Finally, after much speculation as to the delay, the tardy boat arrived, and a steady stream of people flowed by the three gangways to the upper and lower decks. The last straggler was on board and the gangplank lifted, reminding me of the stories I had read of raising the drawbridge across the moat of some ancient feudal castle, and leaving the mole with its imitation portcullis behind we steamed out into the bay. The sun shone from a cloudless sky, and there was not enough wind to straighten out the pennant from the masthead.
We were hardly opposite Yerba Buena Island, however, when we ran into a fog that completely engulfed us. To plunge from bright sunlight into a blanket of gray mist so dense that one cannot see fifty feet in any direction, has just enough spice of danger about it to make it interesting. It was like being cut off from the world, with nothing in sight but this clinging curtain enveloping one like a damp cloud, settling like frost on everything it touches, and glittering like diamond dust.
An undercurrent of anxiety pervaded the ship, for we were running with no landmark to guide us, and with only the captain's knowledge of the bay and the tides to bring us safely through.
Passengers crowded to the rails, straining their eyes into the dense smother, while whistles were blowing on all sides. The shrill shriek of the government tug, the hoarse bellow of the ocean liner, and the fog whistle on Yerba Buena Island, all joined in a strident warning, sending their intermittent blast over the water.
Our engines were slowed down to half-speed, or just enough to give her steerage way, while the anxious captain peered from the wheelhouse with one hand grasping the signal cord, ready for any emergency.
The sea gulls that in clear weather follow the boats back and forth across the bay by the hundreds, were entirely absent, except for one sturdy bird that, evidently bewildered, had lost its way in the fog, and had alighted on the flagpole as if for protection.
Suddenly across our bows a darker spot appeared, which gradually assumed shape, and a Southern Pacific boat loomed like a specter from the smother of fog. The size was greatly enlarged as seen through the veil of mist, and the dense smoke that poured from her funnel settled around her like a pall, adding greatly to its weird appearance.
Our captain was on the watch for just such an occurrence, and three short, sharp blasts from our whistle notified the oncoming boat that we had stopped our engines. But the tide was running strong, and we drew closer and closer together, until we involuntarily held our breath, and nerves were strung to the highest tension. The great screws churned the water into foam as we slowly backed away from each other, like gladiators testing each other's strength, and the Southern Pacific boat vanished into the fog like a ghost, swallowed up, as if wiped from the face of the waters, sending back its deep bellowing whistle as if bidding an angry defiance to the elements.
Slowly we moved forward, feeling every inch of the way, like one groping in the dark, passing boat after boat without accident. One, a three-masted schooner, loaded with lumber, came so near that we could toss a stone on board, and a woman who stood in the bow waved a large tin horn at us, and then applied herself to blowing it most industriously.