“Wind doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Drew said. “What causes fog is—”

“I don’t give a damn what causes it. Fog is fog, all right, little brother? Means you can’t see a damn thing like rocks and shoals and other ships. What difference does it make what causes it?”

Drew considered it best not to reply and went below to rest.

Nathaniel began to ring the bell to warn approaching vessels of Double Eagle’s presence. An hour later, he heard the metallic banging, rhythmic as a drumbeat, of a big ship’s engines. The fog toyed with the sound; it seemed very close one moment; five seconds later, he could barely hear it, only to have it resume, louder than before. When a shape appeared through the murk, indistinct, huge, and horrifyingly near, he remembered every sea legend he had heard: those tales of steamers putting into port with the masts and rigging of small craft dangling from their hawespipes, of fog-blinded liners cleaving Grand Banks schooners in half. He yanked the bell frantically, though he was sure no one aboard the ship could hear it over the throb of the engines, magnified by an atmosphere neither liquid nor gas, but something in between. Then it came to him that the vessel wasn’t bearing down on them, but passing alongside, although very close. He watched it sail by, a looming shadow high as a building, majestic, menacing, its stern churning a wake that rolled Double Eagle sharply while the seas pitched her up and down. A few seconds after the steamer passed, her foghorn tardily let out a blast.

11

SIX HOURS LATER, Will shook him out of dreamless unconsciousness, and he was back on deck. The fog still lay upon the surface of the sea and a heavy dew dripped from the rigging. The masthead and stern lamps had been lit and the sidelights cast diffused auras of red and green. Under the binnacle light, the compass card showed they were still bearing almost due west. Will said that best as he could reckon, they were outside Rhode Island Sound, somewhere between Block Island and Martha’s Vineyard.

“Keep a sharp eye out, because I’m not real sure exactly where.… Jesus Christ, what’s that?”

He pointed alongside, at a luminous oblong shape far below the surface. It rose rapidly out of the depths, growing larger and brighter. Its ascent stopped a fathom or two down, and it was longer than the boat, a size that instilled, rather than fear, the static wonderment people feel when looking at a high mountain. It swam alongside for several minutes, gliding silently under the black waves; then, with a sweep of its huge tail—Will and Nathaniel could make out the luminescent flukes—the sea monster sounded, grew smaller and smaller, and then was gone.