FORE AND AFT SEAMANSHIP.
It has been my fate to put to sea in some of the worst-found craft that
ever scrambled into port again, but of the lot, that ugly little cutter
of Haigh's stands pre-eminent.
She possessed no single good point in her favour. She had swung in
harbour so long that everywhere above the water-line she was as staunch
as a herring-net. Her standing rigging, being of wire, was merely
rusted, but her running gear was something too appalling to think
about. As for her bottom, if she had been turned up and dried for a day
(so Haigh cheerfully averred), there would have been enough bushy cover
on it to put down pheasants in. Fittings, even the barest necessaries,
were painfully lacking, as the man had been living riotously on them
for over a month and a half. A Chinese pirate could not have picked her
much cleaner. What he was pleased to term the "superfluities of the
main and after cabins" had gone first, fetching fair prices. Afterwards
he had peddled his gear little by little, dining one day off a
riding-light, going to a theatre the next on two marline spikes and a
sister-block, and so on. His ground tackle, long saved up for a
_bonne bouche_, had provided funds for that last night in the
gambling hell, where we both got cleared out together; and the balance
that was left didn't represent a mosquito's ransom.
Haigh told me all this as we walked back again down the narrow streets
to the quay, and I suggested that although Mediterranean air was good,
we couldn't exactly live on it during the passage across. But he
pointed out that as his dinghy was very old and rotten, it would be
quite a useless encumbrance on the cruise; and so, dropping me on board
the cutter, he sculled off again to swap this old wreck for provisions.
I roused out a weather-thinned mainsail, black with mildew, and bent
it; and by the time that was on the spars, he had completed his barter,
and had been put on board again by a friend.
We had a dozen words of conversation, and then got small canvas hoisted
and quietly slipped moorings. The night was very black, and thick with
driving rain; and we slid out through the pier-heads unquestioned save
by a passing launch which hailed, and was politely answered in
gibberish.
There was a singular lack of formality about our departure which was
much to be regretted. But there was some small trouble about big
accumulations of harbour dues and such minor items, which would have
had to be settled in return for a clearance _en regle_; and,
remembering how history was galloping, we could not afford the time to
deal with them. And so, after a narrow squeak of being cut down by a
big steamer just outside, we found ourselves close-hauled under all
plain sail, making a long leg with a short one to follow.
"Funds wouldn't run to the luxury of a chart," observed Haigh when I
inquired about this trifle, "but I had a look at a big Mediterranean
track chart at the place where I bartered the dinghy, and the course to
Port Mahon is due south-west, as near as no matter."
"As near as no matter," groaned I in response.
"Why, my dear chap, we really can't indulge in the extreme niceties of
navigation. We've got a compass, which is fairly accurate if you joggle
it with your finger occasionally, and we can fix up a lead line when we
get in soundings, and I dare say we can make a log. D'you mind having a
spell at the pump now? I'm a bit out of condition."
The leaking decreased as the planking swelled to the wet, but other
unpleasantnesses began to show themselves. One of the greatest, to my
way of thinking, was the way we were victualled. To begin with, there
were twenty-three bottles of vermouth, straw-jacketed, and carefully
stowed. Then there was a bag of condemned sea-biscuits, which Haigh
pleasantly alluded to as "perambulators." And the list of solids was
completed by half a dozen four-pound tins of corned beef, and a hundred
and fifty excellent cigars which had not paid duty. There was an iron
tank full of rusty water which "had to do," as refilling it might have
entailed awkward questions. And, lastly, there had been brought on
board a very small and much-corroded kedge anchor, which, as it was the
only implement of its kind that we possessed, gave much force to
Haigh's comment that "it might come in handy."
To tell the truth, when the cold sea air blew away the glamour of
plotting and planning, and I was able to tot up all these accessories
with a practical mind, I was beginning very much to wish myself well
off what seemed a certain road to Jones.
Haigh, on the other hand, seemed supremely contented and happy.
Yachting as a general thing, he said, he found slow; but this cruise
had an element of novelty which made it vastly entertaining. He had
never heard of any one deliberately getting to sea quite under such
circumstances before. He didn't uphold the wisdom of the proceeding in
the least, for when I grunted something about the world not containing
such another pair of thorough-paced fools, he agreed with me promptly.
In fact, he was in far too jovial a humour to argue about anything, and
by degrees I began to fall in with his vein. "Let's split a bottle of
vermouth," said he, "and drink confusion to every one except our two
selves." And we did it.
The breeze lulled at daybreak, and northed till we had it nearly fair.
"This is great business," said Haigh. "I'll bet you five hundred pounds
that we make the islands in the next twenty-four hours. I.O.U.'s
accepted." He slipped off the after-hatch, and dragged up from the
counter a venerable relic of a spinnaker, which was one vivid mottle of
mildew. The sail was duly mocked and set. The wind was freshening, and
our pace increased. The cutter and her parasitical escort kicked up
enough wake for a Cardiff ore-steamer.
"Who says a foul bottom matters now?" said Haigh. "Who will suggest
that she isn't kicking past this scenery at nine knots? Bless the ugly
lines of her, we mustn't forget her builder's health. Hand up another
bottle of that vermouth and the dipper."
We lifted her through it all that morning at a splendid pace, the wake
boiling up astern like a mill-tail. The two booms did certainly make
occasional plunges which might have jarred timid nerves, but such a
trifle did not disturb us.
"It's the best bit of racing I've ever done," said Haigh. "There's a
pig of a following sea, and the wind's squally. Just her weather. If
we'd only got another craft trying to beat us, the thing would be
perfect. We should have some inducement to carry on then."
Whilst we were eating our mid-day meal (on deck, of course) that
variegated spinnaker went "pop," splitting neatly from head-cringle to
foot-rope. It was my trick at the tiller, and so I was tied aft. Haigh
peered round at the ruin, and returned to his occupation of knocking
weevils out of his biscuit. He didn't think it worth while to budge,
and so we let the canvas blow into whatever shaped ribands it chose. If
we couldn't carry the sail, we didn't want it.
The wind hardened down as the day went on, and every knot we went the
sea got worse. The ugly cutter slid down one wet incline, drove up the
next, and squattered through the hissing crest with a good deal of
grumbling and plunging and rolling and complaining. But she had a good
grip of the water, and with decently careful steering she showed but
small inclination to broach-to or do anything else she wasn't wanted
to. She might not be a beauty; she might be sluggish as a haystack in a
light breeze; but, as Haigh said, this was just her day, and we were
not too nervous to take advantage of it. Still, considering her small
tonnage, and the fact that all her tackle was so infernally rotten, she
took a tidy bit of looking after. You see, we might be reckless about
our skins, but at the same time we were very keenly anxious to make the
Balearic Islands.
The thing that I mostly feared was that our old ruin of a mainsail
would take leave of us. If once it started to split, the whole lot
would go like a sheet of tissue-paper. However, whether we liked it or
not, we had to run on now. The wind and sea were both far too heavy to
dream of an attempt at rounding-to. And, indeed, even if we had
succeeded in slewing her head to the wind without getting swamped in
the process (the odds on which were about nine hundred to one against),
it was distinctly doubtful as to whether she would deign to stay there.
Small cutters are not great at staying hove-to in really dirty weather.
And so we topped the boom well up, hoisted the tack to prevent
overrunning the seas, and let her drive; and whilst Haigh clung on to
the tiller and its weather rope, I busied myself with a bent
sail-needle at stitching up any places within reach on the mainsail
where the seams seemed to be working loose.
Soon after dark that night--and I never saw much more inky blackness in
my life--we came across a deep-laden brig which very nearly gave us a
quietus. She was running sluggishly under lower fore-topsail, wallowing
like a log-raft in a rapid, and doing less than a third of our
knottage. We possessed neither side-lamps nor oil, and showed no light;
and as she had not a lantern astern, we got no glimmer of warning till
we were within a dozen fathoms of her taffrail. Haigh couldn't give the
cutter much helm for fear of gibing her and carrying away everything,
and consequently we did not clear that brig's low quarter by more than
a short fathom. Had we passed her to starboard instead of to port, we
should have fouled our main boom, and--well, we shouldn't have got any
farther.
As we tore past, the white water squirming and hissing between the
vessels' sides, a man leaned over the bulwark, with his face looking
like a red devil's in the glare of the port light, and shook a fist and
screamed a frightened venomous curse. Our only reply was a wild roar of
laughter. As we drove off into the mist of scud ahead, I looked back
and saw the man staring after us with dropped jaw and eyes fairly
goggling. He must have thought us mad. Indeed, I believe we had taken
leave of some of our senses then.
"Vermouth's cheapening," said Haigh. "Pass up another bottle. If we do
happen to go to Jones, it 'ud be a thousand pities to take the liquor
down with us undecanted."
Don't get the idea that we were drunk all through that wild cruise,
because we were not. But one thing and another combined to make the
excitement so vivid, that with the liquor handy it did not take much
inducement to make us tipple pretty heavily. We were vilely fed,
bitterly exposed, heavily overworked, unable even to smoke--and--the
vermouth was very, very good.
As the seas swept her the ugly cutter's planking swelled, but before
she became staunch a fearful amount of water had passed into her.
Haigh, who was in no sort of condition, got utterly spun out by a
five-minutes' spell at the pump, and consequently it had been my task
to restore the incoming Mediterranean to its proper place again. It was
a job that wearied every nerve in my body. The constant and monotonous
heaving up and down of a pump-handle is probably the most exhausting
work existent; and soon after passing that deeply-laden brig I pumped
her dry for (what seemed) the ten thousandth time, and toppled on the
deck dead beat.
"Look here," said Haigh, "you get below and turn in. I'm quite equal to
keeping awake until further notice. I'm never much of a hand at
sleeping at the best of times; and just now I'm well wound up for a
week's watch on end. If you're wanted, I'll call you. Go."
I slipped down without argument, dropped into a bare and clammy bunk,
and slept.
* * * * *
Haigh never roused me. I woke of my own accord, and found daylight
struggling in through the dusty skylight in the after-cabin roof. After
yawning there a minute or so, I conquered laziness and returned to the
deck.
Those who think the Inland Sea is always calm ultramarine, under a sky
to match, should have seen it then. The colouring was all of grays and
whites, with here and there a slab of cold clear green, where a big
wave heaved up sheer. It was awfully wild. The sea was running higher
than ever, and the gale had not slackened one bit. The brine-smoke was
hissing through our cross-trees in dense white clouds.
Haigh greeted me with a nod and a grin. His hat had gone, and the dank
wisps of his hair were being fluttered about like black rags; his
narrow slits of eyes were heavily bloodshot; his face was grimy and
pale, his hands grimy and red; his clothing was a wreck. He looked very
unpleasant, but he was undoubtedly very broad awake. He resigned the
tiller and rope, and began gingerly to stretch his cramped limbs,
talking the while.
"D'ye see that steamer, broadish on the weather-bow?"
I looked, and saw on the gray horizon a thin streak of a different
gray.
"I rose her a quarter of an hour ago," he went on, "and bore away a
couple of points so as to cut her off. I'm thinking it wouldn't be a
bad idea to speak her if it could be managed, and find out where we
are. As we haven't been able to rig a log-ship and line, and as the
steering has been, to say the least of it, erratic, our dead reckoning
has been some of the roughest. Personally, I wouldn't bet upon our
whereabouts to quite a hundred miles. Ta-ta."
He went below to smoke, leaving me fully occupied with the steering. We
rose the steamer pretty fast, and in half an hour could see her
water-line when she lifted. She was a fine screw boat of three thousand
tons, racing along at eighteen knots, and rolling with the beam sea up
to her rails, in spite of the fore and aft canvas they had set to
steady her.
Haigh came back to deck, blinking like an owl at the growing day. "Look
at the gray-backs chivying her," said he. "Aren't the passengers just
sorry for themselves now? And won't they have some fine yarns to pitch
when they get ashore about the hardest gale the captain ever knew, and
their own heroic efforts (down below), and all the rest of it? I've
listened to those tales of desperate adventure by the hour together.
Passengers by Dover-Calais packets are great at 'em."
All this while we were closing up. The steamer's decks were tenantless
save for a couple of lookouts forward in oilskins, bright varnished by
the spin-drift, and a couple of officers crouched behind the canvas
dodgers of the bridge, and holding fast on to the stanchions. I was
clearing my throat to hail these last, when Haigh turned and told me I
might save my wind.
"Never mind," he said; "I know her well. She's the _Eugene
Perrier_, a Transatlantique Company's boat, one of the quick line
out of Algiers for Marseille. Look at your compass, and note the course
she's steering--N.N.E. and by E. That's from Cape Bajoli straight for
Marseille. They run both ways between Mallorca and Minorca without
touching. Hooray! who says our luck isn't stupendous? Here we are, not
having made enough southing, and heading so as to fetch Gibraltar
without sighting the islands at all; and then in the nick of time up
comes a _dea ex machina_ in the guise of the _Eugene Perrier_
to shove us on the course again. In main-sheet, and then, blow me if we
won't have a bottle of that vermouth by way of celebrating the event in
a way at once highly becoming and original."
We made a landfall that afternoon off some of the high ground in
North-east Mallorca, and Haigh gave over champing his cold cigar-butt,
and delivered himself of an idea.
"Isn't there another harbour in Minorca besides Port Mahon?"
I said I believed there were some half-dozen small ones.
"Any this west side?"
"Ciudadella, about in the middle."
"Know anything about it?"
"Nothing, except the fact of its existence; and as we have no vestige
of chart, I don't exactly see how we are to learn anything more."
"Precisely. Then, my dear chap, to finish this cruise consistently,
Ciudadella must now become our objective. It would take us another day
to run round under the lee of the island to Port Mahon, and days are
valuable. The cutter's only drawing five foot five, and with our luck
at its present premium you'll see we'll worry in somehow without piling
her up. Perhaps we may get some misguided person to come out and con
us. Of course we'll take him if any one does offer, and owe him the
pilotage; but I'd just as soon we navigated her on our own impudent
hook. It's no use having a big credit on the Universal Luck Bank if you
don't draw on it heavily. The concern may bust up any day."
Luckily for us the gale had eased, or we should never have been able to
put the cutter on the wind. But as it was, with a four-reefed mainsail
and a bit of a pocket-handkerchief jib, she lay the course like a
Cowes-built racing forty; and if she did ship it green occasionally,
there was no rail to hold the water in board. We didn't spare her an
ounce. We kept her slap on her course, neither luffing up nor bearing
away for anything. That was the sort of weather when the ugliness of
the old cutter's lines was forgotten, and one saw only beauties in
them. She might send the spindrift squirting through her cross-trees,
but with the chap at the helm keeping her well a-going, she'd smoke
through bad dirt like a steamer.
We rose the low cliffs of Eastern Minorca about half-way across; but
rain came on directly afterwards, and in the thickness we lost them
again. In that odd way in which things one has glanced through in a
book recur to one when they are wanted, I had managed to recall
something I had once conned over in a Sailing Directions about
Ciudadella. The harbour entrance was narrow--scarcely a cable's length
across--and it was marked by a lighthouse on the northern side, and a
castle or tower or something of that kind on the other bank. The town
behind, with its heavy walls and white houses, was plainly visible from
seaward, and the spire of the principal church was somehow used as a
leading mark. But whether one had to keep it on the lighthouse or the
castle, I could not recollect. Neither could I call to mind whether
there was a bar. In fact, I could not remember a single thing else
about the place; and as Haigh remarked, what little I did recall
(without being in any way certain about its accuracy) was of singularly
little practical use. But this ignorance did not deter us from holding
on towards the coast in the very least. We might pile up the cutter on
some outlying reef, but we were both cocksure that our stupendous luck
was going to set us safe ashore somehow. _Et apres_--the Recipe.
We held on sturdily, lifting slant-wise over the heavy green rollers
till we were within half a mile of the land, and could see the surf
creaming to the heads of the low cliffs, and could hear the moaning and
booming as it broke on rocky outliers; and then easing off sheets
again, we put up helm and ran down parallel with the coast. Being
blissfully ignorant of anything beyond a general idea of Minorca's
outlines, we had to keep a very wary lookout; for a heavy rain had
started to drive down with the gale, and looking to windward was like
peering through a dirty cambric pocket-handkerchief. Indeed, we made
two several attempts at knocking the island out of the water, each
sufficiently distinct to have made any ordinary sailorman in his sane
senses get snugly to sea without further humbugging. And the afternoon
wore on without our seeing either the lighthouse, the castle, or the
town we were looking for; and just upon dusk the coast turned sharply
off to the eastward.
"That looks like a bay," said Haigh, squinting at the land that was
rising and falling over our weather quarter. "If we hold on as we are
going, we ought to pick up the other horn of it." So we stuck to the
course for three hours, and then came to the conclusion that the point
we had seen must have been the extremity of the island, and that we
were at present heading for a continent named Africa, then distant some
two hundred nautical miles.
The discovery cast a gloom over the ship's company. Our nerves were in
a condition then for taking strong impressions. For myself, all
lightheartedness flitted away. The ugly cutter's good deeds were
forgotten, and she appeared nothing more nor less than an ill-formed
cockle-shell. The gale was terrific. I was bone-weary; also the most
particularly damned fool on the globe's surface.
What Haigh's personal conclusions were I do not know. He said nothing,
but stood propped against the weather runner, mumbling over an unlit
cigar and peering into the mist.
After a while he turned. "Here, give me the helm, Cospatric, and do you
get your strong fists on the main-sheet. We'll put her on the wind
again, as close-hauled as she'll look at it. It's no use ratching up to
windward again hunting for Ciudadella, as ten to one we'd miss it a
second time. We'll just run along the lee coast here for Port Mahon.
There, now she's heading up for it like a steamer."
There was silence for a while, and we listened to the swish of the seas
and the rattle of the wind through the rigging. Then Haigh delivered
himself of further wisdom.
"It's a queer gamble this, take it through and back, and it's
remarkably like roulette in being a game where a system doesn't pay. As
long as we worked haphazard we did wonders. As soon as we tried to do a
rational thing, and make that harbour at Ciudadella, we got euchred.
Well, I dare say we both know how to take a whipping without howling
over it. So for the present let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we may
drown. Knock me a biscuit out of the weevils, old chappie, and give me
likewise vermouth and corned horse."
Had the wind remained in its old quarter, we could have made one board
of it all up the southern flank of the island; but, as if to accentuate
the fact that we had already drawn more than our share of good fortune,
the gale veered round to the east, and settled down to blow again in
real hard earnest, bringing up with it a heavy sea. It was tack and
tack all through the night, and we were always hard put to it to keep
the ugly cutter afloat. Indeed, when some of the heavier squalls
snorted down on to us, we simply had to heave-to. It was just a choice
between that and being blown bodily under water.
The dawn was gray and wretched, but from the moment we sighted the last
point the weather began to improve. The air cleared up, the gale began
to ease, and when we ran in under Fort Isabelle just as the sunrise gun
was fired, we saw that the day was going to turn out a fine one.
The long snug harbour of Mahon, which was in the days of canvas wings
almost always filled with craft refuging, is now in this era of steam
usually tenantless. So it was a bit of a surprise to us to find the
English Channel Fleet lying there at anchor. The big war steamers were
getting their matutinal scrub, and were alive with blue-and-white-clothed
men. They looked very strong, very trim, very seaworthy, and the bitter
contrast between them and our tattered selves made me curse them with
sailor's point and fluency. Not so Haigh. He didn't mind a bit; rather
enjoyed the _rencontre_, in fact; and producing a frayed _Royal I_----
blue ensign, ran it up to the peak and dipped it in salute. If I
remember right it was the _Immortalite_ we met first, and down went the
_St. George's_ flag from her poop staff three times in answering
salutation, whilst every pair of eyes on her decks was glued on the
ugly cutter, their owners wondering where she had popped up from. And
so we passed her particularly Britannic Majesty's ships _Anson_,
_Rodney_, _Camperdown_, _Curlew_, and _Howe_, and dropped our kedge
overboard (at the end of the main halliards) close inside the
torpedo-catcher _Speedwell_.
The strain was over. We staggered below and dropped into a dead sleep.
Had there been a ton of diamonds waiting on the cliff road beside us,
with half Mahon rushing to loot them, we could not have been induced to
budge.