Castle Nowhere | Page 5

dogs were whimpering at a distance, both securely fastened to trees,
and the light of the fire had died down: evidently the old Fog was not,
after all, so simple as some other people!
'I might as well see what the old rogue has taken,' thought Waring; 'all
the tobacco and whiskey, I'll be bound.' But nothing had been touched
save the lump-sugar, the little book, and the picture of Titian's daughter!
Upon this what do you suppose Waring did? He built a boat.
When it was done, and it took some days and was nothing but a
dug-out after all (the Spirit said that), he sailed out into the unknown;
which being interpreted means that he paddled southward. From the

conformation of the shore, he judged that he was in a deep curve,
protected in a measure from the force of wind and wave. 'I'll find that
ancient mariner,' he said to himself, 'if I have to circumnavigate the
entire lake. My book of sonnets, indeed, and my Titian picture! Would
nothing else content him? This voyage I undertake from a pure inborn
sense of justice--'
'Now, Waring, you know it is nothing of the kind,' said the Spirit who
had sailed also. 'You know you are tired of the woods and dread going
back that way, and you know you may hit a steamer off the islands;
besides, you are curious about this old man who steals Shakespeare and
sugar, leaving tobacco and whiskey untouched.'
'Spirit,' replied the man at the paddle, 'you fairly corrupt me with your
mendacity. Be off and unlimber yourself in the fog; I see it coming in.'
He did see it indeed; in it rolled upon him in columns, a soft silvery
cloud enveloping everything, the sunshine, the shore, and the water, so
that he paddled at random, and knew not whither he went, or rather saw
not, since knowing was long since out of the question. 'This is pleasant,'
he said to himself when the morning had turned to afternoon and the
afternoon to night, 'and it is certainly new. A stratus of tepid cloud a
thousand miles long and a thousand miles deep, and a man in a dug-out
paddling through! Sisyphus was nothing to this.' But he made himself
comfortable in a philosophic way, and went to the only place left to
him,--to sleep.
At dawn the sunshine colored the fog golden, but that was all; it was
still fog, and lay upon the dark water thicker and softer than ever.
Waring eat some dried meat, and considered the possibilities; he had
reckoned without the fog, and now his lookout was uncomfortably
misty. The provisions would not last more than a week; and though he
might catch fish, how could he cook them? He had counted on a shore
somewhere; any land, however desolate, would give him a fire; but this
fog was muffling, and unless he stumbled ashore by chance he might
go on paddling in a circle forever. 'Bien,' he said, summing up, 'my part
at any rate is to go on; I, at least can do my duty.'
'Especially as there is nothing else to do,' observed the Spirit.
Having once decided, the man kept at his work with finical precision.
At a given moment he eat a lunch, and very tasteless it was too, and
then to work again; the little craft went steadily on before the stroke of

the strong arms, its wake unseen, its course unguided. Suddenly at
sunset the fog folded its gray draperies, spread its wings, and floated
off to the southwest, where that night it rested at Death's Door and sent
two schooners to the bottom; but it left behind it a released dug-out,
floating before a log fortress which had appeared by magic, rising out
of the water with not an inch of ground to spare, if indeed there was
any ground; for might it not be a species of fresh-water boat, anchored
there for clearer weather?
'Ten more strokes and I should have run into it,' thought Waring as he
floated noiselessly up to this watery residence; holding on by a jutting
beam, he reconnoitred the premises. The building was of logs, square,
and standing on spiles, its north side, under which he lay, showed a row
of little windows all curtained in white, and from one of them peeped
the top of a rose-bush; there was but one storey, and the roof was flat.
Nothing came to any of these windows, nothing stirred, and the man in
the dug-out, being curious as well as hungry, decided to explore, and
touching the wall at intervals pushed his craft noiselessly around the
eastern corner; but here was a blank wall of logs and nothing more. The
south side was the same, with