e village off which she
lay.

Oh, how cosy and bright the little cabin looked when I settled down for
a nondescript meal, half-tea, half-dinner, about an hour later!

The lamp, hung from the deck above, gave a mellow light, the kettle sang
on the stove, and the fresh-caught whiting were simply delicious (I
pride myself on my cooking on these occasions), whilst London, work, and
my fellow-beings seemed far away in some other sphere.

This feeling of isolation was considerably increased later on, when,
after a hearty meal and a dip into a story, I put my head out of the
hatch to take a customary "last look round" before turning in.

I suppose it was about 10 p.m.; there was no moon, and I never remember
a denser fog. At first, after the lighted cabin, I could distinguish
absolutely nothing, except where the beam of light from the cabin lamp
struggled past me through the open hatch into a white thickness which I
can only liken to vaporous cotton-wool.

Even when my eyes got a little accustomed to the change from light to
darkness, I could only just make out the mizzen-mast astern and the
lower part of the main-mast forward; beyond these was nothing but
impenetrable thickness.

Not a sound reached me, except the mournful muffled hooting of a
steamer's syren at intervals; no doubt some wretched collier, nosing her
way at half-speed through the fog, in momentary terror of collision.

I don't think I ever felt so cut off from humanity in my life as in that
tiny yacht, surrounded as I was by impenetrable density above and
around, and the deep rushing tide below in a lonely water-way.

No doubt this eerie feeling of loneliness had a great deal to do with my
sensations later on, which, on looking back in after-days, have often
struck me as being more acute and nervous than they had any right to be.

Be that as it may, I was not nervous when I closed the hatch and "turned
in," for I recollect congratulating myself that I was in a safe
anchorage, out of the way of traffic, and not on board the steamer which
I had heard so mournfully making known her whereabouts in the open sea.

I think my "nerves" had their first real unsettling about half an hour
afterwards, just as I was sinking off into a peaceful, profound slumber,
for it seemed to me that I had been roused by a sound like a scream of
pain or fear, coming muffled and distant through the fog; but from what
direction, whether up or down the river, or from the shore, I