A few moments later, the lookout called down that we
were running into a fog-bank dead ahead. Fog banks in that section are
unheard of at nine o'clock in the morning at this season, and we were
more than a hundred miles from land, and what could fog and sand be
doing there.
"Before we knew it, we went into the fog, which proved to be a big
dense bank of this same sand, and it rained down on us from every side.
Ventilators were quickly brought to their places, and later even the
hatches were battened down. The dust became suffocating, and the men at
times had all they could do to keep from choking. What the stuff was we
could not at first conjecture, or rather, we didn't have much time to
speculate on it, for we had to get our ship in shape to withstand we
hardly knew what.
"At first we thought that the sand must have been blown from shore. Then
we decided that if the Captain's figures were right we wouldn't be near
enough to shore to have sand blow on us, and as we had just cleared
Barbados, we knew that the Captain's figures had to be right.
"Just as the storm of sand was at its height, Fourth Engineer Wild was
nearly suffocated by it, but was easily revived. About this time it
became so dark that we found it necessary to start up the electric
lights, and it was not until after we got clear from the fog that
we turned the current off. In the meantime they had burned from nine
o'clock in the morning until after two in the afternoon.
THE ENGINE BECAME CHOKED
"Then there was another anxious moment shortly after nine o'clock.
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