It was the voice of Mr. Candy, the second mate, and a moment after his step could be heard in the plank overhead as he walked to the bulwark rail.
The captain sprang up and went on deck; Hardy continued to eat his supper, and talked to the little boy. It was his watch below, and he was too old a shell to quit the meal until all hands should be summoned, which a quiet fog, however dense, topped by a reassuring barometer, was not very likely to occasion.
The fog, nevertheless, had rolled down quickly through the gloom of the early night on the gust of the black breeze, still nor'west. Black it was. Nothing was visible of the ship but a few spokes of light, like the arrested darting of meteoric fibres spiking from the glass on the skylight in a fiery arch. When the darkness of the night dyes the darkness of fog then the universal blackness is so deep that you might think the solid globe had vanished, and that you hung in the centre of space, death-dark and silent, moonless and starless, chaotic with dumb masses of the deep electric dye.
This night the fancy would have been easily inspired by the hush upon the sea, for the sails floated stirless; there was not wind enough to brush the salt curve into the expiring hiss of foam, and the invisible swell so lightly swayed the eclipsed fabric that only now and again did you catch the sad note of the sea, sobbing along the bends, and hiddenly passing away into the short wake in sighs and tones of weeping.
"Mr. Candy!" called the captain.
"Sir!" came the answer out of the soft invisibility in which the bulwarks abreast were buried.
They came together in the spokes of radiance about the skylight.
"Clew up all three royals and furl them. Let go all three topgallant halliards; the sails may hang. Haul up the mainsail; brail in the mizzen, and down flying and outer jibs, topmast and topgallant staysails, but leave the sails unfurled. See that your side-lights are burning brightly, and bend your sharpest ear over the water for a noise. Was anything in sight before this smother rolled down?"
"I saw nothing, sir. It was a bit thick before the fog came along, and then it came in a wall."