The first lieutenant looked at the chart. 'We can ease down and run a line of soundings, sir,' he observed; 'but even then I doubt if the lead'll tell us much. The water's under ten fathoms the whole way, and we might pile up on one of these banks before we know where we are. They're steep to.'[ [33] He pointed to some patches of closely clustered dots representing sandbanks. 'Perhaps we might pick up one of the buoys, sir?' he added hopefully.
Wooten seemed doubtful. 'Most of 'em have been taken away,' he answered. 'I do wish these perishin' Huns would go and do their dirty work somewhere else! Our compasses are none too accurate, and Heaven alone knows exactly what the tide is doing.' He was very much annoyed, and not a little apprehensive; for the haze over the land was getting thicker every minute, and there was no breeze to dispel it.
Ten minutes later the Mariner was travelling in a cold and clammy mist through which it was impossible to see more than a mile; while five minutes afterwards she had run into a solid wall of thick gray fog, and their range of vision was bounded by a narrow circle with a radius of barely a hundred yards.
'Damn!' Wooten muttered fiercely, stepping to the engine-room telegraph and turning the handle until the pointer showed the revolutions of the turbines for ten knots.
With the sounding-machine going every five minutes, the siren wailing mournfully every two, and extra lookouts placed on the forecastle, they groped their way blindly on. It was trying work; for, now that the fog had shut down, the neighbourhood at once seemed crowded with other ships, the dismal hooting of whose sirens and steam-whistles came from all directions at the same time. The noises they made were curious. Some barked like dogs; others cleared their throats noisily, or stammered and yelped shrilly; while more boomed and bellowed like cattle, howled liked wolves, or laughed like jackasses.
'I've heard a farmyard in the early mornin',' Wooten observed; 'but the racket that's going on now fairly licks creation.'
Once they sighted a huge dull blur in the haze right ahead, and the skipper, holding his breath, jammed the helm over just in time to avoid a large Norwegian tramp laden with timber. The vessels slid by each other barely twenty feet apart, and as they passed a man with an excited purple face and a white beard leant over her bridge-rail gesticulating wildly. 'Why for you no look where you come?' he bellowed in incoherent and very bad English.
'Don't get excited, Father Christmas!' Wooten retaliated, justly annoyed. 'Why the deuce don't you sound your hooter, you perishin' pirate?'
The master of the steamer waved his fists excitedly, but before he could collect his wits and think of anything further to say the vessels had slid past each other and were out of sight and earshot.
For an hour the Mariner travelled on, with the fog as thick as ever. They were running down the Channel between the minefield and the banks lying off the shore; but in spite of the fact that they were working entirely by dead reckoning, and the tide was an unknown quantity, nothing unforeseen occurred.