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Updated: May 28, 2025
Ada talked almost the whole time in a sprightly manner, which gave Leander no opportunity of introducing the subject of his engagement, and this continued until they had reached a small battlemented platform on some rising ground; below were the black masses of trees, with a faint fringe of light here and there; beyond lay the Thames, in which red and white reflections quivered, and from whose distant bends and reaches came the dull roar of fog-horns and the pantings of tugs.
"'The Monk! We cried this out together; for that we had passed the Monk without sighting her or catching sound of her fog-horns was a thing incredible. "'But so it is, said she. 'We have passed the Monk; passed it close. Don't I know the Pope's Head on Lesser Teague? Now hard-a-port still for we've the Gunnel Dogs somewhere there to leeward, and they're worse almost than Hell-deeps.
The night was filled with fog-horns, whistles, bells, and the throb of engines, but we never were near enough to hail the vessels from which the sounds came, and when we rowed toward them they invariably sank into silence. After two hours Stumps and Kinney insisted on taking a turn at the oars, and Lady Moya moved to the bow.
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.
But the fog continued, and it was not port they were looking for now; it was help, food: they were working for life, not salvage; and, wasting no steam, they listened for whistles or fog-horns, but heard none near enough to be answered by their weak voices.
Memory returned to him like a blow, and he sat up in bed. Then slowly, one by one, he again went through all the arguments which had wrung his heart on the jetty while the fog-horns were bellowing. The more he thought the less he doubted. He felt himself dragged along by his logic to the inevitable certainty, as by a clutching, strangling hand. He was thirsty and hot, his heart beat wildly.
Where was he now, on this rainy night? On the seas? At the thought she heard again the fog-horns and the sirens. Her sleep was fitful. Many times she went over again her talk with Howard, and she surprised herself by wondering what he had thought and felt since her departure.
Most objectionable sounds came from the room constantly: the Gang's songs, suggestive laughter, imitations of cats and fowls and fog-horns. These noises were less ingenious, however, than the devices of the Gang for getting rid of tobacco-smoke, such as blowing the smoke up the stove. Carl was happy. In this room he encouraged stammering Genie Linderbeck to become adaptable.
Oh, if he might but go away, now at once, never mind whither, and never come back, never write, never let any one know what had become of him! But no, he must go home home to his father's house, and go to bed. He would not. Come what might he would not go in; he would stay there till daybreak. He liked the roar of the fog-horns.
But the factory-syren voice of the modern "boomster" touches whole sections of the reading public no more than fog-horns going down Channel. One would as soon think of Skinner's Soap for one's library as So-and-so's Hundred Thousand Copy Success.
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