an."

They tumbled out and redded up the place in a hurry, folding away the
rugs and linen--which Bill, with his grimed fingers, did not dare to
touch--and stowing them as he directed. A damp fog permeated the cabin.
Even the engine-room (Bill reported) was full of it, and how the mate
had brought her along through it and picked up Avonmouth was a marvel.

"Single-'anded too, as you may say. 'E's a world's wonder, that man."

The children too thought it marvellous when they reached the deck and
gazed about them. They could spy no shore, not so much as a blur to
indicate it, but were wrapped wholly in a grey fog; and down over the
steamer's tall sides (for she was returning light after delivering a
cargo of Welsh coal) they stared upon nothing but muddy water crawling
beneath the fog.

They heard the mate's voice calling from the bridge, and the fog seemed
to remove both bridge and voice to an immeasurable height above them.

It was just possible to descry the length of the ship, and they saw two
figures bestir themselves forward. A voice answered, "Aye, aye, sir!"
but thickly and as if muffled by cotton wool. One of the two men came
running, halted amidships, lifted out a panel of the bulwarks, set in a
slide between two white-painted stanchions, and let down an
accommodation ladder.

"_Evan Evans_, ahoy!" came a voice from the fog.

"Ahoy, sir!" sang out the mate's voice high overhead, and between two
blasts of the whistle, and just at this moment a speck--a small blur--
hove out of the grey on the port side. It was the skipper arriving in a
shore boat.

The children dodged behind a deck-house as he came up the ladder--a thin
little man habited much like a Nonconformist minister, and wearing--of
all amazing head-gear--a top-hat, the brim of which shed moisture in a
steady trickle. A grey plaid shawl swathed his shoulders, and the
fringe of this dripped too, as he gained the deck and stepped briskly
aft, without so much as a word to the men standing at the head of the
ladder, to whom after a minute the mate called down.

"Sam Lloyd!"

"Aye, aye, sir!"

"What did 'e say?"

"Nothin', sir."

Apparently the children were not alone in finding this singular, for
after another minute the mate descended from the bridge, walked aft, and
followed his chief down the companion. He stayed below for close on a
quarter of an hour, the steamer all this while moving dead slow, with
just a lazy turn now and then