were numbers of people on the pier, but all watching the steamboat and
thinking about her, and so nobody took the least notice of us. The water
was quiet, with what nautical men call a swell that lifted and sank us;
there was a nice wind that cooled the air; I saw two or three wherries
at anchor in the opposite direction to that I was rowing in, and I fancy
the people in them were fishing. Very far out at sea were some ships,
but the only vessel near the harbour was a smack that came out soon
after us, and, filling her sails, pushed quickly past us. One of the men
upon her called out something as the vessel went by, but I didn’t catch
what he said.
“My wife now agreed with me that this was real happiness. There was a
delightful quiet in the air, to enjoy which a man must live for eleven
months every year in the bustle and noise of the City; the town looked
beautiful in the afternoon light, the tops of the white cliffs as green
as new silk, and over and over again, after rowing a few moments, I
would hang on my oars and look at the houses in the distance and the
different objects changing their shapes or shifting their places. As I
had pulled the oars very leisurely indeed, I calculated that it would
not take me more than a quarter of an hour of steady pulling to cover
the distance I had been lazily traversing; I mean I reckoned that I
could cover in a quarter of an hour the distance I had slowly come in
three-quarters. That would make the hour; but my wife was enjoying the
air and the sea so thoroughly that I thought it would not greatly matter
if we broke into another hour. This was a treat we didn’t often get. My
wife flattered me by saying I rowed very well, and made the boat go
wonderfully quick, considering I put very little strength into the oars.
I thought so, too, indeed, and was surprised to observe how rapidly, in
proportion to my exertion, the land had receded away from us. By this
time the pier was only a black line upon the water, and the people upon
it invisible.
“‘You’ll be facing the shore, Sarah,’ said I, ‘when I turn the boat to
row back, and you’ll be much interested in seeing the various objects
growing bigger and bigger as we approach the land.’
“‘No wonder people are fond of the water,’ said she; ‘I could stop here
for weeks.’
“Poor woman! I doubt if she’d say that now.
“It was six o’clock when I turned the boat’s head. I never doubted that
I could row back in twenty minutes, and reckoned that the extra
half-hour would be well worth the money. I rowed at first with a good
deal of energy, and my wife was delighted at the manner in which I made
the foam fly with my oars. Indeed, I worked too hard; the exertion soon
tired me, and I perspired at every pore with the heat. It was slightly
distracting that the baby, who had been sleeping very quietly, should
now wake up and cry for what I suppose you might call her tea, if you
can give regular names to milk-and-water administered about seven times
a day.
“‘I am sorry, William,’ said my wife, ‘that we have stopped longer than
the hour.’
“‘Oh,’ said I, knowing that the child was running in her head, ‘baby
will do very well until we get home; we shan’t be long now;’ and again I
exerted my strength and toiled like a champion rower.
“‘It’s very curious,’ said I, giving up after about ten minutes, and
feeling quite exhausted, and panting for breath.
“‘What’s very curious?’ said my wife.
“‘Why,’ said I, pulling out my watch, ‘here it is twenty minutes past
six, and the land seems rather farther off than it was before I turned
the boat’s head towards it.’
“‘Yes,’ said she, growing a little pale; ‘I’ve been noticing that, too.’
“‘Perhaps it wants a steadier stroke,’ said I, wiping my forehead; and,
settling to the oars again, I rowed for another ten minutes, and then
looked over my shoulder. I could not be deceived. Row as I would, I not
only could make no way, but the boat actually lost ground. I could not
conceive of a current in the sea; a tide was an intelligible thing to
me in a river, but I could not realize that the great body of water we
were floating on was moving in a contrary direction to the land. There
was nothing about to give me the idea; no buoys, or anything of that
kind. All that I understood was that the harder I rowed towards the land
the farther we fell away from it. I was heartily frightened, and pulled
in the oars to stand up and look around me. My wife began to cry and the
baby roared as babies can when they are particularly wanted to keep
quiet. There were some ships, as I have said, a long distance off; and
there was the smack that had passed us, two or three miles distant; but
there was nothing near us. I put my hands to my mouth and shouted
towards the land as hard as ever I could, flattering myself that there
was a faint chance of the smooth water conveying the sound. I then stood
waving and flourishing my hat for at least five minutes.
“‘Oh, William, what will become of us?’ cried my wife, sobbing
piteously.
“I was much too upset to answer her. I had hoped that we should be
noticed by some of the people who keep a look-out on the pier; but as
the time went by, and the sun sank lower, and I could see no signs of
anything coming to our rescue, my spirits fell, and I sat down and
stared blankly at my wife. I put out the oars again, but was so wearied
that I soon gave up rowing; besides, I felt that we were being carried
away, and that the oars scarcely hindered our progress towards the
ocean. All this while the baby was giving us the greatest trouble with
its incessant crying. My wife filled up the pauses of its screams by
anticipating all the horrors which might befall us. She assured me that
she could see nothing before us but death from starvation, unless the
sea should rise and upset the boat and drown us, or unless a passing
vessel should crash into us when the darkness fell. What could I do? We
were in one of those situations in which it is simply impossible for
people to help themselves. I could not row; we had no sail, and even if
we had had a sail I should not have known how to use it; I had no means
of calling attention to our position except by waving my hat or
flourishing an oar, which seemed an idle thing to do, considering what a
speck the boat made upon the water, and how far off we were from
everything but the miserable sea.
“Sure enough, presently the sun sank, and though the twilight lasted a
good bit, yet the water soon grew dark, and speedily after sundown the
coast grew faint, and the ships in the distance were swallowed up in the
gloom. When the night fairly came the wind got up, not very much, but
enough to disturb the water, and the wherry began to slop about
horribly. What was worse, it blew off the land and helped to carry us
farther away. How I cursed my folly for not having brought a man with
me! The crying of the poor hungry little baby and my wife’s moans and
reproaches were just maddening. It was very fine overhead, the sky full
of stars, but there was no moon, and the sea looked as black as ink. I
could see the lights on the land, and could even very faintly hear the
strains of a band of music playing on the cliff, for, as I have told
you, the wind blew from the shore. I pulled out my watch, but though I
held it close to my nose I could not see what time it was. I kept on
looking around in the hopes of observing a passing vessel, but, though
no doubt some must have passed, I did not see them.
“My wife was continually saying, ‘Oh, William, what shall we do?’
“‘Do?’ said I. ‘What _can_ we do? We must sit here and wait.’
“‘Wait!’ she would cry. ‘What is there to wait for?’
“‘For daylight, if for nothing else.’
“‘But what will daylight do for us? We have been lost in daylight, and
when daylight comes where shall we be?’ and here she would hug the poor
crying baby and wish herself dead, and so on.
“Lord, what a time it was! The sea kept the boat rocking incessantly, so
that it was impossible for me to stand up. The dew fell like rain, and
my clothes were as heavy as if I had been exposed to a shower. My wife
said her limbs felt like pieces of iron, and that she had the cramp in
every joint, which I could easily understand, for I, too, suffered
atrociously from having to keep seated and to balance myself to the
tumbling about of the wretched little wherry. By degrees we lost sight
of the lights on shore; and we felt as if we were in the middle of the
Atlantic. Once or twice I thought of taking to the oars again, but when
the lights disappeared there was nothing to aim for. How we passed the
hours I can’t tell you. The baby would wake and cry until she cried
herself to sleep, then wake and cry herself to sleep again, and so on,
hour after hour. My wife and I fell silent; we had exhausted all that
_could_ be said, and we sat there like two statues. To my dying hour I
shall remember the gurgling and sobbing noise of the water splashing
against the boat’s side, and the dreadful silence overhead and around,
above the water, as I may say.
“It must have been past midnight, when I thought I heard a kind of
groaning or rumbling sound in the wind. I could not imagine what it
could be, until, looking into the darkness on my right hand, I spied
three lights upon the sea--one green, one red, and one white--this last
much higher than the others. Soon after there was a heavy noise of
washing water, and just over the white light there was a shower of
sparks, and presently a great black shadow stood up on the sea and
blotted out the stars behind it. I was weak and worn out--terrified to a
degree by the swift approach of this steamer--and though I managed to
shout, my voice seemed to stick in my throat. The great vessel swept
past us not above twenty yards distant; saving those lamps she was all
in darkness, and soon after she had gone by I thought the wherry would
have upset in the waves the steamer had left behind. My wife screamed as
the boat sprang up and down, and every instant I expected the sea to
rush into us. I shouted again to the steamer, hoping that I might be
heard. This time my voice carried well, but nothing came of it; the
steamer rushed on, and was soon out of sight.
“The dawn was just breaking, when I saw a vessel making a black mark
against the pale green light in the place where the sun was coming. It
took me some time to find out which way she was going, but presently the
rising sun made her plain, and I saw that she was a small smack, and
that she aimed directly for us. I managed to stand up in the wherry and
flourish my hat. There was no coast to be seen--nothing visible upon the
sea but that smack. So far as water went, we might have been in the
middle of the biggest ocean in the world. I perceived before long that
the smack saw us, for she lowered one of her sails, and came along
slowly. I looked at my wife to see how this adventure had served her,
and it seemed to me that she had aged twenty years. Her face was hollow,
her dress draggled and limp with the dew; she was a most melancholy
object to look at. I hardly knew her, indeed; and she was equally
astonished by my appearance, as she afterwards told me. Who could
suppose that a night spent in an open boat at sea would work such a
change in people’s looks? As for poor little baby, she had been crying
on and off all night, and, being pretty nearly perished with hunger, she
was a distressing thing, truly, for us parents to see. It was nearly
three-quarters of an hour before the smack came close to us, counting
from the time I had first seen her. A great man in yellow clothes bawled
out, ‘What’s that boat, and what do you want?’ You might have supposed
he would guess our want by our appearance.
“‘We’ve been carried away to sea,’ I answered, in a faint voice, for I
felt as weak as an infant and just fit to cry like one, ‘and we’ve been
in this boat all night.’
“‘Where do you come from?’ he called.
“I told him, and he answered, ‘We’ll tow you in. Look out for the end of
the line;’ and another man threw a rope at me.
“I caught it, but did not know what to do with it; seeing which, the
first man told me to keep hold, and dragged the wherry up to the smack,
and then got into her and attached the line to the boat.
“‘Will you sit here or come aboard?’ he asked.
“‘Oh, come aboard, certainly,’ I replied; so he took the baby and passed
it to a sailor on the smack, and then helped my wife up, and then me.
“So here we were, saved; but faint, broken-down, feeling as if we had
been dug out of the grave. Luckily they had a few tins of Swiss milk in
the cabin, and so poor little baby got something to eat at last. Also
they gave us some corned beef and bread, which we devoured gratefully,
after the manner of shipwrecked people. The captain of the smack laughed
when I told him we had originally started for an hour’s row.
“‘How much do they charge you for an hour?’ says he.
“‘Eighteenpence,’ I answered.
“‘You have had a good eighteen-pennorth,’ said he. ‘You may thank the
Lord, master, that ye’re alive to pay even eighteenpence. D’ye know how
many miles you’ve drifted from your port?’
“‘No,’ said I.
“‘Well then,’ said he, ‘you’ve drifted eleven miles. There’s the
coast--you can calculate for yourself;’ and he pointed to the white
cliffs, which were visible from the smack’s deck, though not from the
boat. A fearfully long distance off they looked, to be sure.
“‘William,’ said my wife at this moment, ‘I’ll never come upon the water
again.’
“‘Nor I, Sarah,’ said I; ‘at least without a man.’
“‘Man or no man,’ said she, ‘I’ll never venture my life again.’
“‘And I have no doubt she will keep her word, though it won’t cost her a
very great effort to do so, for I am quite sure I shall never attempt to
make her break it.”
“And so,” said I, “you got home safe?”
“Yes,” he answered; “the smack landed us in about two hours. The boatman
wanted to charge me for twelve hours’ use of his wherry; but I got off
for half a sovereign, which I thought cheap, as he talked of having the
law of me.”
And here terminated this middle-aged City clerk’s narrative. The moral
of it is not far off, and may be found without much hunting; and that a
little musing over it shall not be without value, any man may judge for
himself if he will but take his stand upon a British pier and watch the
typical seaside visitor enjoying “an hour’s row.”
_THE PLEASURES OF YACHTING._
Steam has played sad havoc with the beauty of our naval and merchant
vessels; but, though it has not spared our pleasure fleets, it has left
untouched numerous graceful fabrics among the yachts of the country, and
sail-power may survive for many years yet in the most beautiful form it
has ever been moulded to by the genius of man. There is a story told of
a butterfly alighting on the breast of a dying girl and taking wing at
the very moment she expired, and soaring into the blue sky with the
sunshine sparkling on its bright wings. I thought of this tale the other
day when I spied the hulk of what appeared to have been a sailing
frigate or an old East India merchantman towing up Channel. There was a
strong, clear wind, and the water flashed like a prism, and I was gazing
with interest at the poor old dismasted hulk when a fine schooner yacht,
beating to the eastward, swirled up under her stern. A noble sight was
that pleasure vessel. Her lee rail was almost flush with the foam which
swept like a storm of snow under the gleaming milk-white curve of her
lower cloths; to windward her sheathing was hove high, and the yellow
metal glittered like new gold as it glanced through the network of spray
and the shining emerald-green fibres of water which leapt about her
glossy sides. She might have been the very spirit of the old dismantled
sailing ship, leaping into bright and beautiful being as the most
exquisite and the completest expression of marine grace. It would have
gratified the most morose sailor to see her. Here was a sight to comfort
Jack for the loss of the noble sailing ships of his younger days. The
grand piles of canvas, the little skysails topping the swelling
pyramids, the magnificent sweep of jibbooms bearing their
marble-coloured cloths in layers like a heap of clouds, the ringing
minstrelsy of the wind among the taut hemp that resembles a spider’s web
as you look at it against the sky of the horizon--these things are gone,
or fast going; the ocean will soon be bare of them, and the star-like
shine of sails upon the sea-line smothered by the long black coils of
furnace smoke. But while such yachts as that whose flashing progress I
watched remain afloat the sea will still possess her English beauties.
It is the owners of such vessels who are perpetuating all that is fair,
all that is memorable, of the traditions of our English ship-building
yards. The survival is a very fit one. It seems proper, indeed, that the
stateliness and elegance of the sailing vessel should come into the
keeping of men to whom the deep is its own exceeding great reward--as
poetry was to Coleridge--who traverse it for love only of its caressing
waters and the glorious life of its noble expanse, and who make it the
framework for marine pictures into whose idealization enters all that
money, fine taste, and devotion to what is beautiful and harmonious can
furnish.
Surely to those who love her for herself the sea is a bountiful and
great-hearted mother. The fascination the ocean exercises over the mind
cannot be expressed in language; and happy is the man who, yielding to
her spell, counts himself one of her sons as a yachtsman. Mercantile
Jack may profess to despise such seafaring as a fresh-water job; but,
nevertheless, let him own that he envies the sand-white decks, the snug
forecastle, the easy life, the glorious runs under blue skies and over
tumbling and silver-bright waters. No other form of “sailorizing” yields
so much unalloyed pleasure. Privacy is the first grand privilege. You
will get that in your yacht, but you will get it aboard no other kind of
ship which ever I have heard of. No amount of passage-money will save
you from worry and companionship you may not be in the humour to enjoy
on board the finest passenger vessel. It is hotel-life: you are a
number; you have luggage; you are making the voyage for a direct object;
in short, you have a destination, and the having a destination makes one
of the main differences between yachting and going to sea in any other
way.
A yacht is a man’s home. He need never be in a hurry. Like Jefferson in
“Rip Van Winkle,” he lives about in spots. He may leave a good deal to
his skipper, but he is always master; he owns the craft which others
steer, and never a humour can come into his head which he may not
indulge without having anybody to argue with him. It is a fine thing to
be lord of the sea in this fashion. A captain of a big ship is a great
man, but he is a sort of a slave also. His business is to make haste,
and obstacles vex his soul. The patent log that he tows astern typifies
the condition of his mind. A head sea is an affliction, and most of the
wonders of the deep are great nuisances to him. He wants to sight
nothing. He objects to excitements and adventures. All that he prays for
is fine weather and so many nautical miles a day. These are the
penalties of having a destination.
The bliss of yachting lies in the having to go nowhere in particular,
and one port being as good as another. If you can’t weather a point,
then there is nothing to do but put your helm up and come back again.
The barometer seldom tells lies, and one of its safe readings, which
makes yachting so delightful, is “Keep the harbours aboard.” That
certainly may always be done in the English Channel, and not for this
reason only does one cease to wonder that it should be the most popular
of all yachting waters. Much has been written about yachting in the
Scotch lakes and northward among the isles. Such cruising might suit a
man who is easily sea-sick, and who is never so comfortable as when his
tow-rope is aboard a tug. But the yachtsman who has the instincts of a
seaman will choose the wide waters of the English Channel, pushing away
to the westward until the Atlantic swell is under his forefoot and his
white sails mirrored in water as blue as the heavens. The Channel is a
sea of itself, and most of the changes of the sea may be felt and
enjoyed on its breast. Here you will get breezes which toss a yacht
prettily enough, and the calms are made beautiful and soothing by the
gentle swell that runs out of the vague horizon, and keep the water
flashing and fading under the sun. Once to the westward of the North
Foreland, there is no finer space of water for yachting, and nowhere
more beautiful shores and nobler coast scenery. It is a great maritime
highway, too, always full of ships, and so crowded with marine interests
that the yachtsman is never weary of looking over the side of his
vessel. Given a strong and sweeping wind from the southward of east,
with the sharp blue sky which that sort of breeze makes; and let the sun
still be soaring, and the atmosphere so transparent that the coast
stands along like a photograph; and let your mainsheet be eased, and
the white heights of the North Foreland on your starboard quarter, the
whole of the grand old Channel is under your bowsprit. Though there be
no cups to win, there shall be a hundred races to run as you go; and,
keeping to leeward of the Goodwins, every jump of the yacht unrolls a
glistening length of white, and green, and brown, and golden shore.
Indeed, there is not a little sport to be got out of the unpremeditated
races of yachting. I remember once coming up Channel, homeward bound, in
a fine clipper ship. We had the wind abeam, and fore-topmast
studding-sail out, and we went ahead of everything like a roll of smoke,
until, coming abreast of the Isle of Wight, a powerful yawl--as superb a
yacht as ever I saw--came frothing and buzzing along, with her main boom
almost amidships, and Dunnose like a blue shadow over her stern. She
ratched like a phantom to windward of us, and then, settling herself
upon our weather quarter, starboarded her helm, eased away her sheets
fore and aft, and overhauled us as if she had a mind to tow us. She was
in a smother of foam. It must have been up to a man’s knees in the lee
scuppers. She showed us the whole of her deck--a lady sitting in the
companion, coolly ogling us through a binocular glass; three or four
yachtsmen aft, squatting under the weather rail. But the view she
offered was not prolonged. She forged ahead of us like a “bonito,” and
in a couple of hours was a small leaning white pillar upon the horizon
dead over our bows.
These are the unpremeditated matches I mean, and I have known some of
them to be run with as wild a desire for triumph as ever a regular
yacht-race kindled. They used to make one of the heartiest pleasures of
yachting; but nowadays where is the foeman worthy of the steel of the
slashing yawls, and cutters, and schooners? Nearly everything that
floats goes by steam, and for a yacht to race a steamer would be as
sensible as to make up a Derby of locomotives and thoroughbreds. Yet
those crank racers, with their enormous spread of cloths--though they be
things of beauty--are certainly not a joy to everybody. They are very
proper to take prizes, but those who love the sea most wisely will least
envy the privileges of the owners of such craft. Sailing with your mast
at an angle of fifty degrees, half the mainsail dark with water, the
froth hissing and seething and bubbling up to the lee side of the
skylights, all hands holding on to windward and wondering what’s going
to happen next, may be exhilarating to some souls, but it is a mad sort
of yachting. These crank and nimble spinners give you no chance of
looking about. They are a fine sight to watch. I know nothing more
exciting to witness than a great narrow-waisted yawl, almost on her beam
ends, hurling through an ocean of foam, jumping the seas until half her
keel is out of water, then burying her bows in the storm of froth as if
she were about to dive out of sight, her metal to windward looking like
a sheet of polished gold, with the sunshine sparkling in the wet of it.
But to be aboard! Decks that one can walk on may be an unsailorly
prejudice, yet they are comfortable; and the obligation to stick to
windward and to hold on with clenched teeth grows tedious and even
fatiguing if too long imposed.