d, and what could fog and sand be
doing there.

"Before we knew it, we went into the fog, which proved to be a big
dense bank of this same sand, and it rained down on us from every side.
Ventilators were quickly brought to their places, and later even the
hatches were battened down. The dust became suffocating, and the men at
times had all they could do to keep from choking. What the stuff was we
could not at first conjecture, or rather, we didn't have much time to
speculate on it, for we had to get our ship in shape to withstand we
hardly knew what.

"At first we thought that the sand must have been blown from shore. Then
we decided that if the Captain's figures were right we wouldn't be near
enough to shore to have sand blow on us, and as we had just cleared
Barbados, we knew that the Captain's figures had to be right.

"Just as the storm of sand was at its height, Fourth Engineer Wild was
nearly suffocated by it, but was easily revived. About this time it
became so dark that we found it necessary to start up the electric
lights, and it was not until after we got clear from the fog that
we turned the current off. In the meantime they had burned from nine
o'clock in the morning until after two in the afternoon.

THE ENGINE BECAME CHOKED

"Then there was another anxious moment shortly after nine o'clock. Third
Engineer Rennie had been running the donkey engine, when suddenly it
choked, and when he finally got it clear from the sand or ashes, he
found the valves were all cut out, and then it was we discovered that
it was not sand, but some sort of a composition that seemed to cut steel
like emery. Then came the danger that it would get into the valves of
the engine and cut them out, and for several moments all hands scurried
about and helped make the engine room tight, and even then the ash
drifted in and kept all the engine room force wiping the engines clear
of it.

"Toward three o'clock in the afternoon of Friday we were practically
clear of the sand, but at eleven o'clock that night we ran into a second
bank of it, though not as bad as the first. We made some experiments,
and found the stuff was superior to emery dust. It cut deeper and
quicker, and only about half as much was required to do the work. We
made up our minds we would keep what came on board, as it was better
than the emery dust and much cheaper, so we gathered it up.

"That night there were more of the same electric phenomena toward
Martini