When the morning came we looked anxiously all about the horizon, the mate going aloft with the captain's glass and sweeping every part of the ocean as far as he could see. He must have staid up there fully an hour; every eye was watching him, and every ear listening in the hope of hearing him call out "Sail ho!" and indicate the direction where the sail appeared. But he made no call, and descended finally to the deck. He shook his head as the captain spoke to him, and we all knew just as well as though he had told us that the Warwick was not in sight. We had been driven a considerable distance out of our course by the gale. As the wind abated we put on a little sail, and increased the quantity at intervals as the wind dropped down. When we had resumed our course and were moving along at a fair pace I looked to the south and saw, perhaps eight or ten miles away from us, a solid wall of what seemed to be land. I was about to say so to the men who were nearest to me, but checked myself just in time to avoid a display of my ignorance. Haines was a little distance away from me, near the foot of the foremast, and so I sidled up to him and asked him to look in the direction that I indicated. I did not suggest what I thought that bank was, and left him to enlighten me or not. We seemed to be approaching the shore with considerable rapidity, and yet we were sailing parallel to it, and not in its direction. "That fog-bank will be on us pretty quick," Haines remarked; and then I knew that what I had supposed to be land was nothing more than fog. "Get out your knife, Jack," said Haines, "and be ready to slash yer way through it. That's one of them fogs that's made out 'er pea-soup and water mixed with a lot of air. When it gets on us you won't be able to see the length of the ship, and just so long as that fog stays we might as well be sailing in a wash-tub for all that we can see around us." I kept my eye on the fog-bank and saw that it neared us rapidly until it reached us. All around and above the air was clear, and it did not take much imagination to suppose that a great monster was coming out of the south to overwhelm us. In some parts of the world the fog is supposed to be the abode of spirits, and in former times the fog itself was believed to be a spirit which had taken that shape. Some of our sailors seemed to have a particular dread of the fog, not so much for its disagreeable nature and the possibility of having a collision with another ship while shut up in the fog-bank, but an uncanny feeling growing out of their superstitions. I didn't have any superstitious fear at all concerning it, but it certainly gave me a very uncomfortable sensation when I saw it coming.