"Rip me!" exclaimed Master Kingswell, "but here is caution that smells remarkably like cowardice." Fretfully sighing, he produced his pipe, tobacco, and tinder-box. Soon the fragrant smoke was mingling with the fog. The young commander leaned back, taking his comfort where he could, like the courageous gentleman that he was. The habit of burning Virginian tobacco was an expensive one, confined to the wealthy and the adventurous. The seamen, who, of course, had not yet acquired it, watched their captain with open interest. When a puff was blown through the nostrils, or sent aloft in a series of rings, they nudged one another, like children at a show. By this time the walls of fog had made of the Pelican a tiny, lost world by itself. Suddenly Ouenwa raised his hand. "Sh!" he whispered. Kingswell removed the pipe-stem from his mouth, and inclined his head toward the hidden river and valley. All strained their ears, to wrest some sound from the surrounding gray other than the lapping of the tide along the unseen land-wash. But they could hear nothing.
"Village," whispered Ouenwa, pointing landward.
"But we saw no signs of a village," protested Kingswell, gently.
"Village," repeated the lad. "Ouenwa hear. Ouenwa smell."
Immediately the four Englishmen began to sniff the fog, like hounds taking a scent on the wind. But their nostrils were not the nostrils of either hounds or Beothics. They sniffed to no purpose. They shook their heads. Kingswell wagged a chiding finger at their keen-nosed companion. The boy read the inference of the gesture, and flushed indignantly.
"Village," he whispered, shrilly. "Village, village, village."
Kingswell looked distressed. The sailors grinned leniently at the determined boy. They had great faith in their own noses, had those mariners of Bristol and thereabouts. Ouenwa, frowning a little, sank into a moody contemplation of the fog.
"This is dull," exclaimed Kingswell, after a half-hour of silence. "Tom, pipe us a stave, like a good lad."
The boatswain scratched his head reflectively. Presently he cleared his throat with energy.
"Me voice be a bit husky, sir, to what it once were," he murmured, "but I'll do me best—an' no sailorman can say fairer nor that."