Toward morning he grew more wakeful. The whistling of the fog-signal,
which had now become almost constant, vanquished at length his
inclination toward slumber. He found his watch, but it was too dark to
tell the time. He raised himself up in his berth, and, pulling open the
window blind, was able with difficulty to make out that it was almost
four o'clock. Outside, he saw a bank of fog, as impenetrable to the eye
as a wall. He pulled the blind to, with an impatient sigh.
"This confounded fog," he thought, "will make us late, and I sha'n't
have time to see those pictures at the Academy."
He lay back in his berth, broad awake, with an objurgation at the
whistle, which was shrieking furiously, and which, he suddenly became
aware, was being answered by the dull bellow of a fog horn blown near
at hand. At that moment the engines of the boat stopped, with that
cessation of the quivering jar which is so terrifying. Fenton could
feel the steamer losing its headway, and being more heavily tossed
about by the waves as it did so. He sat up in his berth with a startled
consciousness of danger, and at the same instant something struck the
steamer with a terrific crash which seemed powerful enough to rend
every timber apart. A tumult of sound broke forth, amid which a
piercing human shriek rang out with awful sharpness. Fenton was thrown
from his berth by the shock, and landed on the floor, bruised and half-
stunned, but otherwise unhurt.
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