William Hope Hodgson

“ Then, on the following day, something happened that set me wondering more than ever, and showed me how right I had been in feeling the mist to be something unnatural. It was in this way.
Five bells, in the eight to twelve morning watch, had gone. I was at the wheel. The sky was perfectly clear--not a cloud to be seen, even on the horizon. It was hot, standing at the wheel; for there was scarcely any wind, and I was feeling drowsy. The Second Mate was down on the maindeck with the men, seeing about some job he wanted done; so that I was on the poop alone. ”

“ Consequently, with the weather being fine, and the wind next to nothing, they should have been in sight all the time. This reasoning seemed to me to show, unmistakably, some connection between the coming of the mist, and our inability to see. So that it is possible we had been in that extraordinary state of blindness for nearly three days.
In my mind, the last glimpse of that ship on the quarter, came back to me. And, I remember, a curious thought got me, that I had looked at her from out of some other dimension. ”

“ He answered me civilly enough, and then asked me what I had been doing to put the Old Man's back up.
"I told him there's a ship on the starboard quarter, signalling us," I said.
"There's no ship out there, Jessop," the Second Mate replied, looking at me with a queer, inscrutable expression.
"There is, Sir," I began. "I--"
"That will do, Jessop!" he said. "Go forrard and have a smoke. I shall want you then to give a hand with these foot-ropes. You'd better bring a serving-mallet aft with you, when you come." ”

“ And I just stared into his face, like an ass, without saying a word. I seemed still incapable, you know, of actual, reasoning speech.
"Are you damned well off your head?" he went on shouting. "Are you a lunatic? Have you had sunstroke? Speak, you gaping idiot!" ”

“ The next day, I kept a pretty close watch, during all my time on deck; but the atmosphere remained clear. Yet, I heard from one of the chaps in the Mate's watch, that it had been hazy during part of the time he was at the wheel.
"Comin' an' goin', like," he described it to me, when I questioned him about it. He thought it might be heat. ”