t the wheel and, coughing the raw,
damp fog out of his throat, he shouted hoarsely to Topper:

"Better get our fog-horn goin', mate."

"Aye, aye, Skipper. It's in your cabin, ain't it?"

"Yes, in the first locker."

The mate descended the companion-steps, with a mysterious smile on his
face, and his dexter optic closed. The casual observer might have
thought that Mr. Topper was actually indulging in a wink.

After a time, he reappeared on deck, walked aft, and said:

"Fog-horn don't seem nowheres about, Skipper. Thought you always kept
her in your charge."

Cap'n Pigg whisked the wheel round just in time to escape a tug, fussing
up-stream, and feeling her way through the fog at half-speed, and then
he grunted sourly:

"So I do. What the d--delay in findin' it is, I can't understand. 'Ere,
ketch 'old o' the spokes, and I'll go; always got to do everything
myself on this old tank, seems to me."

And thus grumbling, Cap'n Pigg went below--not altogether unwillingly,
as, being a man who understood the importance of economizing time, he
combined his search for the fog-horn with the quenching of a highly
useful thirst. But when he came on deck again, wiping his mouth with the
back of his hand, he was unaccompanied by the fog-horn.

"Where the blamed thing's got to, I dunno, more'n the dead. I see it
there, myself, not two days ago, but it ain't nowheres to be found now."

"Rather orkard, Skipper, ain't it, in all this maze o' shippin'?"
returned Mr. Topper with a half turn at the wheel.

"Yes, I don't more'n 'arf like it," returned the Cap'n uneasily. "My
nerves arn't quite what they was. An' a fog's a thing as I never could
abide."

On glided the _Saucy Sally_, almost the only one on the great water way
which spoke not, in the midst of a babel of confusing sounds. Syrens
whooped, steam whistles shrieked hoarsely; the raucous voices of
fog-horns proclaimed the whereabouts of scores of craft, passing up and
down the river; but the trim-built barge slid noiselessly along,
ghost-like, in the dun-colored "smother," giving no intimation of her
proximity.

Then it was that Mr. Bob Topper's moment for action arrived. In casual
tones, he observed to the Skipper:

"Pity, we ain't got something as'll make a sound o' some kind, so's to
let people know as we 're a-comin'."

Cap'n Pigg said nothing: but the anxiety deepened perceptibly in his
face.

"Where the blank blank are yer comin' to?" roared the voice of anoth