"The anchor dropped, the leads were laid in. The commanding officer went
below into his cabin. But he had not been there very long when a voice
outside his door requested his presence on deck. He thought to himself:
'What is it now?' He felt some impatience at being called out again to
face the wearisome fog.

"He found that it had thinned again a little and had taken on a gloomy
hue from the dark cliffs which had no form, no outline, but asserted
themselves as a curtain of shadows all round the ship, except in one
bright spot, which was the entrance from the open sea. Several officers
were looking that way from the bridge. The second in command met him
with the breathlessly whispered information that there was another ship
in the cove.

"She had been made out by several pairs of eyes only a couple of minutes
before. She was lying at anchor very near the entrance--a mere vague
blot on the fog's brightness. And the commanding officer by staring in
the direction pointed out to him by eager hands ended by distinguishing
it at last himself. Indubitably a vessel of some sort.

"'It's a wonder we didn't run slap into her when coming in,' observed
the second in command.

"'Send a boat on board before she vanishes,' said the commanding
officer. He surmised that this was a coaster. It could hardly be
anything else. But another thought came into his head suddenly. 'It is
a wonder,' he said to his second in command, who had rejoined him after
sending the boat away.

"By that time both of them had been struck by the fact that the ship so