“An’ wet up, too,” broke in Josh.
“Yes, yes,” seconded Layn; “a good horn all round.”
All drank; but Josh was last at the jug, and improved his opportunity.
Each man took up his scythe again, wiped the blade with a wisp of grass, and struck with drawing motion his rifle along the blade. Every blow sent out those ringing notes—the test of good steel.
The whetting over, zithe—zithe—zithe—went the scythes once more, the graceful strokes beating again their triple measure. But before the mowers had finished their second bout, the outposts of the fog, which lay banked low over the ocean when they were crossing the Bay, came and settled about them. So intent, though, were the mowers upon the work in hand, that the fog’s insidious presence was not noted, till making the last stroke out, they straightened up and looked around. They could not at first realize the change. When they had struck in at the other end of the swath, their view extended over miles—the wide Bay and the blue shore beyond, lay to the northward; west and east stretched the meadows with their sinuous edges; to the south were the Beach hills and the gap through them, affording a glimpse of the ocean. What wonder is it, then, that the mowers, bending down and watching intently to see where the next stroke should fall, lost consciousness of their surroundings, and were, the first instant on looking up, bewildered to see the impenetrable gray on all sides?
“Well, I sw’ar,” spoke Josh. “This ere’s sudden—I’ll be darned ef I knowed where I wuz for a second ur two.”
“Nuther did I,” replied Layn. “At fust, I tried to git my bearin’s, an’ it bothered me, fur thar wuzn’t no bearin’s to be got. Then I come to my senses, an’ knowed I wuz right here on the medder mowin’, with this ere bank o’ fog all round us.”
A fog, as everybody knows, plays all sorts of tricks with the judgment. A man may drive over a road a hundred times and think himself acquainted with every turn and hollow, with every clump of trees, with every bank, rock, or bunch of shrubbery by the roadside; but let a dense fog come down, and memory at once refuses to match the new impressions with the old. The hollows are deeper and the bends of the road more abrupt, the clump of trees has shifted its position or has entirely disappeared, and every rock and bunch of shrubbery becomes a strange object. If he begins to doubt, his judgment is completely upset, and he concludes he has taken the wrong road.
A man may have sailed from shore to shore of a body of water so often as to feel almost confident of doing it with eyes shut; let, however, a fog settle and blot out every surrounding object, and ten to one he will conclude, before he has sailed a mile, that he has not kept his course, or that the wind has shifted. Then it is all up with him; confusion and uncertainty follow, and there can be no telling where he will make land.
“What’s it goin’ to do, Raner?—hang here all day like this?” asked Layn.