Clearing our motes, we turn a purged and critical eye on our fellows, now all clear of the mist, and steaming in sight. To far astern, where the land lies and the sun plays on wet roof and flashing window-pane, a long line of ships snakes out in procession, their smoke blowing and curling merrily alee to join the cumulus of the foundering fog-banks. There are gaps and kinks in our formation that would, perhaps, call for angry signals in a line of battle, but the laggards are closing up in hasty order to right the wayward tricks of sound and distance in the fog. If not quite ruled and ordered to figures of our text, at least we conform to the spirit, and are all at sea together, steering out on our ventures. Our distance run, _British Standard_ puts her helm over and turns out. Forewarned, all eyes have been focused on the line of her masts, and her sheer gives signal for a general cut and shuffle. We change partners. Curtsying to full rudder pressure, we join the dance, and swing to her measure, adjusting speed to mark time while other important leaders of columns draw up abeam. The flat bright sea is cut and curved by thrashing wakes as the convoy turns south. Ahead and abeam, round and about, the destroyers wheel and turn, fan in graceful formation and swerve quickly on their patrolling courses. We are less expert in the figures of our cotillion. It cannot be pretended that we slip into our convoy stations with anything approaching their speed and precision. We are too varied in our types, in turning periods, in the range of our dead-weight, to manoeuvre alike. Most of us have but a slender margin of speed to draw on, and, 'all bound the same way,' the spurt to an assigned position proves the stern a long chase. The fog, at starting, has thrown many of us out of our proper turn, and we zigzag, unofficially, this way and that, to gain our stations without reduction of speed. In the confusion to our surface eyes, there is this consoling thought--that the same perplexing evolutions (calling for frequent appeals to the high gods for enlightenment as to the 'capers' of the _other_ fellows) have, at least, no better meaning in the reflected angles of a periscope.