RATHER FOGGY.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 189, 16 January 1875, Page 3

RATHER FOGGY.

One day, off the coast of North Carolina, we got into a fog that lasted us the three day-watches, so dense that we could see the channel the steamer cut through it three miles astern, like a new road cut through a cedar swamp. Lounging along forward about seven in the forenoon watch, I drifted in earshot of two jolly tars, just as one of them put out a feeler in this wise : —“ I say, Bob, did you ever see such a fog as this ’ere afore ? ” “ Ah, ay, mate, 1 have that. I’ve seen fogs down along the Sable Banks, and about Canso, that this ’ere stuff’ wouldn’t be more than a bit of mist alongside of.”— “How thick was it, Bob'?”—“Well, once when I was in the old Rifleman, and we were going to Quebec after deals, we ran into a fog-bank one day that carried away our jib-boom, and stove in our port bulwarks. There were a lot of gulls and other big birds stuck fast all in among the fog, jest like sheep in a big snowdrift: not a bird of them could move a wing. We’d been on allowance pf water two weeks, and the carpenter sawed chunks enough out of that ’ere fog to fill every cask in the ship. It was tip-top water that fog made ; but it didn’t melt very fast. Some of it wasn’t melted when we got back to Liverpool, three months afterwards.”