A BOATING TRIP
It was not yet evening, but the sun was very low in the west on our
right hand; a large moon would be rising a little while before eight;
the breeze continued to blow strong, and the ocean rolled into the land
in tall dark-green lines of waves, melting as they charged in endless
succession into wide spaces of foam, orange coloured by the sunset.
‘Do you hear that echo of thunder in the cliff I told you about?’ said
my husband.
I listened and said ‘Yes.’
‘It is like a distant firing of guns,’ said Mary.
‘You have some good boats down there dancing beside the pier,’ said my
husband to the boatman.
‘Ay,’ answered the boatman, ‘you’ll need to sail a long way round the
coast to find better boats than them.’
‘That is a pretty boat, Mary,’ said I, pointing to one with two
masts--a tall mast in the fore-part and a short mast at the stern; she
was painted green and red, and she was very clean and white inside, and
she appeared in my eyes the prettiest of all the boats as she dived and
tumbled and leaped buoyantly and not without grace upon the sharp edges
of the broken water.
‘That’s my boat, lady,’ said the sailor.
‘What is her name?’ inquired Mary.
‘The _Mary Hann_, he answered. ‘I named her after my wife. My wife
is gone dead. I’ve got no wife now but she,’ and he pointed with his
thumb backwards at his boat, ‘and she’s but a poor wife too. She airns
little enough for me. T’other kept the home together with taking in
washing, but nobody comes to Piertown now. Folks want what’s called
attractions. But the Local Board’ll do nothen except buy land as
belongs to the men who forms the Local Board, and the likes of me has
to pay for that there land, and when it’s bought fower five times as
much as it’s worth, it’s left waste. Lord, the jobbery! Are you making
any stay here, sir?’
‘Yes,’ answered my husband, ‘we are here for a month.’
‘And when might ye have arrived?’ inquired the boatman.
‘To-day,’ replied my husband.
‘There’s some very good fishing to be had here, sir,’ said the boatman.
‘If I may make so bold, whenever you wants a trip out, whether for
fishing or rowing or sailing, if so be as you’ll ask for me, my name
being William Hitchens, best known as Bill Hitchens, pronounced in
one word Billitchens--for there’s parties here as’ll swear they didn’t
know who you vos asking for if you don’t call me Billitchens--if you
ever want a boat, sir, and you ladies, if you’ll ask for Billitchens,
you’ll meet with satisfaction. There’s nothen to touch the _Mary Hann_
in sailing, whilst for fishing she’s as steady as a rock, as you may
guess, sir, by obsarving her beam.’
‘When I want a boat I will ask for Billitchens,’ said my husband,
glancing at me with a smile in his eye. ‘This lady--my wife--is fonder
of the sea than I am. I dare say she will sometimes take a cruise with
you. But the weather must be fine when she does so.’
‘You trust the weather to me, lady,’ said the boatman. ‘Man and boy
for over forty-eight year I’ve been a-crawling about this beach and
a-studying the weather. You leave him to me. Whenever you want a cruise
you ask for Billitchens and the _Mary Hann_, and if the weather ain’t
promising for the likes of such a lady as you, you shall have the
truth.’
‘What are your charges?’ said my husband.
‘Wan and sixpence an hour,’ answered the boatman cheerfully, ‘but if
you’d like to engage my boat by the week ye shall have her at your own
price, giving me so much every time ye takes me along.’
‘Is she not heavy to row?’ said I.
‘Lord love ye!’ he cried, gazing at his boat with a sour smile of
wonder at the question. ‘A hinfant could send her spinning. ‘Sides,’
he added, ‘I’ll take care to ship a pair o’ light oars for you, lady,
what’s called sculls, nigh as light as this here baccay-pipe.’
‘Well, good afternoon, Mr. Hitchens,’ said my husband, and we strolled
in the direction of our home, for the shadow of the evening was now
upon the sea, and the strong wind seemed to have grown very cold on a
sudden.
However, before we retired to rest the night fell silent, the sea
stretched in a dark sheet, and from our windows, so high seated was the
house, the ocean looked to slope steep into the sky, as though, indeed,
it were the side of a mighty hill. The moon rode over it, and under the
orb lay a column of glorious silver which stirred like the coils of a
moving serpent as the swell or the heave of the water ran through it.
The dark body of a ship passed through that brilliant path of light as
we stood looking, and the sight was beautiful.
My little ones were sleeping well. Johnny slept in our room and the
baby with the nurse, for my husband could not bear to be disturbed in
his sleep. I looked at my boy, and asked my husband to tell me if he
did not think there was already a little bloom on Johnny’s cheek, and
I kissed my child’s sweet brow and golden hair.
But it was long before my eyes closed in sleep. I lay hearkening to
the dull subdued thunder of the surf beating upon the beach far below
at the foot of the cliffs. It was a new strange noise to me, and I
lay listening to it as though to a voice muttering in giant whispers
out of the hush of midnight; and when at last I fell asleep I dreamt
that I was in the _Mary Hann_, and that Bill Hitchens was steering the
boat, and that she was sailing directly up the line of glorious silver
under the moon; and I remember that I asked him in my dream how long it
would take to reach the moon that as we sailed waxed bigger and soared
higher; but instead of answering he put his knuckles into his eyes and
began to sob and cry, and I awoke to hear little Johnny calling to me
to take him into my bed.
And now followed days as happy as light hearts and bright skies
and good health could render them. The weather continued splendid.
Sometimes it was as hot as ever it had been during the month of July
in the city of the Abbey Church. There was a pleasant neighbourhood,
a country of woods and verdant dingles and swelling pastures, and we
made many excursions, and in particular did we enjoy a visit to some
old ruins which had once been an abbey, but now its windows yawned,
its roof was gone, large portions of masonry had fallen, its floor
was a tangled growth of rank grass and weeds. We listened to the wind
whistling through these ruins: we listened with bated breath and with
raised imaginations, for the noise of the wind was like the chanting
of friars intermixed with a thin wailing of women’s voices; and as I
listened I could not help thinking to myself that it was as though the
ghosts of long-departed monks and chaste and holy nuns had viewlessly
assembled round about us to sing some solemn dirge, and that if our
eyes were as fine a sense as our hearing--if, indeed, we could _see_
the invisible as we could _hear_ it--we might behold the vision of the
building itself spread over our heads and on either hand of us, in
roof, in glorious coloured window, in sepulchral monument.
Here it was that my little Johnny, in running from me towards the grass
which grew upon what had been the pavement of this ancient abbey,
tripped and fell and lay screaming as though fearfully hurt. Mary took
him up: he was not hurt. My husband, looking into the grass to observe
what had tripped the child, put his hand upon something grey and picked
up a little skull. ‘Good God!’ he cried, casting it from him with a
shudder, ‘let us get away from this place.’ But Mary remained behind
alone for some minutes, with her eyes bent upon the little skull,
musing upon it.
Though we made several inland excursions our chief haunts were the pier
and the beach. Those were happy days indeed. My sister and I would take
camp-stools down on to the sands, and long mornings did we thus pass,
my husband moving indolently here and there, smoking, examining pools
of water, stooping to pick up a shell; Johnny scooping with a stick at
my side; baby sleeping in the arms of the nurse. There we would sit and
watch the quiet surface of the sea that melted into the blue air where
the sky came down to it, and gaze at the oncoming breaker poising its
tall emerald-green head for a breathless instant, like some huge snake
about to strike, ere tumbling in thunder and snow and roaring seawards
in a cataract of yeast.
We seemed--indeed, I believe we were--the only visitors in the place.
Nobody intruded upon us; the miles of sand were our own. Robinson
Crusoe’s dominion was not more uninterrupted.
The boatman named William Hitchens had called twice at the house early
in the morning to know if we would go for a nice little sail or row
during the day, but the answer I had sent by the servant was, ‘Not
yet.’ I was in no hurry to go for a nice little sail or a row. When
I was on the sands the sea was so close to me that it was almost the
same as being on it; and the novelty of having the sea feathering to
my feet in white and broken waters remained too great an enjoyment for
some days to induce a wish in me for wider experiences. And then again,
neither Mary nor my husband had the least taste for boating, so that
if I went I must go alone. I was not even able to have my children
with me, for the nurse declared that the mere looking from the beach
at a boat rocking upon the water made her feel ill, and I dared not
single-handed take the children, for how could I, holding the baby,
have looked after little Johnny, who was always on the move, crawling
here and creeping there, and who was just the sort of child to wriggle
on to a seat of the boat and tumble overboard whilst my head was turned?
However, after we had been at Piertown five days we walked down to the
sands as usual after breakfast, and as we passed the entrance of the
pier Bill Hitchens approached us, pulling at a grey lock of hair that
hung upon his forehead under an old felt bandit-shaped hat.
‘A beautiful morning for a sail or a row, lady,’ said he, addressing
himself to me as though he had long before made up his mind that there
was no custom to be got out of my husband and my sister, ‘why not
wenture on an hour, mum? There’s as pretty a little offshore wind
a-blowing as could be wished. And look how smooth the water is! Only
let me draw you clear of this here ground swell, and ye won’t know
you’re afloat. Or if you don’t like sailing, I’ll put a small oar into
the boat, and with me rowing agin ye, lady, ye shall see how light a
boat she is.’
‘Go, Agnes,’ said my husband, observing that I looked wistfully at the
water.
‘Come, Mary!’ said I.
‘No, dear,’ she answered, ‘I am certain to suffer from headache
afterwards.’
‘Why don’t _you_ come along, sir?’ said the boatman to my husband.
‘Because I am very well, thank you, Billitchens, and I wish to remain
well,’ answered my husband.
‘I will go,’ said I, and instantly the boatman was in motion. He
ran with uncouth gestures to a ladder that descended the pier-side,
disappeared down it, and presently emerged in a little skiff which
he propelled with an oar over the stern. Having arrived at his boat,
which was moored in the middle of the small harbour, if I may so term
the space of water within the embrace of the crooked arm of the pier,
he freed and brought her to some steps. I entered, perhaps a little
nervously, sat down, and Bill Hitchens throwing his oars over pulled
the boat out to sea. Little Johnny screamed and wept, imagining that
I was leaving him for ever. I kissed my hand and waved it to him, and
Mary, taking the little fellow in her arms, comforted him.
Now out of that simple English scene of coast life, out of the familiar
commonplace experience of a boating trip, what, if it were not death,
what should be able to shape itself so potent in all horror as to
utterly and absolutely shipwreck my happiness and make a frightful
tragedy of my life? Death it might well have been; again and again
small sailing boats are capsizing and their inmates are thrown into
the water and drowned; but worse than death was to befal me. When
I close my eyes and behold with the vision of my mind the scene of
that little town, and the terraces of the cliffs, though I am able to
connect the long chain of circumstance link by link, the memory of the
disaster and all that followed the disaster affects me even at this
instant of time with the violence of a paralysing revelation. I know
the past to be true, and still I gaze dumbly and with terror backwards,
incapable of crediting it.
But the dreadful misfortune that was to overwhelm me did not happen at
once. No: my short excursion that morning I thoroughly enjoyed. All was
safe, well, and delightful. I told the boatman to keep somewhat close
in to the shore, and I held my husband and sister and children in view
all the while. The boatman rowed leisurely, and my dear ones on the
shore kept pace with the boat until they had arrived at their favourite
spot on the sands, where they seated themselves and watched me. I rowed
a little and found the oar the man had placed in the boat for my use
very light and manageable; but I plied it unskilfully; indeed I was but
a wretched oarswoman. Yet it amused me to dip the blade into the water
however clumsily, and to feel that the boat received something of her
impulse from the swing of my figure.
Bill Hitchens talked much, and had I heeded his conversation I might
have found his queer words and odd thoughts and expressions amusing;
but I was too much occupied with my oar, and with looking at the group
on the sands, and with admiring the coast, to attend to his queer
speech. And, indeed, we were at just such a distance from the coast as
enabled me to witness in perfection its incomparable romantic beauties.
The cliffs rose in dark and rugged ramparts, and their gloomy massy
colours were peculiarly defined by the line of white surf which, the
fall of the breakers being continuous, seemed fixed as though painted
along the foot of the coast. The windows of the house we occupied
sparkled over the edge of the heights, but the structure was so high
lodged, the altitude from the sea appeared so prodigious, that spite of
the softening shadow of trees behind it, and spite of its quaint and
cosy shape, it had an odd, wild, windy look to my eyes, and I wondered
as I gazed at it that it had not been levelled long ago by one of the
many hurricanes of wind which Bill Hitchens told me thundered across
the sea and against the land in winter time, blind with snow and black
with flying scud. And the town made me think of Tennyson’s description
of a coastal village, for there was a frosty sparkle upon the houses
as though they were formed of blocks of rock salt. The sky was a deep
blue, and I noticed that it seemed to tremble and thrill where the bend
of it disappeared past the edge of the cliffs, as if the dye of the
cliffs themselves were lifting and sifting into it, and deepening the
beauty of its hue just there. The water was everywhere flashful with
the light wind that was blowing from the land. Presently the boatman
said:
‘Lady, let me gi’ you a bit of a sail?’
I consented, and he took my oar from me and laid it in the boat,
then loosed a big sail that lay upon the seats and hoisted it, and
afterwards he set a little sail at the stern, and then sat down at
the tiller and steered, making the boat skim along on a line with the
beach. My dear ones flourished their hands to me.
This was enjoyment indeed. The boat seemed to me to sail wonderfully
fast; I looked over the stern and perceived that she left behind her
a long furrow as beautiful with its ornamentation of foam and bubble
and eddies as a length of rich lace. Hitchens sailed the boat to and
fro, and all the time he was bidding me observe what a beautiful boat
she was, how there was nothing whatever to be afraid of, how in such a
boat as the _Mary Hann_, as he called her, a party of people might sail
round the United Kingdom in perfect comfort and security.
‘Only make it worth my while,’ said he, ‘and I’d go to Ameriky in
this here boat. Make it worth my while, lady, and I’d double the Harn
in her. Ameriky was discovered by folks as would have swopped their
precious eyes for such a boat as this here to make the voyage in. I
don’t speak of Australey, for Cook he had a ship; but I’ve heered tell
of Columbus; there’s one of us chaps as has read all about that gent
and is always a-yarning about him; and ower and ower I’ve heard him say
that that there Columbus would have swopped his precious eyes for the
likes of such a boat as the _Mary Hann_ for to make his discovery with.’
In this manner Bill Hitchens discoursed about his boat, as he sat
beside the tiller with his head well between his shoulders and his back
rounded like a cat’s at the sight of a dog.
After this I was continually making excursions with Bill Hitchens.
Having got to know him, I never would hire another in his place.
Indeed, he took care that nobody should supplant him, and called for
orders every morning with the punctuality of the butcher or the grocer.
Often I would go out twice a day, so keen was my enjoyment of the
pastime of sailing and rowing. Twice my husband accompanied me, but
after the second time he told me he had had enough, and he went no
more in the boat. Once I coaxed Mary into joining me, and in less than
five minutes the boatman was obliged to put her ashore, and when I
returned two hours later I found her motionless on the sofa with a sick
headache.
The behaviour of the boatman did not belie the character I seemed to
find written in his face. He proved a very honest, civil, deserving
fellow, possessed of a quality of sourness that imparted a particular
relish to his odd manner of speaking. I did not fear to be alone with
this man. I had every confidence in his judgment and prudence. He was
allowed by his comrades of the beach to be one of the smartest boatmen
on the coast. My husband ascertained this, and he also agreed with me
in my opinion of the fellow’s respectability, and day after day I would
enter the boat and my husband would stand watching me without the
faintest misgiving of any sort in either of us.
On several occasions Hitchens carried me out to so great a distance
that the features of the land were indistinguishable, and these long
trips I enjoyed most of all; they were like voyages, and when I stepped
on shore I would feel as though I had just arrived from the other side
of the world.
We had now been a day over three weeks at Piertown. The weather had
continued fine and warm throughout--in truth, a more beautiful October
I never remember--and we had all benefited vastly by the change. But
on the morning of this day my husband received a letter. He opened it,
read it attentively, and exclaimed to me across the breakfast table, ‘I
shall have to leave you for a couple of days.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
He passed the letter to me: it was a business letter, addressed to
him by his clerk. The nature of the business does not concern us;
enough that the call was important and peremptory. The business, my
husband said, would certainly detain him in Bath until the hour of the
departure of a late train on the following night, if indeed he should
be able to return then.
I packed his handbag, and Mary and I walked with him to the railway
station. I kissed him, and we parted.
My sister and I returned home to take the children to the sands. We
passed the morning under the cliffs, talking and reading and playing
with the children. It was a bright day, but I afterwards remembered
noticing that the blue of the heavens was wanting in the beautiful
clear vividness of hue of the preceding days. The azure had a somewhat
dim and soiled look, such as one might fancy it would exhibit in
a very fine, thin dust-storm. I also afterwards remembered having
observed that there was a certain brassiness in the glare of the sun,
as if his light were the reflection of his own pure golden beams cast
by a surface of burnished brass or copper. These things I afterwards
recollected I had noticed, yet I do not remember that I spoke of them
to my sister.
We dined at one o’clock. The road from our house to the sands carried
us past the entrance to the pier. As we leisurely strolled, Bill
Hitchens lifted his breast from the post which he was overhanging, and
approached us with a respectful salutation of his hand to his brow.
‘Will you be going out this afternoon, lady?’ he asked.
‘My husband has been called away,’ I replied, ‘and I do not feel as if
I should care to go upon the water during his absence.’
‘You will find the afternoon tedious, dear,’ said Mary.
‘It’s a beautiful day, lady,’ said the boatman. ‘There’s a nice little
air o’ wind stirring. Couldn’t ask for a prettier day for a sail, lady.’
‘It is somewhat cloudy,’ said I, directing my gaze at the sky.
‘Fine weather clouds, lady,’ said the boatman. ‘Keep your sight upon
’em for a bit and you’ll find they’re scarcely moving.’
‘That is true,’ said I.
‘If you go,’ said Mary, ‘I will take Johnny and baby for a drive.’
‘You’ll soon be leaving Piertown, lady, worse luck!’ said the boatman,
with an insinuating grin. ‘This here fine weather ain’t a-going to last
neither. It won’t be long afore we’ll be laying our boats up. It may be
blowing hard to-morrow, lady, and it may keep on blowing until your
time’s up for retarning.’
I reflected and said, ‘Well, Hitchens, you can get your boat ready
for me by half-past two or a quarter to three. I’ll be back by four,’
said I, addressing Mary, as we walked home, ‘and by that time you’ll
have returned. Do not keep baby out later than four,’ and we talked of
my husband and on home matters as we climbed the road that led to the
level of the cliff.
At a quarter-past two I was ready to walk to the pier for a trip which
I thought might likely enough prove my last, and which was not to
exceed an hour and a quarter. I was dressed in the costume in which I
usually made these excursions--in a blue serge dress, a warm jacket,
and a sailor’s hat of grey straw. An old-fashioned fly stood at the
door waiting for Mary and the nurse and children. I took baby in my
arms and kissed her, and I lifted Johnny and kissed him and saw the
little party into the fly, which drove off.
I lingered a moment or two. A strange sense of loneliness suddenly
possessed me. I cannot imagine what could have caused it if it were
not the silence that followed upon the fly driving off, together with
the thought that my husband was away. I entered the little parlour to
ascertain the time by the clock on the mantelpiece, for my watch had
stopped and I had left it in my bedroom. Upon the table lay a pair
of baby’s shoes, and a horse and cart that my husband had bought for
Johnny was upon the floor. As I looked at these things I was again
visited by an unaccountable feeling of loneliness. But it could possess
no possible signification to me, and passing out of the house I closed
the hall-door and walked briskly down to the pier.
The boat was ready. I entered her, and Hitchens rowed out of the
harbour. The surface of the water was smooth, for the small breeze of
the morning had weakened and was now no more than a draught of air;
but the sea undulated with what sailors call ‘a swell,’ upon which the
boat rose and sank with a sensation of cradling that was singularly
soothing to me. The horizon was somewhat misty, and I observed that the
extremities of the coast on either hand in the distance were blurred,
showing indeed as though they were mirrored in a looking-glass upon
which you had slightly breathed.
‘It looks somewhat foggy out upon the sea,’ said I.
‘Nothen but heat, lady, nothen but heat. I like to see fog myself with
the wind out at Nothe. When that happens with fine weather it sinifies
that fine weather’s a-going to last.’
The figures of a few boatmen idly lounged upon the esplanade. A man
in a white apron, smoking a pipe, stood in the door of one of the
public-houses, watching us as the boat receded. A coastguardsman, stick
in hand, leaned over the edge of the pier, gazing down at the little
cluster of boats which swayed upon the gently heaving water of the
harbour. The sun shone upon some bright gilt sign of a cock, or bird
of some sort, over the door of one of the public-houses; and next door
to this sign was another, the painted head and bust of a woman eagerly
inclining forwards, with the right arm advanced and a wreath in her
hand. It had probably been the figure-head of a ship.
These little details of the picture I remember remarking as I looked at
the shore whilst the boat leisurely drew away. What a dull, motionless
place did Piertown seem! The main street climbing the hill was visible
past the curve of the pier, and only two figures were to be seen
ascending it.
‘I cannot understand how you men get a living,’ said I to Bill Hitchens.
‘We don’t onderstand it ourselves, lady,’ said he.
‘You are boatmen, but nobody hires your boats,’ said I. ‘How do you
live?’
‘It’s a riddle, mum,’ answered Hitchens, ‘and there ain’t no answer to
it.’
‘Yet those boatmen,’ said I, ‘who are standing upon the esplanade are
comfortably dressed, they appear neat and clean, their clothes may be
rough but they are fairly good and warm, they are all smoking and I
suppose they have to pay for the tobacco they smoke; they, and others
like them, are constantly in and out of the public-houses, and the beer
which they drink must cost them money. How do they manage?’
‘I’ve been man and boy getting on for eight and forty years upon that
there beach,’ said Bill Hitchens, ‘and if you ask me to tell you how
me and the likes of me manages, my answer is, lady, I gives it up.’
We were silent, and I continued to look at the shore and to admire the
scene of it.
‘The time was,’ said Bill Hitchens meditatively, ‘when I hoped to live
to see the day as ’ud find me the landlord of a public-house. When
all’s said and done, lady, I don’t know that a plain man like myself
could ask for a more enjoyable berth than a public. Take a dark, wet,
cold night, blowing hard and the air full of snow and hail. Only
think of the pleasure of opening the door just to look out, so as
to be able to step back again into the light and warmth and all the
different smells of the liquors,’ he added, snuffing. ‘Only think how
pleasingly the time flies in yarning with customers. Then, if ever ye
stand in need of a drain, there it is--anything ye like and nothen to
pay; ’cos when a landlord drinks it’s always at the expense of his
customers, whether they knows it or not. Then think again, lady, of
a snug little parlour at the back, all shining with clean glasses and
mugs like silver, with a warm fire and a kettle of boiling water always
ready--ah!’ He broke off with a deep sigh.
‘I’ll take an oar,’ said I.
‘Lor’ bless me!’ he cried, running his eyes over the boat. ‘I’ve
forgotten to ship a pair of sculls for you,’ by which term he signified
the light oars he was in the habit of placing in the boat for my use.
‘The oar you are rowing with will be too heavy for me, I fear,’ said I.
I dorn’t think it will, mum,’ he answered. ‘Suppose ye try it. After
you’re tired of rowing we’ll hoist the sail, for we shall find more
wind stirring when we get out furder.’
He adjusted the oar and I seated myself at it and began to row. He sat
in the bows of the boat near the tall mast and I upon a hinder seat
near to that end of the boat which I had heard him call the ‘stern
sheets.’ I did not find the oar so heavy as I had imagined. The boatman
had placed it so as to fairly balance it and I continued to swing it
without much trouble.
But after I had been rowing a few minutes the pressure of the handle
of the oar in my grasp caused my rings to hurt me. I endured the
inconvenience until it became a pain; then, tilting the oar and
supporting it by my elbow, I pulled off my rings--that is to say, my
wedding-ring and two others, all that I wore--and placed them by my
side on the sail, which lay in a sort of bundle along the seats. I
never had any superstitious feeling about my wedding-ring. Over and
over again had I removed it to wash my hands. With many women, when
once the wedding-ring is on, it is on for ever. Well would it have
been for me had I possessed the sentiment of tender and graceful
superstition that influences most wives in this way.
My rings being removed I applied myself again to the oar, and for about
a quarter of an hour Bill Hitchens and I continued to row the boat out
into the open sea. By this time we had reached a distance of a mile
from the land. The faint air had been slowly freshening into a little
breeze, and the water was rippling briskly against the side of the
boat. I was now tired of rowing, and, asking Bill Hitchens to take the
oar from me, I rose from my seat and sat down near the tiller.
‘May as well hoist the sail now, lady, don’t ye think?’ said Bill
Hitchens.
‘Yes, you can hoist the sail,’ said I, ‘but I do not wish to go too far
from the land. What o’clock is it?’
He extracted an old silver watch from somewhere under his jersey and
gave me the time.
‘I wish to be home by about a quarter past four,’ said I.
He answered that he would see to it, and, seizing hold of a rope
which passed through the top of the mast, he hoisted the sail. He
then came to where I was sitting, and set the little sail upon the
mast at the stern, and when this was done he grasped the tiller, and
the boat, feeling the pressure of the breeze in her broad canvas--for
though she was a small boat she carried a sail that I would think was
disproportionately large for her size--heeled over and cut through the
water on her side very quickly.
‘It’s a nice soldier’s wind for the land, lady,’ said the boatman.
‘What is a soldier’s wind?’ I asked.
‘Why,’ he answered, ‘a wind that allows ye to go there and back
wherever ye may be bound to.’
‘The coast looks a long way off, Hitchens.’
‘It’s vurking up a bit hazy, lady, but there’s nothen to hurt.’
‘I expect the sky will be overcast before sunset,’ said I. ‘Do you
see that bank of clouds hazily peering through the air over the coast
there?’ and I indicated a portion of the land which certainly did not
lie in the direction whence the wind was blowing; so that it was plain
to me, ignorant as I was in all such matters, though my perception had
been sharpened a little by being much upon the water, and by listening
to Bill Hitchens discoursing upon the several aspects of his calling--I
say it was plain to me that those clouds were working their way up over
the land, and that if they did not promise a change of weather they
must certainly betoken a shift of wind.
The boatman cast his eyes carelessly towards the coast and said ‘that
there was nothing to hurt in them clouds, that he rather believed they
were settling away instead of rising,’ and then he changed the subject
by asking me if my husband had gone to London, and if I had ever seen
London, and if it was as big a place as folks pretended it to be.