When he returned the murk had closed in thickly. It was as though the
vessel were immured from the world. Virginia was standing at the
wheel, and with the pall throwing the derelict into more sombre relief,
Dan caught more strongly than ever the utter contrast which her
presence brought to this abandoned hulk. Whenever she had walked along
the deck it had seemed a profanation to him that the uneven planking
should know her tread; that she should be on the derelict at all was,
he felt, a working of Fate against everything that was beautiful and
graceful.
Now, as she stood there in the pallid gloom, she suggested some tall,
beautiful genius, presiding over the wrack of elemental things, facing
a more glorious future.
"How shut in everything seems!" she said, as Dan took the wheel from
her hands. He had a long fog-horn which he blew at intervals.
"We haven't seen a speck of a ship," he explained, "but now the fog is
about us there's liable to be a fleet of them in our vicinity at any
time. At least that has been my experience with fogs. It would not be
much fun to be rammed, although in our present condition I fancy it
would hurt the other vessel more than it would this."
Hour after hour they went on blindly, silently, save at such times as
Dan's raucous horn blasts went tearing through the fog.
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