George Ryan and Cushing were forward, up near the bow watching the ship cut into the flat, glassy waters.
“This isn’t bad at all,” George said. “I could handle sailing in seas like this.”
Cushing smiled. “Don’t get your hopes up. It won’t last. A freak calm, that’s all.”
George suddenly narrowed his eyes and peered into the night. “Check it out,” he said.
“You see that?”
It was like somebody had strung up a rolling white tarp in the distance. It was getting larger by the second, blotting out everything, eating the darkness and the sea foot by foot.
“Fogbank,” Cushing said, unsure.
George had never seen anything like it. It was a huge, undulating blanket of yellow-white mist, sparkling and luminous. It took his breath away. Within a minute or so, you could see nothing else. It was like the heavens, clouds and all, had fallen to earth and consumed everything in their path.
“Quite a sight, eh?”
George and Cushing turned. Gosling was standing there, arms folded, his pipe dangling from his lips. He looked strange, tense maybe.
“You ever seen a fogbank like that?” George said.
“Sure, plenty of times. You get ‘em out here,” he said.
For some uncanny reason, George had the odd feeling that he was being lied to.
“Are you going to steer around it?” Cushing asked.
“What do you think?”
And they knew what he meant. It was everywhere, closing in from what seemed every direction. There was no avoiding it unless they were to turn back, but at the speed it was making, they’d never outrun it.
“Do they always glow like that?” George said. “Those fogbanks?”
Gosling smiled thinly. “Sure.” He tapped out his pipe on the railing.
“It’s going to be pea soup here in about twenty minutes, boys, you better get below.”
They left and Gosling stood there, feeling a strange compulsion to wait for it, to meet the mist dead on.
Trembling, he waited.