So we bucked on in, till five, till five-thirty, till six, and all the boat’s lights revealed was a yellow circle of fog that traveled with us. Wet and chilled, we two stood at the wheel together, in such hard conditions that no navigator and no pilot could have done much more than grope.
“We must have missed her!” admitted the old skipper at last. “I don’t fancy the open gulf, and I don’t fancy piling her up on some shore in here. What do you think we should do, Mr. Harry?”
“Listen!” said I, raising a hand.
“There’s no bell-buoy,” said he.
“No, but hark. Don’t you hear the birds—there’s a million geese and swans and ducks calling over yonder.”
“Right, by George!” said he. “But where?”
“They’d not be at sea, Peterson. They must be in some fresh-water lake inside some key or island. On the Long Key there’s such an inland lake.”
“It’s beyond the channel, maybe?” said he. But he signaled Williams to go slow, and that faithful unseen Cyclops, on whose precious engines so much depended, obeyed and presently put out a head at his hatch, quickly withdrawing it as a white sea came inboard.
“We’ll crawl on in,” said Peterson. “The light can’t be a thousand miles from here. If only there was a nigger man and a dinner bell beside the light—that’s the trouble. And now—good God! There she goes!”
With a jar which shook the good boat to the core, we felt the bottom come up from the depths and smite us. Our headway ceased, save for a sickening crunching crawl. The waves piled clear across our port bow as we swung. And so we hung, the gulf piling in on us in our yellow rimmed world. And at the lift and hollow of the sea we rose and pounded sullenly down, in such fashion as would have broken the back of any boat less stanch than ours.