About this time they fell in with shifting banks of fog, blowing before the wind, the like of which Tom had never seen before. They seemed to drift in belts, and were no doubt raised by cold currents of air, for a chill could be felt the minute the ship would run into one of them. Every now and then the wind would sweep these banks away, rolling them up before it, and for a little while there would be a clear space around the ship for maybe a couple of miles or more. At that time they were under all plain sail to top gallant sails, and were booming along at a rate that could not have been less than ten knots. Tom thought that the _Nancy Hazlewood_ might even have done better than she was then doing, were it not that she labored in a most unusual way for a vessel, in a wind no heavier than that in which she was then sailing. There is no doubt that this came from the heaviness of her spars as well as the ill stowage of her provisions and stores; still she was doing well, and any one could see with half an eye that it would be an uncommonly swift cruiser to whom the _Nancy Hazlewood_ would not be able to show a clean pair of heels, if the need should arise for her doing so. It was a little before the middle of the first dog watch, when there happened one of the closest misses that Tom ever had of losing his life. I most firmly believe that if any one beside Jack Baldwin had been the officer of the deck, Tom Granger’s story would never have had to have been told. Jack was walking up and down on the poop in a restless sort of a way. It was plain that he was anxious at the fog, as well he might be. At one time the ship would be surging away across what seemed to be a lake, with dull banks of snow all around, at another she would plunge headforemost into whirling clouds of mist, so thick that the leaden sea alongside could barely be seen; heaving as though it were something alive, and the fog was smothering it. Jack came to the break of the poop and looked over to where Tom was standing, on the deck below. His black hair and beard were covered with the dampness, so that he looked as though he had turned gray. “Tom,” said he, “I wish you’d slip foreward and see that those men are keeping a bright lookout ahead. Keep your weather eye lifted too, Tom, till we’re out of the worst of this infernally thick fog.” So Tom went foreward, as Jack had asked him to do, and found that the two men who had been placed there since they had run into the fog were keeping as sharp a lookout as could be wished for. Just as Tom climbed up on the forecastle, they surged out into a clear space, that was maybe two miles or two miles and a quarter from side to side. They had run pretty nearly across this stretch, and I recollect that Tom was just lighting his pipe under the lee of the foremast. As he raised his head and looked over the port bow, he saw a sight that made the blood stand still in his veins.