SO the 23d was the last fair day that they had on that short cruise. During the forenoon the wind held from nearly the same quarter—that is, northerly and westerly.
The air was mild and pleasant; the day, like the day before, seemed more like June than the middle of April.
Toward noon, however, the wind shifted around to the southward and eastward, and the glass had a downward bearing. Tom saw, with a troubled feeling, that the weather began to take an ugly sort of a look. About nine o’clock Captain Knight gave orders to have the vessel’s course altered to nearly due south.
At noon the observation showed their position to be about 35° 40′ north, by 71° west, with Hatteras about 210 miles distant, W. by S. on the starboard beam.
A little before eight bells, Captain Knight came up on deck again, and Tom, feeling anxious himself, looked out of the corners of his eyes, to see if he could gather what the captain thought of the situation. It seemed to Tom that he was not quite easy in his mind. He cast his eyes aloft, and then looked around. He took a turn or two up and down the deck, and then looked at the glass, which, as had been said, was falling. Whatever he might have thought about the looks of things, he said nothing. Tom had half expected an order to shorten sail, but Captain Knight gave none such, and presently went to his cabin again.
Shortly after noon the wind was blowing from the northeast. It became a great deal colder, and by four o’clock the sky was overcast by a gathering haze, which, at last, shut out the sun altogether.
About this time they fell in with shifting banks of fog, blowing before the wind, the like of which Tom had never seen before. They seemed to drift in belts, and were no doubt raised by cold currents of air, for a chill could be felt the minute the ship would run into one of them. Every now and then the wind would sweep these banks away, rolling them up before it, and for a little while there would be a clear space around the ship for maybe a couple of miles or more.
At that time they were under all plain sail to top gallant sails, and were booming along at a rate that could not have been less than ten knots. Tom thought that the Nancy Hazlewood might even have done better than she was then doing, were it not that she labored in a most unusual way for a vessel, in a wind no heavier than that in which she was then sailing. There is no doubt that this came from the heaviness of her spars as well as the ill stowage of her provisions and stores; still she was doing well, and any one could see with half an eye that it would be an uncommonly swift cruiser to whom the Nancy Hazlewood would not be able to show a clean pair of heels, if the need should arise for her doing so.
It was a little before the middle of the first dog watch, when there happened one of the closest misses that Tom ever had of losing his life. I most firmly believe that if any one beside Jack Baldwin had been the officer of the deck, Tom Granger’s story would never have had to have been told.
Jack was walking up and down on the poop in a restless sort of a way. It was plain that he was anxious at the fog, as well he might be. At one time the ship would be surging away across what seemed to be a lake, with dull banks of snow all around, at another she would plunge headforemost into whirling clouds of mist, so thick that the leaden sea alongside could barely be seen; heaving as though it were something alive, and the fog was smothering it.