It was the bell-buoy at the mouth of Harwich River.

But he did not deem it necessary for one who was a prisoner on board, and no sailor, to interfere in the navigation of a vessel now making its way to the Faroe fisheries for the twentieth time.
"My conscience," he observed, "rings louder than that." The Captain took a turn round the tiller with a rope made fast to the rail for the purpose, and went to the side of the ship, lifting his nose toward the west.
"It is the land," he said.

"I can smell it.

But it is only the Blessed Virgin who knows where we are." He turned and gave a gruff order to a man half hidden in the mist in the waist of the boat to try a heave of the lead.
The sound of the bell could be heard clearly enough now--the uncertain, hesitating clang of a bell-buoy rocked in the tideway--with its melancholy note of warning.

Indeed, there are few sounds on sea or land more fraught with lonesomeness and fear.