On the bar there was no end of a lump, and, as we were blanketed by that high cliff, the Nona took it uneasily, chucking up and down with flapping sails and rolling damnably, but in a few moments the strength of the ebb had swept us far enough out to catch the wind again, and we set a course full-and-by; right out for the open, for the large. For we designed to beat in again after a few miles, and so make our way down-Channel towards the Cornishmen.
There was certainly quite enough wind: ‘All the wind there is,’ as an old Irish sailor said to me once during an Atlantic gale so abominable that he and I could not walk against its icy, sleeting December fury, but had to crawl forward tugging along the rail by main force, all up the windward side.... That was a passage worthy of remembrance, for we took three weeks between Europe and the Delaware, the engines and the old frame quite unfit for their task; and in that cheap passage, also, I learnt from a stoker two songs: one called ‘The Corn Beef Can,’ and the other called ‘The Tom Cat.’ They are of the great songs of this world.
A man should learn all the songs he can. Songs are a possession, and all men who write good songs are benefactors. No people have so many songs as the English, yet no people sing less in these last sad days of ours. One cannot sing in a book. Could a man sing in a book, willingly would I sing to you here and now in a loud voice ‘The Corn Beef Can’ and ‘The Tom Cat,’ those admirable songs which I learnt in early manhood upon the Atlantic seas.
There was more wind, indeed, than I liked. We took in the third reef, and went about to the starboard tack, after we had run out so far that we thought we could fetch, upon this tack, the next harbour. As we came near to that town, and saw its roofs far away appear and disappear again behind the crests of unpleasant seas, the Nona heeled suddenly to a much too angry gust. I heard a crash coming from below, and with it the voice of my companion crying, ‘Come down quick and help!’
The Crew (if I may call him so) was sitting forward, hunched up, clutching the weather shrouds, and not happy. I called him to come and hold the tiller, while I should go below to help, and I warned him that she was pulling hard, although she was under three reefs, for we had nothing forward now but the third jib. He looked over his shoulder in a very ghastly way, and shook his head from side to side, as though despairing to be heard in such a wind. I was within a few feet of him, and I bawled, ‘COME AND TAKE THE TILLER! QUICK!’ but again he miserably shook his head, and clung to the shroud. Then did I, commending myself to Saint Elmo (which is a false name, for his real name was Peter, and even Gonzales, and he was the man who was so shocked to find all the Galicians lapsed into a pagan darkness and living in open fun), struggle to make some shift of keeping the tiller up with my right arm stretched back, while I craned my head down below the cabin door to see what was going on downstairs.
The stove had got adrift in the lurch. There was oil all over the place, and a mass of crockery, and everything on the weather side had leapt to leeward, and some little of it trailed in the oil of the floor-boards. It was not more serious than that; for, luckily, the stove was not alight. I shouted to my companion that I could not leave the tiller. I bobbed up my head again and found that even in that short moment she had almost swung into irons. I put her round just in time, and we raced and flew, breasting the seas for that farther little misty harbour town.
The Nona is like those women who are peevish and intolerable under all conditions of reasonable happiness, but come out magnificently in distress. I lie; for the Nona is never peevish and intolerable. What I mean is that in easy weather she is a little sluggish on the helm, and has one or two other small faults, excusable after the fortieth, the fiftieth, year: for she was launched before Plevna, though, it is true, a year or two after Sedan. She has her mortalities; but in a seaway she is magnificent. With her few inches of freeboard, her old-fashioned straight stem, her solid grip upon the water, she takes the sea as though she belonged to it, and so she went that day, riding in highbred fashion, worthy of all praise, and praise she received from me as she leant over and took the combers one after the other. I gave her perpetual encouragement: for no boat will do her best unless she is sufficiently flattered.
Thanks to that increasing wind, the passage was short enough, and what we had said would at most take three days was accomplished between a morning and an evening, for it was still broad daylight when we passed outside the group of rocks of which the chart warned us, and stood within a mile or two of the now distinct houses of that little harbour town, all full of Cornish men.
But the wind still rose, and for the wind to rise when day is falling is a very bad sign. I had no desire to ride it out in the open, and I proposed to get in under the lee of the land (for there was a sort of point there), and not to drop anchor till I could be sure of plenty of water in the harbour later on, when I should make for it on the flood.
My companion came up on deck, from settling things below, and we cast about anxiously for a place where the anchor might be let go.
It was not an easy calculation. She was driving pretty fast. One had to get well under the shelter of the low point, and yet to leave plenty of water beneath one in which to swing. I asked him to go forward and get all ready, and the Crew would help him. But the Crew did not do so.
The sea being now calmer (though the wind was still rising) because we had come under the lee of the point, the Crew did, indeed, stagger forward; but he still held on manfully by the forestay, and looked curiously on my companion’s activity with the anchor as at a novel and a pleasant sight. Beyond that he did nothing; but I think he was proud of keeping his legs so long as he could grasp that forestay. It is no use to argue nor much use to command in the face of imbecility.
I shouted to my companion to let go the chain when I thought the right moment come, and at the same instant brought her up sharp.
The anchor took the ground. We were in, perhaps, five fathom of flood water; for it was full evening, though still light. When we had so lain for a quarter of an hour or so, taking stock of everything around, I asked my companion whether we could not, with the last of the light and the last of the flood, make harbour. The wind was still rising, but we should be running before it towards the not distant pier. Rounding that stonework, we should shoot right into the wind’s eye, when it probably would be broken by the hillside of houses beyond, and, even though we did not know how far the harbour might still be dried out, we should be in safety, with plenty of water beneath our keel for an hour or two more, while we enquired where we should berth. So we decided to risk it, though perhaps wiser men would have ridden out the night where we lay.
She certainly took a great deal of water aboard during that short mile or two, with more and more breakers as we got farther and farther from the protection of the point. Once, when she buried badly, I was afraid the sprit might snap, for I had not housed it. But she carried through all right (though the sprit bent like a willow wand), and we rounded in the gloaming, shot past the pier-end, and dropped anchor immediately inside.
A man hailed us from the shore; we threw him a rope, and he showed us where to berth in water that would just or nearly float us, even at the lowest of the tide.
The Crew was no longer indolent, now that he had left behind him the pitiless waste of the seas and felt once more beneath his feet the solid strength of England. He did what he was told in fastening warps and putting out fenders. Then came the moment for payment: wage and the railway fare home. Before he went over the side I asked him gently whether he had ever been to sea before. He said: ‘Oh, yes, in a manner of speaking.’ I asked him whether he had ever handled a tiller. ‘Not by rights,’ he said. ‘Not in such a boat as this.’ I asked him whether he had any fault to find with the boat. He said no, she was a very good boat so far as he could see, but he did not pretend to understand these things. He went over the side into the darkness. He was and he remains a mystery.
Was he a Charon man who pulled a ferry from shore to shore? Or was he a man who lounged about on the quay, dressed as his companions were dressed, but timid of tumbling water? Or was he a vision? Or a detective? Or an actor? Or one of those writing men who pretend to go to sea in boats, but never do? I cannot tell. I never saw him again.
This episode of the man in sailor clothes with the hitch, who knew nothing of the sea, started my mind upon two ways, which, as they diverged, I could not both follow.
For first it made me think of how we judge by immediate indications—and the taking-in of people through this method is at the basis of most commercial successes; even this poor fellow had made some shillings by it. But also it led me to consider how astonishingly in the modern world we live side by side and know nothing of one another.