Short seas running and a squally wind abeam made the light ship jerk and
roll. The early sun was hidden in the dull purple of a racing sleet-cloud,
which passed over the _Bonadventure_ and swept on to lash the dunes of
Holland lying dim blue along the yellow horizon. The engines beat out
a cheerful tattoo and sent the ship, wobbling as she went, at eleven
knots through the green water. The wind grew westerly but not sisterly;
the melancholy began to expatiate on the short text, "The Longships,"
but the profusion of fishing smacks out around us seemed to show that no
tempestuous weather was at hand.
The next morning, a spiritual Beachy Head was glittering like crystal
in the distance; while the head wind fell upon us, and momently a great
thud like the impact of a great shell shook the ship's sizable frame and
lifted her in see-saw style. I watched the south coast sliding by with
as much excitement as if I had been coming home on leave again. Meacock
was at his most picturesque with his reminiscences of a hard-case
ship called the _Guildhall_, but I could not retain what he told me,
with this distraction of English shores and skies about us. The general
scene recorded itself; of all the magnificent evenings which my voyage
had brought forth this was perhaps the nonpareil. The skies were of
tumultuous colour, requiring one of the old Dutch masters to observe, let
alone to reproduce. A bright brazen sun, throwing at his whim (as it
were) his vesture of clouds about him, burnt out below a pavement of
light ever seething with the leaping waves, and sometimes hidden,
sometimes emerging, lit the sky astern to a tawny glow, or left it
sullen as clay. Here, the horizon was an olive green, there, a blue
girdle; ships in stippled blackness tilted this way and that against it,
or nearer ploughed grey expanses; and above pillars and cliffs of
rocky cloud lifted themselves enormously into a firmament purpled or
kindled into wild flame.
So we hurtled along, the wind flawing, abeam, ahead. The great prow
mounted high against the sunset, or thrust like the head of a porpoise
down again into the onslaught of rolling waters. The hand on the lookout
paced up and down the foc'sle head in loneliness, the officer on the
bridge answered his call as ever, the seagulls followed the ship with
their unvarying calm and pride of wing. Presently the fine light of
Eddystone was our solace.
The last day of my pursership dawned, a day I welcomed and yet was sorry
to find come. How swiftly it stole by! At seven that morning we were
midway between the Longships lighthouse and that yet lonelier one the
Wolf, with Land's End white with snow to feast the eye. The sun was a
Jolly Bacchus, the waves dancing as green as the young leaves sacred to
that god, and the happy porpoises ambled among them. Yet still, as we
swung round the corner, in a veritable procession of funnels and smoke
trails, a squall came down, heralded by a half-seen rainbow, threw us
rudely off the poise and chilled the air to winter again. But round went
the _Bonadventure_ and coasted beneath moors and tors sullenly green
into the Bristol Channel.
The heavy rolling died away as we passed from the Cornish shore (where
they are said to eat strangers), and my Emden chilblains felt the weather
growing much warmer. Indeed, we had not had so mild a day since we left
Las Palmas. Towards three we came abreast of Lundy Island's bluff, and
Hartland opposite, a sturdy cliff likewise. The tide helped us well,
but the wind was veering. Urged by those officers and engineers whose
wives would be at Barry Docks this evening to greet them, and by his
own wishes, the chief had promised to bring the _Bonadventure_ to the
tier in Barry Docks by seven.
Ilfracombe nestling happily under the moors was quickly passed; the
_Bonadventure_ could move when she had a mind; the mellow green country
of Somerset parcelled in such English fashion with such straight
hedgerows, faded astern. The coast of Wales revealed the twin lighthouses
called the Nash Lights, and still the ship raced on. Then, as if before
the time, we were entering the locks at Barry, in a smoky twilight,
after an evening shower; were inside, and tied up to the tier.
Not much remains to add. The next day I scrambled down the rope ladder,
and bade farewell to the _Bonadventure_, that "dirty ship," not unbeloved;
and Mead came next. The boat below carried us to the quay, under the
red hulls of ships gleaming with the light from the dancing ripples; then
came paying off, a most unpunctual and irritating performance, and
good-byes to the old friends, from Hosea to Kelly, of the last few
months; and most of all, perhaps, to that gay spirit Mead. My good-bye
to these might be, I hoped, no such final one; but my round trip was
accomplished and I felt that for me "there would be no more sea," so that
the actual signing off of the purser seemed to me a point in my life's
course. Then presently, after a hearty last word with Mead--kind be the
dog-watch stars to him, wherever his ship carry him--I departed; the
last train for Slowe having, naturally, gone out, I made for the nearest
town to Slowe, and finishing my journey part on foot, part on a borrowed
bicycle, was enabled to awaken Mary while the rest of the parish of
Staizley slept the sleep of the just.
[Illustration: Welcome Sailor!]