“Well, that is pretty cheery,” uttered Wally. “However, it’s all experience.”
“Confirmed optimists like you ought to be sat on three times a day!” Jim said. “A little of this sort of experience goes a long way—and doesn’t make up for missing the sunrise on Table Mountain.”
“Never mind—it will give you something to talk of for ever so long,” Wally answered. “You can’t possibly talk about sunrises to a girl you’re dancing with, but you can make awfully good yarns out of a fog like this. Cheer up, Jimmy; you’ll be ever so much more interesting in the future!”
“I’m not proposing to do much dancing, or talking either,” said Jim, laughing. “So the prospect doesn’t console me. At the moment, it would console me more to batter someone—preferably you. Norah, you’re cold!”
“I know I am,” said Norah, shivering. “This old fog gets into one’s very bones. Doesn’t it make you homesick now to think of old Billabong, and the sunlight out on the Far Plain!”
“And a bogged bullock, with a note like that fog-horn!” retorted Wally. “It’s too cold to stand still, I think—let’s walk.”
They walked, arm in arm, with Norah between them, finding it necessary to talk loudly to avoid collisions in the fog, as their rubber-soled shoes made no sound on the deck. In the fore part of the ship a few bedraggled sea-birds had floundered into the rigging, and now sat there, crouched and miserable, afraid to set off again into the white horror all round them. A magpie, brought from Australia, which ordinarily lived in the bow and made cheerful remarks to the whole ship, was crouched in a corner of its cage, dismally squawking, while its deadly enemy, a sulphur-crested cockatoo with which it was on most disrespectful terms, had no spirit left to insult it, but drooped on its perch. The ship seemed dead; none of the usual cheery bustle was going on, since all possible tasks were discontinued to leave the crew free to watch. Weary watching it was, straining overside in dread of seeing a dark hull loom out of the fog, knowing that it would then, in all probability, be too late to avert disaster.
A monotonous voice led them to the side of the ship. A sailor was standing on a tiny platform over the rail, secured by a leather band round his body. He leaned well out, heaving the lead with a practised hand, his voice chanting the depth tonelessly—“By the deep—by the mark!” Seen in the mist that clung in beads to his blue guernsey and tarry trousers he seemed unnaturally large—and the dreary call was more depressing than the ceaseless hoot of the fog-horn.
They gave up the deck at last, and went below, where the passengers were gathered in the lounges and smoking-rooms, trying to make the best of the weary day. The fog was everywhere; it crept through every open doorway and port-hole, and filled cabins and alleyways, so that jocund humourists went along hooting, for fear of being run down. Every electric light was on, as though it were midnight; they gleamed through the hanging mist, globes of dingy yellow. Babies howled dismally—sleepy and heavy, but kept awake by the incessant fog-horn; their mothers, pale and anxious, tried vainly to soothe them. Norah secured her own especial baby, bore him off to her cabin, and tucked him under her grey ’possum rug; and then, to her own immense surprise, fell asleep beside him, and slumbered peacefully until the luncheon gong came into competition with the siren, and the baby woke and demanded nourishment.
There was no sign of the fog lifting. They lunched in silence; conversation was impossible, and the stewards, flitting about in the misty gloom, spoke in sepulchral whispers. No officers were visible; the empty chairs at each table bore mute witness to the urgency of their watch. The doctor made a valiant effort to maintain cheerfulness, and succeeded in dispelling a fraction of the depression in his particular corner. But even the doctor was incapable of spreading himself over an entire saloon, and his efforts to be, as he pathetically said, a sunbeam, were local and not general. Nobody seemed happy, and the meal was finished in half the usual time.