John's mother kept a
little oasis for thirsty neighbors, in a city adjacent to my home town,
and his father was a man of unsteady habits. But John was a good fellow,
active and willing, and, though he had not inherited a rugged
constitution, he could pull a good steady stroke.
Soon after we reached the Banks, a storm swept our decks and nearly
carried away our boats. As a result, the dories, particularly my own,
were severely strained and leaked badly. For two weeks, however, we had
no fog, but on the morning of the second of June, just as we went over
the schooner's side and shaped our course for our outer buoy, a bank of
fog with an edge as perpendicular as the side of a house moved down on
us like a great glacier, though much more rapidly, shutting us in and
everything else out from sight. It was ugly and thick, as if all the fog
factories from Grand Manan to Labrador had been working overtime for the
two weeks before and had sent their whole output in one consignment. We
had just passed our inner buoy when the fog struck us, but we kept on
for the outer buoy, as was customary in foggy weather, since it was
safer to get that and pull in toward the vessel, rather than take the
inner buoy, pull out, and find ourselves with a boatload of fish and
ugly weather over a mile from the vessel.
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