A sound across the harbour

An original literary non-fiction-style account of hearing a foghorn while waiting beside a harbour.

The far side of the harbour had disappeared, but it had not become distant. I knew where the warehouses stood. I could almost supply the dark windows and the white stripe along the quay from memory. The fog refused to confirm any of them. Water and air met somewhere beyond the rail without offering a useful boundary.

Then the horn sounded. It began low, widened and held, a blunt shape pushed through the whiteness. I felt it in the rail beneath my hands before I thought about where it came from. Conversations along the quay stopped at different points, leaving unfinished words scattered beside the water.

When the sound ended, the fog looked exactly as it had before. A small tap came from a rope against a metal post. Somebody closed a car door. These nearby sounds seemed almost excessively precise after the broad note from the invisible harbour. A child asked whether we would hear it again. The adult beside him said that they would wait a little longer.

We did hear it. This time I did not search the whiteness for a shape large enough to explain the sound. I watched a gull settle on the nearest bollard instead. Its feet made two small adjustments on the metal. Behind it, the foghorn continued, giving the hidden water a presence which no window or painted stripe could have supplied.

How does the writer use language to convey the foghorn's effect on the harbour scene?