In a few minutes the slight protection afforded us by Will's Island was
denied us. I was anxious to ask further details about this injured man we
were hurrying to see, but the two fishermen had no leisure for
conversation. A few necessary words had to be shrieked. Even before I had
finished putting on my oilskins the water was dashing over us, and old
Sammy, at the tiller, was jockeying his boat with an intense
preoccupation that could not be interfered with.

The smack was of a couple of tons' burden, undecked, with big fish-boxes
built astern and amidships. She carried two slender masts with no
bowsprit to speak of, having no headsails, and her two tanned wings
bellied out while the whole of her fabric pitched and rolled over the
white crested waves. The fog was growing denser around us, as if we had
been journeying through a swift-moving cloud. It was scudding in from the
Grand Banks, pushed by a chill gale which might first have passed over
the icy plateaux of inner Greenland.

This lasted for a long time. We were all staring ahead and seeking to
penetrate the blinding veil of vapor, and I felt more utterly strayed and
lost than ever in my life before. Our faces were running with the salt
spray that swished over the bows or flew over the quarters, to stream
down into the bilge at our feet, foul with fragments of squid and caplin
long dead. We were also beginning to listen eagerly for other sounds than
the wind hissing in the cordage, the breaking of wave-tops and the hard
thumping of the blunt bows upon the seas.

"Look out sharp, byes, I'm mistrusting'," roared old Sammy.

There were some long tense moments, ended by a shriek from Frenchy by the