he
deck, exchanged a few words with the officer, and returned. Miss Keene,
who had felt a sense of relief, nevertheless questioned his face as he
again stood beside her. But he had recovered his beaming cheerfulness.
"It's nothing to alarm you," he said, answering her glance, "but it may
mean delay if we can't get out of it. You don't mind that, I know."

"No," replied the young girl, smiling. "Besides, it would be a new
experience. We've had winds and calms--we only want fog now to complete
our adventures. Unless it's going to make everybody cross," she
continued, with a mischievous glance at Brace.

"You'll find it won't improve the temper of the officers," said Crosby,
who had joined the group. "There's nothing sailors hate more than a fog.
They can go to sleep in a hurricane between the rolls of a ship, but a
fog keeps them awake. It's the one thing they can't shirk. There's the
skipper tumbled up, too! The old man looks wrathy, don't he? But it's no
use now; we're going slap into it, and the wind's failing!"

It was true. In the last few moments all that vast glistening surface of
metallic blue which stretched so far to windward appeared to be slowly
eaten away as if by some dull, corroding acid; the distant horizon line
of sea and sky was still distinct and sharply cut, but the whole water
between them had grown gray, as if some invisible shadow had passed in
mid-air across it. The actual fog bank had suddenly lost its resemblance
to the shore, had lifted as a curtain, and now seemed suspended over the
ship. Gradually it descended; the top-gallant and top-sails were lost
in this mysterious vapor, yet the horizon line still glimmered faintly.
Then another mist seemed to rise from the sea and meet it; in another
instant the deck whereon they stood shrank to the appearance of a
raft adrift in a faint gray sea. With the complete obliteration of all
circumambient space, the wind fell. Their isolation was complete.

It was notable that the first and most peculiar effect of this misty
environment was the absolute silence. The empty, invisible sails above
did not flap; the sheets and halyards hung limp; even the faint creaking
of an unseen block overhead was so startling as to draw every eye
upwards. Muffled orders from viewless figures forward were obeyed by
phantoms that moved noiselessly through the gray sea that seemed to have
invaded the deck. Even the passengers spoke in whispers, or held their
breath, in passive