forward. There certainly is something going on, or is going to happen.
What ARE they looking at?"

The mate had clambered halfway up the main ratlines, and was looking
earnestly to windward. Two or three of the crew on the forecastle were
gazing in the same direction. The group of cabin-passengers on the
quarterdeck, following their eyes, saw what appeared to be another low
shore on the opposite bow.

"Why, there's another coast there!" said Mrs. Markham.

"It's a fog-bank," said Senor Perkins gravely. He quickly crossed the
deck, exchanged a few words with the officer, and returned. Miss Keene,
who had felt a sense of relief, nevertheless questioned his face as he
again stood beside her. But he had recovered his beaming cheerfulness.
"It's nothing to alarm you," he said, answering her glance, "but it may
mean delay if we can't get out of it. You don't mind that, I know."

"No," replied the young girl, smiling. "Besides, it would be a new
experience. We've had winds and calms--we only want fog now to complete
our adventures. Unless it's going to make everybody cross," she
continued, with a mischievous glance at Brace.

"You'll find it won't improve the temper of the officers," said Crosby,
who had joined the group. "There's nothing sailors hate more than a fog.
They can go to sleep in a hurricane between the rolls of a ship, but a
fog keeps them awake. It's the one thing they can't shirk. There's the
skipper tumbled up, too! The old man looks wrathy, don't he? But it's no
use now; we're going slap into it, and the wind's failing!"