The sailor was a weatherbeaten old Guernseyman, possessing about twelve words of Anglo-Saxon in his vocabulary. Mrs. Verschoyle, however, in her agonised desire for truth, stretched her arms forth in the direction of the vanished red light. She also articulated the words Castle Cornet with tolerable distinctness. Her meaning had made itself clear. The answer, proceeding from the depths of a gruff, tobaccoey throat, was incisive: ‘_Brouillard!_’ And _brouillard_ it proved, clammy, ice-cold, yellow, after the manner of all mid-Channel fogs. At first every one affected to take this reverse of fortune as a jest, the little bit of mock danger that was needed to point a moral to the preceding day’s enjoyment. So providential, said the ladies, in pious but quavering chorus, that the _Princess_ lay close on shore before the fog grew thick. The skipper’s duty, clearly, was to make straight for St. Peter’s harbour and land them. Only, why lose time? Why steam so slowly? What object could Captain Ozanne have in exposing them to this mortal cold a moment longer than was needful? Mrs. Verschoyle, after a few minutes’ suspense, voted for independent action. She had, indeed, broached a project of creeping up to the men at the wheel and imploring them to ‘turn faster,’ when there came a general stir among the crew, followed by a rattling sound which most of the party had sufficient sea-going experience to recognise. The _Princess_ was about to cast her anchor. Just at this juncture appeared Lord Rex, fresh from hurried consultations with Ozanne and the boatswain. A suspicious unconcern was on Lord Rex Basire’s face, a note of forced cheerfulness in his tone. ‘Lucky we have got so near home, is it not, Mrs. Verschoyle? We are about two miles from shore, they say,--Ozanne, of course, knows every yard of water,--just within or without the _Grunes_, whatever the _Grunes_ may mean. We shall only have to ride half an hour or so at anchor--awfully jolly sensation, I can tell you, with a south-west swell. And then, as the mist rises, we shall steam clean into Petersport.’ But this show of jauntiness misled no one. The De Carterets, Cassandra Tighe, Marjorie Bartrand, all understood their position better than did Lord Rex. And it was a position of the utmost gravity. The _Princess_ was lying in dense fog, surrounded by shoals, across the very highway of the Channel night steamers. For an old and wary seaman like Ozanne to have been forced to anchor at such a strait did but render the fact of his helplessness more pointed. ‘What does it all mean? Are we not close to port, madam?’ The ladies were pressing together in groups. Dinah whispered the question across Cassandra Tighe’s shoulder.