CHAPTER III. WHAT CAME IN A NORTH SEA FOG.


Night saw our ship off Orfordness, and there the breeze failed us,
and a thick fog, hiding the land and its lights, crept up from
seaward and wrapped us round. But before it came, on Orfordness a
fire burnt redly, though what it was, unless it might be some
fisher's beacon, we could not tell.

The fog lifted as we drifted past the wide mouth of Stour and
Orwell rivers with a little breeze, and the early daylight showed
us the smoke of a fire that burnt on the higher land that shuts in
the haven's mouth on its southern shores. But even as we saw it,
the fog closed round us again and the wind died away, so that we
lowered the sail, and the men got out the oars, and slowly, while
Kenulf swung the lead line constantly, we crept on among the sand
banks down the coast.

Presently the tide turned against us, and Kenulf thought well that
we should drop anchor and wait for its turning again. The men
gladly laid in the oars, and the anchor rattled out and held. The
ship swung to her cable, and then there seemed deep silence after
the even roll and creak of the great sweeps in their rowlocks. The
fog was very dense, and beyond our stem head I could see nothing.

Then to break the silence came to us, over no great stretch of
water as it seemed, the sound of a creaking block, the fall of a