Cool—Fishwives—Iron-bound coast—Etretat—Ripples—Pilot-book—Hollow
water—Undecided—Stomach law—Becalmed—Cape la Hève—The breeze—Havre de
Grâce—Crazy.
So much for Sunday thoughts; but after the day had ended, there happened
to me an absurd misery, of the kind considered to be comical, and so
beyond sympathy, but which must be told, and it happened thus:—
The little yawl being anchored in the harbour had also a long rope to the
quay, and by this I could draw her near the foot of an upright ladder of
iron bars fixed in the stones of the quay wall, an ordinary plan of
access in such cases. The pier-man promised faithfully to watch my boat
as the tide sunk (it was every moment more and more under his very nose),
and so to haul her about that she should not “ground” before my return;
yet, when I came back at night, her keel had sunk and sunk until it
reached the bottom, so she could not be moved with all our pulling.
Moreover the tide had gone out so far as to prevent any boat at all from
coming to the dock wall round the harbour. I tried to amuse myself for
an hour while the tide might rise; but at length, impatient and sleepy
and ready for bed, to be off to-morrow at break of day, I determined to
get on board at once somehow or other.
[Picture: Descending to the boat]
Descending then by the iron bars until I reached the last of them, I
swung myself on the slack of the strong cable hanging from above (and
attached at the other end to my yawl), and which the man received strict
orders to “haul taut” at the critical moment. Alas! in his clumsy hands
the effect intended was exactly reversed; the rope was gently loosened,
and I subsided in the most undignified, inevitable, and provokingly cool
manner quietly into the water at 10.30 P.M. However, there was no use in
grumbling, so I spluttered and laughed, and then went to bed.
Long before sunrise the Rob Roy was creeping out of the harbour of Dieppe
against the strong wind at that point dead ahead; but I took the tow-line
thrown down from the quay by some sturdy fishwives, who will readily tug
a boat to the pier head for a franc or two, and thus save a good
half-hour of tedious rowing against wind and tide. This rope was of a
deep black colour, very fine, thin, and yet strong. There was no time to
find out what it was made of, but it seemed to be plaited of human hair.
As I was aft in my boat and steering, the line suddenly slipped and
disappeared, and the Rob Roy was in great danger of going adrift on the
other pier head, but the excellent dames speedily regained their long
black tress, and coiled it and threw it to me again with great dexterity;
and soon all was put right, and the sails were up, and the line cast off,
and we plunged along in buoyant spirits.
It was a fair wind now, and with a long day in front, and the freshness
of Monday after a good rest. Still this was a rather more anxious day
than the others, because in those though we had passed over the dangers
on the coast of the Somme, they were hidden by water; and on a sunny
morning who can realize shoals that are so fatal in bad weather, but are
concealed by the smiling calm of a fine day? Not so with the great
beetling cliffs of sharp red flint now glittering alongside my course for
miles and miles far beyond what the eye could reach. These formed an
impressive object ever in sight, and generally begetting, as it was seen,
an earnest hope that the weather might be good “just to-day.” This part
of the coast, too, beside being iron-bound, has no port that is easy to
enter, and the tides moreover are very powerful, so that, with either a
gale or a calm, there would be a danger to meet.
It is obvious, of course, to the sailor who reads this that the
difficulty of navigation along such a coast was much increased by my
being alone. An ordinary vessel would put well out to sea, and go on
night and day in deep water with a good offing, and its crew would take
watch and watch until they neared the land again close to their
destination.
But the course of the Rob Roy had to be within seven or eight miles of
the shore, so as to keep within reach of a port at night, or at the worst
near some shallower spot for anchorage; else, in the attempt to sleep, I
might have been drifted twenty miles by the tide, perhaps out to sea,
right away from our course, and perhaps ashore on the rocks. It had not
yet become my plan to pass whole nights at sea as was necessary in the
latter part of this voyage.
With these little drawbacks now and then, which threw rather a graver
tone into the soliloquy of the lonely traveller, it was still a time of
excessive enjoyment. The noble rocks towered up high on the left, and
the endless water opened out wide on the right with only some dot of a
sail, hull down, far far off on the horizon, a little lonely speck fixed
in hard exile; but very probably the crew in that vessel too were happy
in the breezy morn, and felt themselves and their craft to be the very
“hub of the universe.”
In a nook of the cliffs was Etretat, now the most fashionable
bathing-place of Northern France. Long pointed pillars of rock stood in
the sea along this shore, one especially notable, and called the “Needle
of Etretat.” Others were like gates and windows, with the light shining
through. I thought of looking in here to escape the flood-tide which was
against me, but I was deterred by the Pilot-book telling in plain words,
“The Eastern part of the beach at Etretat is bordered by rocks which
uncover at low water.”
The Rob Roy’s previous behaviour in a sea made me quite at ease about
waves or deep water, but to strike on a rock would be a miserable delay,
and somehow I became more cautious as to exposing my little craft to
danger the more experience I acquired; certainly also she was valued more
and more each day. This increase together of experience and of
admiration, begetting boldness and caution by turns, went on until it
settled down into a strange compromise,—extreme care in certain
circumstances, and undue boldness at other times.
All over the British Channel there are patches of sand, shingle, or rock,
which being deep down are not dangerous as regards any risk of striking
upon them, but still even without any wind they cause the tide-stream to
rush over them in great eddies, and confused babbling waves. The water
below is in action, just like a waterfall tumbling over a hill, and the
whirlings and seethings above look threatening enough until you become
thoroughly aware of the exact state of the case, being precisely that
which occurs above Schaffhausen, on the deeps of the Rhine, and which we
have described in the account of a canoe voyage there.
These places are called by the French “ridèns,” or in England “ridges,”
and in some charts, “ripples” or “overfalls,” and while there is sure to
be a short choppy sea upon them, even in calm weather, the effect of a
gale is to make them boil and foam ferociously.
A somewhat similar feature is the result when a low bank projects under
water from a cape round which the tide is rushing; and as I determined
not to risk going into Etretat, we had to face the tedious tossing about
off one of these banks, described thus in the Pilot-book:—
“Abreast Etretat the shoal bottom, with less than eight fathoms on it,
projects a mile to the N.N.W. from the shore, and when the flood-stream
is at its greatest strength it occasions a great eddy, named by the
mariners of the coast the _Hardières_, which extends to the northward as
far as the Vaudieu Rock, and makes the sea hollow and heavy when the wind
is fresh from the eastward.”
It was just because the wind was fresh from the eastward that I could
hope to stem the tide and get through this place; but once in the middle
of the hubbub, the wind went down almost to nothing, so that for three or
four hours I could only hold my place at most, and the wearisome monotony
here of “up and down” on every wave, with a jerk of all my bones each
time, was one of the few dull and disagreeable things of the whole
voyage.
A sea that is “hollow” is abominable. However high a wave is, it may
still have a rounded and respectable shape, and it will then tilt you
about smoothly; but a “hollow” sea splashes and smacks and twists and
screws, and the tiring effects on the body, thus hit right and left with
sudden blows, is quite beyond what would be anticipated from so trifling
a cause.
At length, as the tide yielded, the wind carried me beyond the Hardières,
on and on to Fécamp, where the Rob Roy meant to stop for the night. But,
willing though I was to rest there, the appearance of Fécamp from the
offing was by no means satisfactory. It did not look easy to get into,
and how was I to get out of it to-morrow? The Pilot-book took a similar
view of this matter. {77}
Yet we must put in somewhere, and this was the nearest port to the Cape
Antifer, the only remaining point to be anxious about, and which we might
now expect to round next day. On the other hand, there was the argument,
“If the wind chops round to the west, we may be detained in Fécamp for a
week, whereas now it is favourable; and if we can possibly get round
to-day—Well what a load of anxiety would be done with if we could do
that!” The thought, quite new, seemed charming, and, yet undecided, I
thought it best to cook dinner at once and put the question to the vote
at dessert.
It is very puzzling what name to give to each successive meal in a day
when the first one has been eaten at 2 A.M. If this is to be considered
as _breakfast_, then the next, say at nine o’clock, ought to be luncheon,
which seems absurd, though the Americans call any supplemental feeding a
“lunch,” even up to eleven o’clock at night, and you may see in New York
signboards announcing “Lunch at 9 P.M. Clam Chowder.” {78}
Now, as I had often to begin work by first frying at one or two o’clock
in the moonlight, and as it would have a greedy sound if the next attack
on eatables were to be called “second breakfast,” the only true way of
settling this point was to consider the first meal to be in fact a late
supper of yesterday, or at any rate to regard it as belonging to the
bygone, and therefore beyond inquiry, and so to ignore this first
breakfast altogether in one’s arrangements. The stomach quite approved
of this decision, and was always ready for the usual breakfast at six or
seven o’clock, whatever had been discussed a few hours before.
The matter as to Etretat was decided then. We two were to go on, and to
hope the wind would do so to. Then away sped we merrily singing, with
the new and unexpected prospect of possibly reaching Havre that very day.
From thence a month was to be passed in going up and down the Seine and
at Paris; and what was to come after that? How come back to England?
Why that problem must now be “blinked,” as a future if not an insoluble
question, at any rate just as easy to solve a month hence as it is now.
For a long time the wind was favourable, and precisely as strong as was
desirable, and the formidable looking Cape Antifer, which at mid-day
seemed only a dark blue stripe on the distant horizon, gradually neared
us till we could see the foam eddying round its weather-wasted base.
Then came the steep high wall of flint cliff with shingle débris at its
foot, but no one approach from top to bottom, if any bad thing
happened,—no, not for miles.
This was a time of alternate hope and fear, as the wind gradually lulled
away to nothing, and fog arose in the hot sun; the waves were tossing the
Rob Roy up and down, and flapping the sails in an angry petulant way,
very distressing if you are sleepy. For four hours this hapless state of
things continued, yet we were already within five miles of Cape de la
Hève, and, once round that, on the other side was Havre. How tantalizing
to be so near, and yet still out of reach! If this calm ends in a west
wind, we may be driven back anywhere by that and the tide. If it ends in
a thunderstorm we shall have to put off to sea at once.
See there the lighthouses up aloft on the crag—two of them are lighted.
Soon it will be dark around, and we shall at this rate have to enter
Havre by night. All this time we were close to the cliffs, but the
sounding-lead showed plenty of water, and when the anchor was thrown out
the cable did not pull at all; we were not drifting but only rocked by
the incessant tumble and dash of the sea, which, though of all things
glorious when careering in the breeze, is of all most tiresome when
rolling in a calm.
At this time I felt lonely, exceedingly lonely and helpless, also sleepy,
feverish, discontented, and miserable. The lonely feeling came only
twice more in the voyage; the other bad feelings never again.
Now, there are one or two sensations which after experience at sea seldom
deceive you as to what they prognosticate, though it is impossible to
give reasons for their hold upon the mind. One is the feeling, “I am
drifting,” another, “The water is shoaling,” and the third, “Here comes a
breeze.” Each of these may be felt and recognised even with your eyes
shut. It does not come in through one sense or another, but it seems to
grasp the whole system; and it is a very great convenience to have this
faculty alive in these three directions, and to know when to trust it as
a true impression.
On the unmistakable sensation that a breeze was coming, the rebound from
inaction and grumbling, lying full-length on deck, to alert excitement
was instantaneous and most pleasing. The anchor was rattled up in a
minute, and it was scarcely stowed away before the genial air arrived,
with ripples curling under its soft breath, once more exactly favourable.
Slowly the two lights above on the cliff seemed to wheel round as we
doubled the Cape. Slowly two little dots in the distance swelled up into
big vessels in full sail, and others rose from the far-off waters, all
converging to the same port with myself; their very presence being
companionship, and their community of purpose begetting a mutual
interest. For these craft deep in the water the navigation here is
rather intricate, though the excellent and uniform system of buoys
employed in France does all that is possible to make the course clear;
but my little boat, drawing less than three feet of water, could run
safely even over the shallows, though, as a rule, I navigated her by the
regular channels, as this gave me much additional interest in the
bearings about every port.
When the lights at Havre hove in sight the welcome flashing was a happy
reward to a long day’s toil, and as the yawl sped forward cheerily
through the intervening gloom, the kettle hummed over the lamp, and a
bumper of hot grog was served out to the crew. Soon we rounded into the
harbour, quiet and calm, with everybody asleep at that late hour; and it
was some time more before the Rob Roy could settle into a comfortable
berth, and her sails were all made up, and bed unrolled, and the weary
sailor was snoring in his blanket.
Next day the people on the quays were much amused by the curious
manœuvres of my little dingey; its minute size, its novel form (generally
pronounced to be like a half walnut-shell), its bright colour, and the
extraordinary gyrations and whirlings which it could perform, for
practice taught some new feat in it almost every day.
At night there was a strange sound, shrill and loud, which lasted for
hours, and marred the calm eve and the quiet twinkling of the stars.
This came from a hundred children collected by a crackbrained stranger
(said to be English). These he gave cakes and toys to by day lavishly,
and assembled them at night on the quay to sing chorus to his incoherent
verses—a proceeding quite wonderful to be permitted by the police so
strict in France.