A fog, dense, swirling and moist as a wet sponge, shut down all about the _Ajax_ that morning soon after breakfast. The captain donned his oil-skins and took up his position on the bridge, to stay there, as was his custom, till the fog should lift and everything be secure again.
The chief engineer was sent for and instructed to keep his force in the grimy regions below, keyed up for instant obedience to orders from the bridge, for the _Ajax_ was on the Atlantic lane, a well-traveled, crowded ocean track.
Like a blind man, the big tanker felt her way along, now starting forward and now almost stopping with an air of fright, as some fancied obstruction loomed in her path.
Through the weary day and the long night that followed, the _Ajax_ groped her way through the fog blanket that hung like a dense mist-shroud over the sullenly heaving sea. It was a marine game of touch and go, with possibly death and disaster for the stakes.
The engine-room telegraph spun in a weary succession of “Come ahead”—“Slow”—“Ahead”—“Slow”—“Stop her”—and “Come ahead, slow” again.
When daylight came, it shone on the fog walls that bound the _Ajax_ prisoner. The wan light showed Jack the figures of the captain and his first officer on the bridge. He knew that through the long night they had kept their weary vigil. But so dense was the fog that it was not always possible to see the bridge from the after superstructure.
Only when light and vagrant breezes sent the fog-wreaths fluttering and writhing, like ghosts, could a blurred view of the forward part of the ship be obtained.
Jack, too, had been on duty all night and he felt dull and wretched. Through the fog had come calls from other ships, and vague whisperings and chatterings, all fraught with fear and caution.
So far as those on the _Ajax_ knew, there was no ship closer to them than the _Plutonia_ of the Smithson Lines. Jack had been busy through the night, running back and forth with messages. Now, as he came to the door of his cabin for a breath of the fog-laden air, he was musing to himself on the anxious look on the captain’s furrowed face.
It was not the fog. Jack had seen the captain guide his ship through even denser smothers than the present one. He had always been his calm, collected, even cold, self.