Some further effort at either persuasion or impudence—­nobody but Phinuit ever knew which—­was drowned out by the first heart-broken bellow of the whistle sounding the fog signal.

Liane Delorme bounded out of her chair, clapping hands to ears, and uttered an unheard cry of protest; and when, the noise suspending temporarily, she learned that it was to be repeated at intervals of two minutes as long as the fog lasted and the yacht was under way, she flung up piteous hands to an uncompassionate heaven and fled to her stateroom, slamming the door as if she thought thereby to shut out the offending din.

One fancied something inhumanly derisive in the prolonged hoot which replied.

Rather than languish under the burden of Mr. Phinuit’s spirited conversation for the rest of the afternoon, Lanyard imitated Liane’s example, and wasted the next hour and a half flat on his bed, with eyes closed but mind very much alive.  Now and again he consulted his watch, as one might with an important appointment to keep.  At two minutes to four he left his stateroom, and as the first stroke of eight bells rang out—­in one of the measured intervals between blasts of the whistle—­ending the afternoon watch, he stepped out on deck, and paused for a survey of the weather conditions.

There was no perceptible motion in the air, witnessing that the wind had come in from astern, that is to say approximately from the southeast, and was blowing at about the speed made by the yacht itself.  The fog clung about the vessel, Lanyard thought, like dull grey cotton wool.  Yet, if the shuddering of her fabric were fair criterion, the pace of the Sybarite was unabated, she was ploughing headlong through that dense obscurity using the utmost power of her engines.  From time to time, when the whistle was still, the calls of seamen operating the sounding machine could be heard; but their reports were monotonously uniform, the waters were not yet shoal enough for the lead to find bottom at that pace.

The watch was being changed as Lanyard started forward, with the tail of an eye on the bridge.  Mr. Collison relieved Mr. Swain, and the latter came down the companion-ladder just in time to save Lanyard a nasty spill as his feet slipped on planking greasy with globules of fog.  There’s no telling how bad a fall he might not have suffered had not Mr. Swain been there for him to catch at; and for a moment or two Lanyard was, as Mr. Swain put it with great good-nature, all over him, clinging to the first officer in a most demonstrative manner; and it was with some difficulty that he at length recovered his equilibrium.  Then, however, he laid hold of the rail for insurance against further mishaps, thanked Mr. Swain heartily, added his apologies, and the two parted with expressions of mutual esteem.

The incident seemed to have dampened Lanyard’s ardour for exercise.  He made a rather gingerly way back to the quarterdeck, loafed restlessly in a deck-chair for a little while, then went below once more.