ropped.
I should like to see moorings done that way, at Cowes, say, or in
Southampton Water. I should like to see a lot of craft laid head and
tail to the wind with a yard between each, and, when Lord Isaacs
protested, I should like to hear the harbour man say in a distant voice,
"_Sic volo, sic jubeo_" (a classical quotation misquoted, as in the
South-country way), "the wind never changes here."
Such as it was, there it was, and trusting in the wind and God's
providence we lay criss-cross in Lowestoft South Basin. The Great Bear
shuffled round the pole and streaks of wispy clouds lay out in heaven.
The next morning there was a jolly great breeze from the East, and my
companion said, "Let us put out to sea." But before I go further, let me
explain to you and to the whole world what vast courage and meaning
underlay these simple words. In what were we to put to sea?
This little boat was but twenty-five feet over all. She had lived since
1864 in inland waters, mousing about rivers, and lying comfortably in
mudbanks. She had a sprit seventeen foot outboard, and I appeal to the
Trinity Brothers to explain what that means; a sprit dangerous and
horrible where there are waves; a sprit that will catch every sea and
wet the foot of your jib in the best of weathers; a sprit that weighs
down already overweighted bows and buries them with every plunge. _Quid
dicam?_ A Sprit of Erebus. And why had the boat such a sprit? Because
her mast was so far aft, her forefoot so deep and narrow, her helm so
insufficient, that but for this gigantic sprit she would never come
round, and even as it was she hung in stays and had to have her weather
jib-sheet hauled in for about five minutes before she would come round.
So much for the sprit.
This is not all, nor nearly all. She had about six inches of free-board.
She did not rise at the bows: not she! Her mast was dependent upon a
forestay (spliced) and was not stepped, but worked in a tabernacle. She
was a hundred and two years old. Her counter was all but awash. Her
helm--I will describe her helm. It waggled back and forth without effect
unless you jerked it suddenly over. Then it "bit," as it were, into the
rudder post, and she just felt it--but only just--the ronyon!
She did not reef as you and I do by sane reefing points, but in a
gimcrack fashion with a long lace, so that it took half an hour to take
in sail. She had not a jib and foresail, but just one big headsail as
high as t
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