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Away to the north it had deepened almost into a fog, a low-lying and luminous mist like the white pall which often shrouds the sea on a calm bright day in summer. The sky was losing its burnished copper hue and becoming blue again, and, on the false horizon supplied by the crest of the fog-bank, stood a brilliantly vivid panorama.
Little by little, even as the steady boom of the steamer's whistle came echoing in, the front of the fog-bank thinned and lifted, showing the white-capped waves rolling beneath. Suddenly a strong shift of wind descended from the cañon between two of the many mountain-peaks which line the bay, and broke the fog into long ribbons of white vapor.
It faded just when they had most need of it when the last cliffs of France went suddenly out of sight in a thick fog-bank of nothingness; and the cold, empty void, through which the steamer crept cautiously, roaring from minute to minute like a leviathan in pain, seemed all that the universe henceforth had to offer them.
During the two days I had been below, the weather was much the same that it had been, head winds, and snow and rain; or, if the wind came fair, too foggy, and the ice too thick, to run. At the end of the third day the ice was very thick; a complete fog-bank covered the ship.
As Viney had said, the wind came through the fog, driving the boat in unseen fashion, while the sail hung almost limp. There was a little eddy of oily water at the stern; they were slipping, sliding through the fog-bank, back to the earth. "Back to life," Falkner hummed, "back; back, to the land, to the world!" The fog clung in Margaret's hair, and dimmed her eyes.
As the first lieutenant of the "Constitution" was walking the quarter-deck, he heard a young midshipman among the prisoners suddenly exclaim, "There's a large ship in the offing." The lieutenant peered about on every side, but could see nothing, until, looking upward, he saw the top-gallant sails of a large ship moving along above the fog-bank. Capt.
It turned out that a small fog-bank had taken the form of a gray steamer moving swiftly over the water, and had been fiercely cannonaded by the whole Federal fleet. This occurrence gave the Confederates an idea; and they began sending out dummies to engage the fleet, while the true blockade-runners would slip out unobserved in the excitement.
We therefore hoped that we should be able to keep in advance for an hour or two, when we might perhaps reach the land ahead. But this hope was suddenly crushed by the supposed land, not long after, rising up into the sky, thus proving itself to be a fog-bank! A bitter feeling of disappointment filled each heart, and was expressed on each countenance, as we beheld this termination to our hopes.
There have been times when I have hesitated about getting my anchors for sea, when the barometer was falling, the wind in, and a fog-bank on the horizon but now, years after, I still recall my reluctance to face that ordeal. But like most things, the obstacles were largely in one's own mind, and the kindness which we received left me entirely overwhelmed.
The breeze freshened, and, as was to be expected, blew the fog-bank away before sunset. Sep Marvin had been an unwilling student all day. Like many of his cloth and generation, Parson Marvin pinned all his faith on education. "Give a boy a good education," he said, a hundred times. "Make a gentleman of him, and you have done your duty by him."
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