There was silence in the pilot-house after that. Ahead there was ticklish navigation. There were the narrow slues, the crowding shoals, the blind turns of Nantucket Sound, dreaded in all weathers, but a mariner's horror in a fog.
Nobska's clarion call drew slowly abeam to port, and after due lapse of time West Chop's steam-whistle lifted its guiding voice in the mists ahead.
“Better use the pelorus and be careful about West Chop's bearing after we pass her, Mr. Bangs,” Captain Mayo warned his first mate.
As a sailor well knows, the bearing of West Chop gives the compass direction for passage between the shoals known as Hedge Fence and Squash Meadow—a ten-mile run to Cross Rip Lightship. In a fog it is vitally important to have West Chop exact to the eighth of a point.
Fogg was glad that he was alone where he sat. He trembled so violently that he set an unlighted cigar between his teeth to keep them from rattling together.
The mate was outlined against the window, his eyes on the instrument, his ear cocked. Every half-minute West Chop's whistle hooted.
“Right, sir!” the mate reported at last, speaking briskly. “I make it west by nothe, five-eighths nothe.”
Fogg rose and half staggered forward, taking a position just to the left of the wheel and compass.
“East by south, five-eighths south,” the captain directed the helmsman. “Careful attention, sir. Tide is flood, four knots. Make the course good!”
The quartermaster repeated and twirled his wheel for the usual number of revolutions to allow a three-points change.