“Fog?” Mr. Seaton’s tone had an aghast ring to it.
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you sure, Captain?”
“No, sir. It’s only a possibility, but a good one.”
Hepton was making his rifle bark again, deep, snappy and angry in its throat, in answer to a challenge from shore, but Powell Seaton stood surveying the weather with a look of deepest concern.
Then he turned to regard the drab seventy-footer at anchor near by.
“It would be the enemy’s real chance, wouldn’t it?” he inquired.
“Just what I dread, sir,” Captain Tom admitted. “Let us be wrapped in a thick bank of 166 fog, and the Drab would be out of our vision and hearing in a very short time.”
“Shades of hard luck!” groaned the charter-man, growing pallid.
Off on the seaward horizon an indefinite haze was soon observable. To the untrained eye it didn’t look like much. Though Mr. Seaton spoke of it, he didn’t appear much concerned.