The ports were closed and the gun deck was dark and dismal. The fog oozed in through every crack and cranny, and all was very unpleasant.
Of a sudden there was a sharp reverberation that sounded so much like the report of a big gun that all hands jumped.
The course of the ship was changed, and the jingle bell sounded. The "Yankee" forged on at full speed in the direction from which the sound had come.
We all stood in expectant attitudes, listening for another report. We had about made up our minds that our ears had deceived us, when another explosion, louder and nearer than the first, reached us.
On we rushed—toward what we knew not—through a fog so thick that the water could be seen but dimly from the spar deck.
The suspense was hard to bear, and the desire to do something almost irresistible. The men unconsciously took their regular stations for action, the guns' crews gathered round their guns, the powder divisions in the neighborhood of the ammunition hoists.
"I wish Potter was here," said "Stump." "I rather think he would be white around the gills. This sort of business would give him a bad case of 'cold feet.'"
"Oh, he had 'cold feet' a few days after we left New York, and wrote to his friends to get his discharge," said "Bill." "Got it and quit two weeks after we left New York, the duffer," added "Hay."
The "Yankee" still steamed on into the bank of fog.
"Cupid," the ship's bugler, began to play the call for general quarters, but was stopped by a sharp command from the bridge.