Page:Barbour--Lost island.djvu/215

 "A penny for your thoughts," Tempest said early one morning when he came upon Dave leaning over the taffrail, staring out at the beautiful picture. The gray sky in the east was just becoming tinged with red, stained with the promise of the sun, and little wisps of mist floated in vague shapes, like scenes from Fairyland.

"It looks like—like a dream," Dave said.

"Does n't it?" Tempest agreed. "One of the queer things about these waters is that mist, which looks so dreamy, can become a regular nightmare before you know where you are. One has to navigate with brains instead of charts hereabouts, and the skipper does n't take quite the same view of fog as you do. He's been grumbling for two days about it. It was pretty bad while we were down below in our bunks last night, and he had the engines running at half speed for some hours."

"But there's plenty of water where we are, is n't there?" Dave asked.

"Cap'n thinks so, evidently, because he's