Out of the Fog | Page 5

and get our inner buoy. This seemed easy, but we found that it is as
important to have a point of departure as it is to have a destination, and
not knowing just where we were we could not head our boat to where
the vessel was. We shouted, and listened, rowed this way and that way
but not a sound came to us through the fog, although we knew that the
boy must be at his post ringing the bell, so that the boats could hark
their way back to the vessel. I learned afterward that the tide that
morning was exceptionally strong. I had noted its direction and made
allowance for it, before leaving the schooner, but we were where the
Gulf Stream and the Arctic Current are not very far apart and the
resulting tides are strong and changeable. We were in the grip of two
great elemental and relentless forces, the impenetrable fog, cutting off
all our communications, and the strong ocean current sweeping us away
into the uninhabited waste of waters. From my experience of the year
before, I knew what it meant to be lost in the fog on the Banks,
practically in mid-ocean; I understood that if the fog lasted for a week
or ten days as it sometimes did, especially at that season of the year, it
was a fight for our lives. I soon realized that we were lost and that the
fight was on.
We were certainly stripped for it, without impedimenta, no anchor,
compass, provisions, water, no means of catching fish or fowl, and with
rather light clothing, as we were dressed for work and not for protection
against cold. But youth is optimistic and claims what is coming to it,
with a margin for luck, and we started on our new voyage of discovery

with good courage and a cheerful disregard of the hardships, dangers
and possible death in the fog, with which and into which we were
drifting.
It would not be strictly accurate to say that we saw nothing during all
the time we were adrift, but the things we saw were of the same stuff
that the fog was made of. Early in the first day I saw a sail dimly
outlined in the misty air. I called John's attention to it with a shout, and
he saw it too, but, as we rowed toward it, the sail retreated and then
disappeared. We thought that this was strange, for the wind was not
strong enough to take a vessel away from us faster than we could row,
and we were near enough to make ourselves heard. Soon, the sail
appeared again, and again we shouted and rowed toward it, and again it
glided away from us and disappeared, and again, and again, through the
seemingly endless procession of the slow-moving hours of that first day,
we chased the phantom ship.
When night came on, there came with it a deepening sense of loneliness
and isolation. The night was also very cold, the chill penetrated our thin
clothing, and we were compelled to row the boat to keep ourselves, not
warm, but a little less cold. The icebergs coming down on the Arctic
Current hold the season back, and early June on the Banks is much like
April on the Massachusetts coast. We tried to sleep lying down in the
bottom of the boat with our heads in a trawl tub, but we were stiff with
cold, the boat leaked badly, and it was necessary to get up frequently
and bail out the water. The thought also that we might drift within sight
or sound of a vessel, or within sight of a trawl buoy, made us afraid to
sleep.
The night finally wore away, the second day and night were like the
first, the third like the first and second and the fourth day like another
"cycle of Cathay." These four days and nights were like solitary
confinement to the prisoner, the grim monotony and lack of incident
contributing to the cumulative effect and accentuating the sense of
helplessness and isolation. There was nothing to relieve the situation.
We were like an army lying in trenches in the face of the enemy,
waiting for the enemy's move.
The fourth night we were startled by the sound of the fog horn of a
sailing vessel. The wind was blowing almost a gale. We listened to get
the direction, then sprang to the oars and rowed hard to intercept her,

shouting, listening, rowing with all our strength, and willing, if need be,
to be run down, in the chance of being seen and rescued. The horn
finally sounded so near that it seemed that we could almost see the
vessel, and we felt sure that they could hear our