a whole-voiced hail
be but dimly heard.

Lifting lazily over the long swell, under easy canvas, we sailed,
unseeing and unseen. Now and on, the hand fog-trumpet rasped out a
signal of our sailing, a faint, half-stifled note to pit against the
deep reverberation of a liner's siren that seemed, at every blast, to
be drawing nearer and nearer.

The Old Man was on the poop, anxiously peering into the void, though
keenest eyes could serve no purpose. Bare-headed, that he might the
better hear, he stepped from rail to rail--listening, sniffing,
striving, with every other sense acute, to work through the fog-banks
that had robbed him of his sight. We were in evil case. A dense fog
in Channel, full in the track of shipping--a weak wind for working
ship. Small wonder that every whisper, every creak of block or parrel,
caused him to jump to the compass--a steering order all but spoken.

"Where d'ye mark that, now?" he cried, as again the liner's siren
sounded out.

"Where d'ye mark ... d'ye mark ... mark?" The word was passed forward
from mouth to mouth, in voices faint and muffled.

"About four points on th' port bow, Sir!" The cry sounded far and
distant, like a hail from a passing ship, though the Mate was but
shouting from the bows.

"Aye, aye! Stan' by t' hand that foresheet! Keep the foghorn goin'!"

"... Foresheet ... 'sheet ... th' fog'orn ... goin'!" The invisible
choir on the main-deck repeated the orders.

Again the deep bellow from the steamer, now perilously close--the
futile rasp of our horn in answer.

Suddenly an alarmed cry: "O Chris'! She's into us! ... The bell,
you! The bell! ..." A loud clanging of the forward bell, a united
shout from our crew, patter of feet as they run aft, the Mate shouting:
"Down hellum, Sir--down hellum, f'r God's sake!"

"Hard down helm! Le' go foresheet!" answered to the Mate's cry, the
Old Man himself wrenching desperately at the spokes of the wheel.
Sharp ring of a metal sheave, hiss of a running rope, clank and throb
of engines, thrashing of sails coming hard to the mast, shouts!

Out of the mist a huge shadowy hull ranges alongside, the wash from her
sheering cutwater hissing and spluttering on our broadside.

Three quick, furious blasts of a siren, unintelligible shouts from the
steamer's bridge, a churning of propellers; foam; a waft of black
smoke--then silence, the white, clammy veil again about us, and only
the muffled throb of the liner's rever