Lost in the Fog

by James De Mille

No sooner had he found out this than he tried to tear off one of the seats of the boat, in the hope of using this as a paddle. But the seats were too firmly fixed to be loosened by his hands, and, after a few frantic but ineffectual efforts, he gave up the attempt.

But he could not so quickly give up his efforts to save himself. There was the box of biscuit yet. Taking his knife from his pocket, he succeeded in detaching the cover of the box, and then, using this as a paddle, he sought with frantic efforts to force the boat nearer to the shore. But the tide was running very swiftly, and the cover was only a small bit of board, so that his efforts seemed to have but little result. He did indeed succeed in turning the boat's head around; but this act, which was not accomplished without the severest labor, did not seem to bring her nearer to the shore to any perceptible extent. What he sought to do was to achieve some definite motion to the boat, which might drag her out of the grasp of the swift current; but that was the very thing which he could not do, for so strong was that grasp, and so swift was that current, that even an oar would have scarcely accomplished what he wished. The bit of board, small, and thin, and frail, and wielded with great difficulty and at a fearful disadvantage, was almost useless.

But, though he saw that he was accomplishing little or nothing, he could not bring himself to give up this work. It seemed his only hope; and so he labored on, sometimes working with both hands at the board, sometimes plying his frail paddle with one hand, and using the other hand at a vain endeavor to paddle in the water. In his desperation he kept on, and thought that if he gained ever so little, still, by keeping hard at work, the little that he gained might finally tell upon the direction of the boat—at any rate, so long as it might be in the river. He knew that the river ran for some miles yet, and that some time still remained before he would reach the bay.

Thus Tom toiled on, half despairing, and nearly fainting with his frenzied exertion, yet still refusing to give up, but plying his frail paddle until his nerveless arms seemed like weights of lead, and could scarce carry the board through the water. But the result, which at the outset, and in the very freshness of his strength, had been but trifling, grew less and less against the advance of his own weakness and the force of that tremendous tide, until at last his feeble exertions ceased to have any appreciable effect whatever.

There was no moon, but it was light enough for him to see the shores—to see that he was in the very centre of that rapid current, and to perceive that he was being borne past those dim shores with fearful velocity. The sight filled him with despair, but his arms gained a fresh energy, from time to time, out of the very desperation of his soul. He was one of those natures which are too obstinate to give up even in the presence of despair itself; and which, even when hope is dead, still forces hope to linger, and struggles on while a particle of life or of strength remains. So, as he toiled on, and fought on, against this fate which had suddenly fixed itself upon him, he saw the shores on either side recede, and knew that every passing moment was bearing him on to a wide, a cruel, and a perilous sea. He took one hasty glance behind him, and saw what he knew to be the mouth of the river close at hand; and beyond this a waste of waters was hidden in the gloom of night. The sight lent new energy to his fainting limbs. He called aloud for help. Shriek after shriek burst from him, and rang wildly, piercingly, thrillingly upon the air of night. But those despairing shrieks came to no human ear, and met with no response. They died away upon the wind and the waters; and the fierce tide, with swifter flow, bore him onward.

The last headland swept past him; the river and the river bank were now lost to him. Around him the expanse of water grew darker, and broader, and more terrible. Above him the stars glimmered more faintly from the sky. But the very habit of exertion still remained, and his faint plunges still dipped the little board into the water; and a vague idea of saving himself was still uppermost in his mind. Deep down in that stout heart of his was a desperate resolution never to give up while strength lasted; and well he sustained that determination. Over him the mist came floating, borne along by the wind which sighed around him; and that mist gradually overspread the scene upon which his straining eyes were fastened. It shut out the overhanging sky. It extinguished the glimmering stars. It threw a veil over the receding shores. It drew its folds around him closer and closer, until at last everything was hidden from view. Closer and still closer came the mist, and thicker and ever thicker grew its dense folds, until at last even the water, into which he still thrust his frail paddle, was invisible. At length his strength failed utterly. His hands refused any longer to perform their duty. The strong, indomitable will remained, but the power of performing the dictates of that will was gone. He fell back upon the sail that lay in the bottom of the boat, and the board fell from his hands.

And now there gathered around the prostrate figure of the lost boy all the terrors of thickest darkness. The fog came, together with the night, shrouding all things from view, and he was floating over a wide sea, with an impenetrable wall of thickest darkness closing him in on all sides.

As he thus lay there helpless, he had leisure to reflect for the first time upon the full bitterness of his situation. Adrift in the fog, and in the night, and borne onward swiftly down into the Bay of Fundy—that was his position. And what could he do? That was the one question which he could not answer. Giving way now to the rush of despair, he lay for some time motionless, feeling the rocking of the waves, and the breath of the wind, and the chill damp of the fog, yet unable to do anything against these enemies. For nearly an hour he lay thus inactive, and at the end of that time his lost energies began to return. He rose and looked around. The scene had not changed at all; in fact, there was no scene to change. There was nothing but black darkness all around. Suddenly something knocked against the boat. He reached out his hand, and touched a piece of wood, which the next instant slipped from his grasp. But the disappointment was not without its alleviation, for he thought that he might come across some bits of drift wood, with which he could do something, perhaps, for his escape. And so buoyant was his soul, and so obstinate his courage, that this little incident of itself served to revive his faculties. He went to the stern of the boat, and sitting there, he tried to think upon what might be best to be done.

What could be done in such a situation? He could swim, but of what avail was that? In what direction could he swim, or what progress could he make, with such a tide? As to paddling, he thought of that no more; paddling was exhausted, and his board was useless. Nothing remained, apparently, but inaction. Inaction was indeed hard, and it was the worst condition in which he could be placed, for in such a state the mind always preys upon itself; in such a state trouble is always magnified, and the slow time passes more slowly. Yet to this inaction he found himself doomed.

He floated on now for hours, motionless and filled with despair, listening to the dash of the waves, which were the only sounds that came to his ears. And so it came to pass, in process of time, that by incessant attention to these monotonous sounds, they ceased to be altogether monotonous, but seemed to assume various cadences and intonations. His sharpened ears learned at last to distinguish between the dash of large waves and the plash of small ones, the sighing of the wind, the pressure of the waters against the boat's bows, and the ripple of eddies under its stern. Worn out by excitement and fatigue, he lay motionless, listening to sounds like these, and taking in them a mournful interest, when suddenly, in the midst of them, his ears caught a different cadence. It was a long, measured sound, not an unfamiliar one, but one which he had often heard—the gathering sound which breaks out, rising and accumulating upon the ear, as the long line of surf falls upon some rocky shore. He knew at once what this was, and understood by it that he was near some shore; but what shore it might be he could not know. The sound came up from his right, and therefore might be the New Brunswick coast, if the boat had preserved its proper position. But the position of the boat had been constantly changing as she drifted along, so that it was impossible to tell whether he was drifting stern foremost or bow foremost. The water moved as the boat moved, and there was no means by which to judge. He listened to the surf, therefore, but made no attempt to draw nearer to it. He now knew perfectly well that with his present resources no efforts of his could avail anything, and that his only course would be to wait. Besides, this shore, whatever it was, must be very different, he thought, from the banks of the Petitcodiac. It was, as he thought, an iron-bound shore. And the surf which he heard broke in thunder a mile away, at the foot of giant precipices, which could only offer death to the hapless wretch who might be thrown among them. He lay, therefore, inactive, listening to this rolling surf for hours. At first it grew gradually louder, as though he was approaching it; but afterwards it grew fainter quite as gradually, until at length it could no longer be heard.