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! CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR. "SHIP, AHOY!" "It is the last straw," says the proverb, "that breaks the camel's back!" Bob's courage had been on the wane long before the white, woolly fog environed them; although, up to now he had endeavoured to brave it out in the presence of Dick, the very consciousness that he was the main cause of their being in such a perilous predicament preventing him from betraying the fears he felt. But, when this octopus of the air clutched them in its corpse-like grip, breathing its wet vapoury breath into their faces, soddening their clothes with heavy moisture and slackening their energies as it had already damped their hopes of a steam-vessel coming to the rescue, Bob, whose nerves were strained to their utmost tension, at last broke down.