“What can I do, sir? We must make up for time lost through the fault of that drunkard of a helmsman.”
“True, Captain Clubin.”
“I am anxious to arrive. It is foggy enough by day: it would be rather too much at night.”
The Guernsey man rejoined his St. Malo fellow-passengers, and remarked:
“We have an excellent captain.”
At intervals, great waves of mist bore down heavily upon them, and blotted out the sun; which again issued out of them pale and sickly. The little that could be seen of the heavens resembled the long strips of painted sky, dirty and smeared with oil, among the old scenery of a theatre.
The Durande passed close to a cutter which had cast anchor for safety. It was the Shealtiel of Guernsey. The master of the cutter remarked the high speed of the steam-vessel. It struck him also, that she was not in her exact course. She seemed to him to bear to westward too much. The apparition of this vessel under full steam in the fog surprised him.
Towards two o’clock the weather had become so thick that the captain was obliged to leave the bridge, and plant himself near the steersman. The sun had vanished, and all was fog. A sort of ashy darkness surrounded the ship. They were navigating in a pale shroud. They could see neither sky nor water.
There was not a breath of wind.