hese expectations are soon depleted amongst the first lines of the novel, where a reader learns that the journey is taking place on the Thames, on a cruising yawl, 'Nellie'. Everything seems to be still and calm, where there is not even a 'flutter of the sails', and everything is 'at rest', while the crewmembers 'wait for the turn of the tide'. The opening evokes a very static atmosphere, where nothing seems to be getting accomplished. A reader first recognises the bathos of the novel, at this moment, as the seemingly mysterious and adventurous aspect to the novel, suggested by the title, and the nouns 'mist' and 'haze', which are pathetic fallacy for obscurity and indistinctness, has not been carried through into the text.
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