Half-seas over—Thick night—Risky—Reckless—Tied in—Lying-to—Land
ahead—Scottish replies—Sleep.
See the sails are impatiently flapping. Each wave jerks the mast and
canvas with a smart loud crack like that of a whip. The sound is
unspeakably irritating, it seems so useless and wanton, and so perfectly
_de trop_ while the wind is absolutely calm. At other times, in such a
case, you can stop this provoking clatter by hauling up the boom and
lowering the jib; but here, in mid ocean, we must not hamper the sails
but be ready for the first faint breath of wind, and moreover—best to
confess it—I had in this case a serious disturbance _within_, yet not
mental. Strawberries and cream imprisoned with mushrooms did not agree.
They called them mushrooms in Havre yesterday, and we know “there are 371
edible fungi;” but I assert that the rebellious species embarked with me
were toadstools, and so giddiness followed upon sleep . . .
Gentle and cool is the first fresh murmur of a new breeze as it comes
from afar, tripping along. Gratefully we watch its footsteps on the sea.
Its garments rustle in the south, and the glassy rounded waves are now
crested by its touch. Then the coolness of it fans the cheek, the flag
flutters while the sails fill full, the mast bows gently under the soft
pressure, and the Rob Roy runs eagerly again upon her proper course.
Dinner was instantly served up to celebrate the event. It is an
Englishman’s way. Still we were fifty miles from England, but wave after
wave rose, dashed, and was left behind, till the sun got weary in his
march, and hung, in the west, a great red globe. My course had been
taken for the Nab light, which is in the entrance towards Portsmouth, but
the Channel tide, crossing my path twice, could carry the yawl fast, yet
secretly, first right, then left, and both ways once again.
Yet when the evening shade fell we expected to see at least some light in
the horizon, for the English lights are clear, and they shine out twenty
miles to sea. How I peered into the inscrutable darkness, and standing
by the mast to get higher, but in vain; yet still the wind urged on, and
the sea tumbled forward all in the right way. Hours passed, and
ship-lights now could be descried; they were crossing my path, for they
were in the great fair-way of nations bound east or west through the
Channel. This at least was company, but it was also danger. We have
left the lonely plain, and are walking now in the street of waters; but
how am I to sleep here, and yet I _must_ sleep this night. I tried to
“speak” a goodly vessel sailing past like a shadow—I ventured even to
near it—hailing, “How far to the Nab?” but the voice melted in the
breeze. Low vapoury clouds began to rise from the sea; they looked like
dark trees around; but the stars were clear up above. It was impossible
not to feel as if land was there, yet, when my lead was cast, the deep
only laughed at its little reach downward.
In such thick weather it will never do to ferret out the channel to
Cowes, even if we are near it. The night must be passed at sea, and
better begin to do that now than go in too near the cliffs in darkness;
and so we prepared to lie-to. Lowering the main-sail I tried the yawl
first under mizen and jib; but the rolling in every trough of the waves
was most uncomfortable, and besides she drifted north, which might end by
going ashore.
Then I took in the jib and set the storm-mizen, and hung out the anchor
with twenty fathoms of chain—not, of course, to reach the bottom, but to
keep the boat’s head easier in the sea, and this did perfectly well. The
motion was a long, regular rise and fall, and the drift was to the east;
quite out of our proper course, indeed, but I couldn’t help that.
The motion of a vessel lying-to is far more easy than what would be
supposed possible. When you are rocked in a boat making progress by
sails or steam, the pressure of each wave is more or less of a blow, for
the ship is going forward, and it resists the mass of water often with
violence. At anchor, too, though in a modified degree, the action is the
same, and in a swell without wind the oscillations are jerky and short,
for they are not softened by the sails then merely hanging. But if a
boat is staunch and strong, and the deck is tight, and she has plenty of
keel, so as not to swerve round right and left, but to preserve a general
average direction towards the wind, then she may lie-to in a very stiff
gale and high sea with a wonderfully gentle motion. Her head then is
slightly off the sea, and there is but little rolling. The sails are so
set that they ease every lateral heave. She forges forward just a little
between the wave tops, and when the crest of one lifts her up she
courteously yields for the time, but will soon again recover lost ground
by this well-managed “compromise.”
When we saw how admirably the Rob Roy behaved in lying-to, and that
scarcely a wave broke over her deck, we felt that if it came to the worst
we might thus pass a whole week in her safely.
Now I must make my bed. Undoubtedly this was a risky deed about to be
done; but pray what else could we do?
“You ought not to have come there at all,” may be replied.
Say that to the huntsman who has got into a field with the only way out
of it over a chasm to leap. Tell it to the mountain climber scrambling
down, who pauses before a _crevasse_; and do not forget to say the same
to the poor old fisherman overtaken in the midnight winter’s gale with
his life in one hand and in the other a tangled net that has caught the
fried sole for your comfortable dinner.
It would not do of course to go into my cabin. In the first place, the
dingey was there, and then if I were to be enclosed inside when anything
like a “run down” had to be dealt with, the cabin might be my coffin.
First I tried to crouch down in the well, but the constraint on limbs and
joints was unbearable. My head slept while my knees ached with the
pressure. No! there must be a positive lying down to sleep, if the sleep
is to give true refreshment when you are rocked about on the waters; and
this you have no doubt been convinced of any time at sea.
The strange twists of body I tried to fit into comfortably where the
space (in the well) was only three feet each way, reached at last to the
grotesque—the absurd contortions of a man miserable on a pleasure
jaunt—and I laughed aloud, but somehow it sounded hollow and uncanny.
As to the exact spot where the Rob Roy was at this particular time we had
of course no possible idea, but judging from after circumstances, the
position must have been about ten miles south of St. Catherine’s Head,
and she drifted twenty miles east while I dreamed.
[Picture: Bed of the Sea]
One effect of extreme exhaustion is to make the mind almost reckless of
risk, and we can well understand how in some shipwrecks, after days and
nights without sleep, men are in a placid, callous composure of sheer
weariness, and that the last agony of drowning then is nothing, just as
Dr. Livingstone told me, the shake given by a lion to his victim
paralyses the whole system before it is killed. Therefore, as danger was
only likely, and sleep was imperative, I must have sleep at all hazards,
and so we loosed out the folds of the main-sail on the wet deck. How
white and creamy they looked while all was dark around, for no moon had
risen. Then I put on my life-belt, and fastened the ship’s light where
it would not swing, but rested quite close to the deck. I rolled the
thick, dry, and ample main-sail round me, stretching my limbs in charming
freedom, and I tied myself to the boom, so as not to be easily jerked
overboard by the waves. Of course it was my firm intention to sleep only
by winks of one eye at a time; but the struggle with Morpheus was, we
suspect, _very_ faint; at any rate no record remained but a few dim
visions that may have flickered in the soft vanishing of consciousness.
Can any person be expected to describe his first feelings as he awakes in
such a bed and finds it broad day? Bright and glorious sun, high up, how
I stared at you! and then a glance to the side, and behold, there is
land—England. Deliberately I rose and gave three hearty cheers—nobody
there to hear, indeed, but myself—no matter, it did good to me to cheer,
and to hear too. Breakfast was soon agoing. Ten hours’ sleep had
thoroughly refreshed me, mind and body; but I could not make out what
part of the coast we had hit upon.
It was still about twelve miles distant, and as there were no cliffs in
sight, it could not be the Isle of Wight. My chart told nothing; my
French Pilot-book had woodcut pictures of all the coast, but nothing came
of the search in these; and whether we had drifted east or west of the
Isle of Wight we finally gave up as a question—we must go to the coast
itself and see.
Therefore we steered due north, rapidly nearing the unknown land, and
with a joyous morning, barometer high, wind south, and a coming fine day.
Presently there loomed on the horizon one, and then another, and another,
splendid ships of war. They steamed in line, and I tried to intercept
them to put the query, “Where am I?” Baffled in this, the puzzle was,
“Are they going to Portsmouth or Plymouth?” There were equally good
reasons for either.
At length three towns could be seen, and the pictures of the French
Pilot-book were closely examined, but several plates had each three towns
which would fit the case before me, one as well as the other.
Fortunately we chose the middle one of the three, because it had a little
lighthouse. That on the left we found afterwards was Bognor, which has a
reef of dangerous rocks upon its shore.
A fisherman was in his boat, and I hailed him, “Boat ahoy! What is the
name of that town?”
“Town, sir?”
“Yes; that village right ahead; what do you call it?”
“The village there, sir?”
“Yes; what is its name? It has a name, hasn’t it?”
“Oh, yes, certainly, sir, it’s got a name.”
“Well, what is the name? I don’t know where I am.”
“Where have you come from, sir? from the Wight?”
And after these Scottish answers to the questions of a Scotsman, at last
I found my way into Littlehampton; and if ever you go to the Beach Hotel
in want of a soft bed, after sleeping out of a bed for nearly a month,
you will find it there.
This little place, between Bognor and Brighton, is a quiet bathing town
just in the delicate stage of existence, when it has been found out and
admired, but not yet spoilt. One row of houses fronts the sea with a
fine grassy plain between, and a clean white strand.
The Inn was of olden times, and apart near the water, with a landlady of
the good old English type; and her son, the waiter, rampant about canoes,
kept an aviary under the porch and a capital swimming dog in the stable.
Lie on a sofa in the coffee-room detached, and read the ‘Times,’—go into
the drawing-room and play the piano, or sit under the garden trees and
gaze on the fair blue sea, and hope fervently that, with a strong Tory
government to protect our institutions, this hotel may be long kept hid
from that merciless monster the “Company (Limited).” But already a
railway runs here, and threatens its quiet. Even a steamer now and then
from France screws its way into the very narrow channel, where the river
Arun has wound down thus far from Arundel. {188}