Gradually the great smoke cloud began to grow more distant, the fleet with its convoy having passed by, continuing to head into the east, where the lurking U-boat would possibly be waiting to attack.

“That was a great sight!” exclaimed Tom, as their attention again turned to possibilities lying before them, rather than what had passed by.

“Never forget it as long as I live!” Jack declared vehemently.

“It’s been a good thing for us in more than one way,” Tom went on to say.  “You see, personally, I’ve been just a bit in doubt about our actual bearings; and this has set me straight.  I can put my finger on the actual spot on the chart where we’d be likely to meet the fleet.  So now we’ve got to change our course sharply.”

“Running more into the south-southwest, you mean, I suppose, Tom?” asked Beverly.

“Just that,” continued the acting pilot.  “We want to strike the Virginia shore, you understand, and right now we’re off Long Island.  After several hours on our new course we’ll again make a sharp swing into the west, and then look for land!”

“And that land, oh, joy! will be our own America!” cried Jack, his face fairly beaming with expectation.

They kept booming along on the new course for several hours, and as it did not seem necessary to continue at such a great altitude they again descended to the old familiar line of flight, with the sea about five hundred feet below.

“Given another hour,” Tom said, along about the middle of the morning, “and it will be time to strike for the west.  We must be off Delaware or the tip of Maryland right now.  Jack just reported a faint glimpse of land, but wasn’t sure it might not be a low-hanging cloud bank.”

“And now we’re in for another experience, I’m afraid,” called out Jack, “for there’s a nasty sea fog sweeping along from the south.  We’re bound to drive into it before five minutes more—­the first real mist blanket to strike us all the way across.”

Jack’s prediction proved no idle one, for in less than the time specified they found themselves suddenly enveloped by a dense mantle of mist through which it would have been utterly impossible to have seen anything a hundred feet away.

Tom for one did not like the coming of that fog just when they were about to drew near the land of their hopes.  Unlike a vessel, they could not come to anchor and ride it out, waiting for the fog to lift; but must drive on, and desperately strive to find some sort of landing.

“The thickest fog I ever saw!” Jack observed, after they had been passing through the moist gray blanket of mist for some little time.

“Just the usual kind you’ll meet with on the sea at times,” answered the lieutenant.  “I was caught in one when out on the fishing banks, and it wasn’t any too pleasant a feeling it gave me either.  But for our compass we’d never have reached shore again.”

“And but for the compass right now,” said Tom, “it would be next to impossible to steer a straight course.”