So did we enter that passage.
Jack Sound in that evening light was a repetition of Ramsey, only more violent, for we were more in the full roar of the ebb. There was the same rush as of a millrace, the same cataracts of falling water over the landward rocks. We came out of it with the setting sun glorious upon our starboard quarter, and ran quickly for the end of Skokholm—another Scandinavian name—sure (in that steady breeze) of rounding Saint Anne’s Head easily before darkness, and dropping anchor in some cove of Milford Haven.
But nothing is ever certain at sea. We were, perhaps, a mile from the Head when there rolled up with astonishing rapidity from out the main ocean a solid bank of cloud, sweeping the level of the sea. I say cloud rather than fog, because it was so solid and so dark. It caught us like a cloak thrown over a man’s head; and, before we knew where we were, we found ourselves steering hopelessly by the card, not daring to keep too much out, lest we should lose the mouth of the haven; not daring to keep too much in, lest we should strike: and nothing to prevent that but listening anxiously to the great fog-blast, which was now hooting regularly in its panic from the height of the headland.
What followed for nearly two hours was such an adventure as only wretched amateurs would indulge in, and amateurs in a craft which did not draw more than six feet of water. The wind, such as it was, had dropped, of course, with the fog. It gave us only enough way to creep eastward before it; and what we proposed to do was so to feel our way in the fading light through that dense mist until we should hear the slight surge of water upon the rocks of the haven mouth to port, that is, on the north side of the haven entry. I had a large plan aboard, and I knew that there was water close up to the shore, and that it was plain enough going, with nothing hidden beneath the surface. So we gingerly put her head slightly round, when we made out the mournful menace of the fog-horn to have come just aft of the beam; my companion took the helm, and I went forward with the lead, and also to call out to him to put the helm up whenever that might be made necessary by our getting too close. We faintly heard already the slight wash of the gently heaving water, and I saw, some few yards off the bow, little gleams of white through the mist, which were the foam sliding from the rock surfaces, as we slipped by. The Nona’s movement was so very slight that even if she had struck a glancing blow, nothing that was not jagged would have harmed her greatly; but we were preserved and did not touch.
We had this further good fortune, that, just as it grew quite dark, the sound of the slight surge to leeward receded and disappeared so that we knew we had turned the headland and opened the first bay of that long inland arm of the sea. Our chart showed us good depth and good holding-ground, and a good berth for the night, granted that there should be no other craft about. We heard none such through the fog; no voices, no swinging spars, no movement at all. So when we had got well into the bight, we dropped anchor; trusting to luck that, as she swung to her chain, she would not strike shoal ground nor anything near. Had we still had the dinghy, I would have gone out and explored and made certain, and risked my chance of getting back aboard through the mist, but, having no dinghy, we had to take things as they were, and these seemed secure enough, for we were well out of the fairway. The first of the night was interrupted by that perpetual call of the great horn upon the headland, but before midnight the fog lifted, the sound ceased, and a profound silence fell upon the sea and the land. We had also the comfort of seeing that we had plenty of room to swing, with the shore perhaps a quarter of a mile away.
That night as I fell asleep I designed the second and third verses of the ‘Chanty of the Nona.’
The next morning we found, following the flood up the Haven, a very slight breeze from the west and north, not enough to allow us to beat up against the current; so we passed the time till the beginning of the ebb, or rather till the flood should slacken, sailing slowly up that long fiord, Milford Haven, of which one reads so much in history, but which to-day, having no industrial hinterland, has half dropped out of men’s memories. Two evils of the past are rooted in its landscape, for it was here that the first Tudor claimant, ‘the foul usurper, Henry Tydder,’ landed with his French mercenaries to try for the crown, which he grasped in two weeks on Bosworth Field. And it was hence that the transports sailed for the Puritan orgy of lust, loot, and massacre in Ireland under Cromwell’s leadership. I wondered as I cruised about, watching the shores and the little town near by, what further fate Milford Haven might hold for England. Things go by threes—especially evils—what will the third curse arising from this inlet be?
The wind freshened just as the flood was slackening, so we turned to beat out. It was well into the afternoon when we took the open sea, with the wind a trifle north of west, so that our last board out of harbour was a free run. We took her well outside so as to be able to set a straight course for Lundy and beyond, intending a passage to Bideford River, and the ending of this voyage.
The wind dropping somewhat, it was evening before we had well passed Saint Goven’s lightship, and all that night we went quietly over the seas with a gentle following wind until, before morning, we raised Lundy Light full and clear. But the wind failed us at dawn, falling first to irregular puffs, and at last, when we were about a mile and a half northeast of the island and pointing right for Appledore Bar, it fell off altogether. Little patches of slightly ruffled water, here and there, fewer and more distant one from the other, at last faded out to nothingness; and we lay helpless, hardly moving, until the set of some slight current drew us half a mile further on into that strange piece of water called the Great White Horse Race.
What this may be in heavy weather or even in a strong breeze I cannot tell, for I have never been through it before or since. As things were, in that dead calm, it was a perpetual succession of fairly even, long, smooth, watery hills, with troughs astonishingly deep and rounded crests astonishingly high for a morning without wind. There was no way at all on the Nona; she lay buoyant enough, but like a log; broadside on and rolling damnably for hour after hour; shaking her spars with every lie-over, as though to so many hammer-blows; throwing the boom with a bang, although I had made it as fast as I could, and giving a violent jerk at the mainsheet each time she ended a swing. It was a miserable ten hours or so that we endured, gazing at Lundy from the top of each passing heave, and drifting there paralysed under the useless sky.
Lundy is one of those neat things which you get now and then in Nature, and which look as though they had been specially designed on a rather careful plan with one simple object. One would think Lundy could do no harm—yet I always remember the Montague.
It is so placed that it gives shelter in any weather. It is a sort of little breakwater set up in the midst of the Bristol Channel, offering security to all craft, coming up or down; for there is good holding-ground everywhere about, and you can lie under the lee of the land whichever way it may be blowing. The only drawback of the neighbourhood for small craft is this same White Horse Race, in which we had been caught by the calm. Even in that oily weather, its great swells passed us half way to the height of our jaws, and our topmast, excessive for the little craft, made her roll all the worse, while the motion was so jerky that at times I feared for the fastenings of the shrouds at the sides. But a larger craft would think nothing of this patch of sea and, save for it, all the water round Lundy is exactly made for security.
I have never landed on the island. I have heard many legends about it, none of which I repeat for fear that they are false. But what I should most like to know (only I have never met any one who could tell me) is whether the pleasure of isolation which these places afford increases with the years, or at last becomes intolerable? I knew a man once who, during all the latter part of his life, was torn between the desire of possessing an island, and his fear lest, once he had bought it, he should find that he had purchased misfortune. All his friends told him that islands were like those legendary objects of bad luck which one man has to pass on to another and which each new holder soon finds unendurable. To be king of one’s own land, to be quite cut off from the complexity and futilities of the world, to have a little country all of one’s own, neatly bounded, inaccessible if one chooses to make it so—that is enough to tempt any one who has lived among men. But I am assured by many who have not themselves tried it, that after a very short experience in such things one has no desire but to be rid of them. A community might find it endurable enough and, indeed, religious communities have often found it so; but not individuals, nor one family. Lundy, however, is larger than most, and perhaps the sense of isolation is less.