“You should have seen the pilgrims stare! They had no heart to grin, or even to revile me: but I believe they thought me gone mad⁠—with fright, maybe. I delivered a regular lecture. My dear boys, it was no good bothering. Keep a lookout? Well, you may guess I watched the fog for the signs of lifting as a cat watches a mouse; but for anything else our eyes were of no more use to us than if we had been buried miles deep in a heap of cotton-wool. It felt like it, too⁠—choking, warm, stifling. Besides, all I said, though it sounded extravagant, was absolutely true to fact. What we afterwards alluded to as an attack was really an attempt at repulse. The action was very far from being aggressive⁠—it was not even defensive, in the usual sense: it was undertaken under the stress of desperation, and in its essence was purely protective.