, and fell breathlessly against the rough wall of the tower five minutes later.
The roke was thicker than ever after that momentary lifting, but Joey didn't care now. There was shelter and safety in the tower, and she felt as though having reached it was the next best thing to being safe at Redlands. Noreen had told her it really was a good four miles from the College, but it seemed comfortingly close when one remembered that night on the leads.
Joey felt her way round it until she came to a narrow door standing at least three feet above the ground. She felt the ledge on which the door opened with her fingers, scrambled up to it, and tried the door. It was fastened, but she carried a strong pocket-knife, and inserting the stoutest blade into the chink, she forced back the bolt which secured it on the inside, and opened the door. Then, with a delightful thrill of mystery, she scrambled through into the tower.