50 BLOWING THE FOG HORN. 



passage, at high tide, between these two islands, is but very shallow 

 at best, and not fit for vessels to go between. From a square white 

 tower on the northern part of the island, a fixed light, sixty feet 

 above the sea, and visible fourteen miles, shines by night. We heard 

 the half hour gun, from this same quarter, during the fog — it is 

 also fired during dense snowstorms — all the time we were anchored ; 

 and far into the night its heavy and loud boom echoed to our ears 

 with a dull thundering roar. Our hunting, not as successful as it 

 might have been, brought several species of birds to our notice, but 

 our wet clothes called for more attention than our birds, for the 

 time being, while we dried ourselves as well as we could under 

 the circumstances. The next morning as the fog cleared away the 

 cFmk, chnk, clinkety clink, of the anchor chain, as all hands 

 heaved at the patent windlass, sounded merrily (it was about six 

 o'clock) on the otherwise quite still air, and before long we were 

 dashing along with a breeze that had by this time nearly cleared the 

 air of fog, though it was soon on us again as thick as ever ; but we 

 were past the dangerous shoals and in free water, so we kept on 

 our course, and let the thick fog come on again. Little we cared for 

 it although we kept the old tin fog horn, with its toot-toot-toot, 

 and tootety toot, going all the morning. A vessel's fog horn is an 

 old fashioned institution, and consists of a tin horn similar to that 

 used by venders of fish, yeast, and other articles of street com- 

 merce ; or by the noisy college student in his rows between classes 

 or his midnight music, of horrid notoriety, at home. The main dif- 

 ference is that the tin is unpainted or unvarnished, and the whole 

 horn shorter and less clumsy. Any one can blow it, and on this 

 particular morning, any one did. It lay upon the deck of the cabin, 

 and while it was the special duty of the man at the wheel to "tend 

 it," as is sometimes said, everybody that came around had his or 

 her turn at it. It acts as a warning to other craft that we are 

 around and coming, while all vessels use one in a dense fog. We 

 had started from Quebec with a consort, in the shape of another 

 vessel, supposed to be a slower sailer than ours, of similar size and 

 lading, bound for the same ports with us. In fact one captain 



