For the first time in his life, as the Clover lay on the slow swell of the sea that he might listen, Frank Hallock felt a thrill of fear. What could it mean? Where was Captain Green? Could he have gone off and left him out there all alone?
Frank called and listened, and called again until his voice grew dull and husky with shouting, and the only sound that seemed to respond was that dreadful toll, whether of his own heart beating or of fog-bell, he could not tell.
Meanwhile Captain Green, becoming thoroughly alarmed at the non-appearance of the Clover, pulled up his own anchor and began to row in the direction Frank’s boat had lain. After rowing around for awhile, he concluded to let his boat drift with the tide, knowing that in time it would take him toward the land. It so happened that the sound of water, swashing on the stones of the island, assailed his hearing, and, after many attempts, he succeeded in following the sound to its source.
Having landed on the island, he immediately gave the alarm, and, after having secured a boat and an oarsman, set forth in search of Frank, with a compass as guide and the dinner-horn as trumpet.
They rowed north and south and east and west, the Captain acting as trumpeter, and the only answer obtained from all their efforts was one shrill steam-whistle as a passing steamboat made haste to change its course to get out of the way of a supposed sailing vessel.
During all this time Frank Hallock was pulling out to sea, firmly believing that he was making for the Connecticut coast. He heard neither horn nor call nor whistle, as he steadily moved on his course. Meanwhile the afternoon had been passing and the early evening was drawing near. To Frank the fog seemed to be deepening, but it was the deepening of darkness.
Many times he laid down his oars and set his ears to listen with an intentness that made him feel as though he was all ears. He imagined many sounds, but heard nothing except the splash of his own boat’s bow on the sullen sea; then he would take up his oars, and, counting a hundred strokes, lay them down and listen once again; but each and every time with the same sickening failure to hear sound of helping man.
It was not until the darkness grew to night, and night unrelieved by light or star, that Frank became thoroughly alarmed—and that he felt to the full the dulling drench of the fog. It seemed to sink down through the crown of his cap and suffuse hair and brain; it seemed to be swept through him from shoulder to shoulder, and his very feet turned limp and his knees shook as he arose and tried to stand for a moment, to relieve the cramp that had settled down upon them.
“O that it would rain or blow or do anything but fog on like this,” he thought. “I wonder what Kate would do out here now, to-night!” Nevertheless, Frank could not help wishing, far down in his heart, that Kate was with him out there, and he began to be very sorry that she was not, for somehow a savor of comfort seemed always to be around Kate.
Whatever else came of the fog, loss of appetite did not, and Frank began to feel all the beseeching of hunger.