The wind suddenly dropped, just as the tide turned, the ebb setting out
from Spithead towards the east, dead against them; when, instead of
running in homewards "in no time," the cutter, after a time, became
becalmed first, and then gradually began to drift out into the open
Channel again.
Dick was the first to notice this.
"Look, Master Bob!" he cried. "We aren't making no headway at all! I
don't see we're getting any the nearer to the Nab!"
"We will, soon," replied Bob, all hopeful. "It's only because the
breeze has dropped a bit. Before long, we'll pick it up again! I
think, Dick, we'd better slacken off the sheets and let her bear away
more!"
This was done; but, still the _Zephyr_ would not move.
She had net way enough, indeed, to answer her helm; for, her bows
pointed west, and south, and east, alternately, as the tidal eddies
swayed her in this direction and that.
"I knewed we was doin' wrong," remarked Dick presently, after a long
silence in which neither of the boys spoke a word. "It's a judgment on
us!"
"A fiddlestick!" retorted Bob. "We'll only drift about like this for a
short time; and, when the tide turns again, it will sweep us back to
Spithead like one o'clock!"
"I doesn't believe that, Master Bob," said Dick disconsolately, sitting
down on a thwart, and looking longingly at a faint speck in the distance
which he thought was Southsea; although they were almost out of sight of
land now, the swift current carrying the boat along nearly four knots an
hour. "We should ha' tuk warnin', Master Bob, by Rover. He knowed what
wer' a-coming and so he swum ashore in time, he did!"
"Rover is a faithless creature!" cried Bob hotly. "I'll give him a good
licking when we reach the land again, you see!"
"When'll that be, Master Bob?"
"Oh, some time or other before night," replied he defiantly, but Dick
could easily tell from his tone of voice that he did not speak quite so
buoyantly as before; and his already long face grew longer as the day
wore on without the breeze springing up again or any change of
circumstances.
They did not pass a single ship near, notwithstanding that they saw
several with all their sails set, their loftier canvas catching a few
lingering puffs of air that did not descend low enough to affect the
cutter. The sight of these vessels moving, however, raised their
drooping spirits, Bob and Dick thinking that the wind by and by would
affect them, too.
But no breeze came; and all the while they were being carried further
and further out to sea.
"Hallo, there's a steamer!" sang out Bob after another protracted
silence between the pair. "I see her smoke easily. She's steering
right for us!"
"Where?" asked Dick. "I doesn't see no steamer, Master Bob."
"There!" said the other, pointing to a long white line on the horizon.
"There she is, blowing off her steam, or her funnel smoking, quite
plain!"
"Lor', Master Bob!" ejaculated the other, after peering fixedly for a
moment where his companion directed him to look. "That arn't no steam
or smoke as ever I seed. It be a cloud, or fog, I knows; or summut o'
that sort, sure-ly, Master Bob!"
Bob, however, would not be persuaded of this, persisting that he was
right and Dick wrong.
"I don't know where your eyes can be!" he said scornfully. "I'll bet
anything it's a steamer; or, I never saw one!"
But ere another hour had passed over their heads, Dick was proved to be
the true prophet; he, the false!
The low-lying bank of vapour, which originally resembled the trail of
smoke from some passing steam-vessel on her way down Channel, gradually
spread itself out along the horizon.
It then rose up, like a curtain, from the sea; and, stretching up its
clammy heads towards the zenith, widened over the heavens until it shut
out the western sun from their gaze, making the still early afternoon
seem as night.
Creeping over the surface of the sullen water with ghostly footsteps,
the mist soon shrouded the boat in its pall-like folds; impregnating the
surrounding atmosphere with moisture and making the boys believe it was
raining, though never a drop fell.
It was only a sea-fog, that was all.
But it was accompanied by a dampness that seemed like the hand of Death!