Here Nils, who had been up to the mast-head to see if he could make out anything (for these fogs very often lie on the surface, not a dozen feet thick, looking from above like so much cotton wool in a box, while the sun is shining brightly above them), slid down the back-stay, and declared he could feel a light air aloft on the starboard beam; “his cheek felt quite cold,” he said, “though the heavy main-sail, dripping with dew, did not acknowledge the breeze at all.”
“How is her head; why, confound you, you have forgotten the compass” (not at all an unlikely piece of forgetfulness in a river yacht.) This was soon remedied, for the Parson put his own little pocket affair on the deck, which, as it was a calm, did quite as well as her own.
She was looking a little southward of east, having probably turned round and round a dozen times during the night.
“That would do, the wind was southerly then; but where were they?”
The day was now getting bright, and the fog was looking like a silver veil; the tiresome pattering of the knittles had ceased, or was renewed only at intervals; she was evidently gliding through the water,—but which way were they to steer? Amal certainly must be somewhere to the northward, but within six or eight points it was impossible to tell where after such a sleepy watch as had been kept during the past night. Reluctantly, Moodie brought her to the wind, and hauled his foresheet to windward.
But the breeze increased, and the fog began to lift now and then; it could be seen under, as it were, and though just as thick about the mast-head as ever, a hundred yards or so of the surface could be seen plainly on either side.
Nils rubbed his hands at this infallible sign of the rising of the fog, and Moodie, somewhat easier in his mind, ordered coffee.
“There’s land on the port-beam,” said the Captain, during one of these lifts. “I am sure I saw land, whatever it is.”
“There ought to be no land there,” said Moodie; for, lying as she did now, close to the wind, she had brought the east, that is to say, the great expanse of the lake, to her port-side, and was looking exactly on the opposite direction to her course; “get a cast of the lead, and keep a bright look out for rocks.”
Just then the curtain of the fog rose in earnest, and disclosed a cluster of rocks and islets, among which they had got themselves completely entangled. “Why, what is this?—it is! no, it can’t be! yet it is—”