The Saloon
The Saloon
At the end of the first day of this ignoble process of transportation I had enough things on board to be able to sleep there in comparative comfort. And at the end of the few days during which the Mate stayed away with the children I was able to tell myself that the barge at last looked like a home. The cabins were all furnished and habitable; the pictures were hung; even the china and books were arranged provisionally.
When for the first time I lit the fifty-candle-power lamp which hung from the ceiling of the saloon and looked down the long radiant room I said that I never wanted to live in a better place.
I cannot forget the pride of those first few evenings on board. Here was a dream come true. Wherever I cared to go my home would go with me and carry everything I owned; and the barge was not only my home, but my yacht and my motorcar. Every evening I held a kind oflevéein the saloon. Tom had more sailor friends, and Harry more landsmen relations, than I had suspected. As for Sam Prawle, as critic-in-chief and privy councillor, he was licensed to bring on board as many people as he pleased. I learned that therace of bargees had all along known the best use to which a barge could be put, and I myself figured as a tardy practitioner in ideas which had been immemorially in their possession. Yet it gratified me to notice that they gaped a good deal at the transformedWill Arding, particularly at night, when candles as well as the lamp showered a thousand points of light on silver and glass and china.
Sam Prawle at one of mylevéesexplained to the assembled guests that the simplest way of going to London was by barge. It was evident to him that I had done well to make myself independent of trains, which in his view were the confusion of all confusions. One of the most baffling experiences of his life, apparently, had been a journey by train from Fleetwick to Whitstable.
‘That may be right enough for same as them what fare to understand these things,’ he said, ‘but I don’t hould with them. Well, naow look at here, sir. When yaou get to Wickford ye’ve got to shift aout o’ one train into t’other, ain’t ye, sir? And there’s two docks where them trains baound up to Lunnon berth. Five years ago we was in one dock, and year afore last it was t’other. Well, ye daon’t knaow where ye are, sir, do ye? I niver knaow one of they blessed trains from another; that’s the truth, that is; they all fare to me the spit o’ one another. Then there’s everyone a bustlin’ abaout, and themrailway chaps a shaoutin’ aout afore the train come, and when she do come most everyone’s in such a hurry to git aboard that there ain’t no time to ask, and ye don’t knaow where ye are, sir.
‘Then, happen yaou’ll have to shift again halfway up to Lunnon, and happen not; that fare to be all accordin’. And same as when ye git to Lunnon, yaou’ve got to git acrost it, ain’t ye, and when ye asks haow to do it, some on ’em says, “Yaou go under-ground,” and some on ’em sez, “Yaou take a green bus with Wictoria writ on it.” I ain’t over and above quick at readin’, and I daon’t never fare to git as far as where she’s a goin’ to afore she gits under way. Last time I got someone from here to put me aboard and speak the conductor for me. But then agin, when ye git to t’other station and git your ticket, ye ain’t found the blessed ould train, for that’s a masterous great station full o’ trains. No, sir, ye don’t knaow where ye are, and that’s the truth, that is. Then mebbe yaou’ve got to shift agin on the Whitstable line, same as I did time I went arter them oysters.
‘But same as goin’ in a little ould barge or a smack with the wind the way it is naow. If ye muster an hour afore low water ye can take the last o’ the ebb daown raound the Whitaker spit. Then ye just hauls yer wind and takes the flood up Swin till ye come to the West Burrows Gas Buoy. Accordin’ to haow the tide is ye may have to makea short hitch to wind’ard to make sure o’ clearin’ that ould wreck on the upper part o’ the sand. Arter that ye can keep she a good full till ye find the tail o’ the Mouse Sand with yer lead; then, soon as ye git more water agin, bear away abaout south an’ by west and keep her head straight on Whitstable. Ye knaow where ye are, sir, the whole time, don’t ye? A course, if ye’re a bit early on the tide ye may have to keep away a bit to clear the east end o’ the Red Sand, but yaou must have come wonnerful quick if there ain’t water over the Oaze, and Spaniard, and Gilman, and Columbine. That’s easy same as night-time, too, for when ye’re clear o’ the Mouse Sand ye can go from the Gas Buoy on the lower end of the Oaze across the Shiverin’ Sand to the Girdler Lightship that is, if yaou can’t go overland. Yes, yes; that’s much better; ye knaow where ye are the whole time, don’t ye?
‘I ain’t on’y took a barge above Lunnon once’t, and I remember that well, as I larned suthen I den’t know afore and that ’ad to do with trains, too. We ’ad just berthed at Twickenham with coals, and as I ’ad to goo to Lunnon to see the guvnor I goos off to the railway station and buys a ticket, and says to the fust porter I sees, “Whin’s the next daown train, mate?”
‘“In abaout twenty minutes,” ’e says.
‘So I slips acrost the road and was just in the middle of my ’alf-pint when I ’ears a train comin’,[PgI peaks out o’ the window and sees it come in from the westward. “That fare to be my train,” I says to myself, and drinks my beer as quick as I can and goos acrost to the station again. But they shet the door just as I come in.
‘“Where’s that train a goin’, mate?” I says to the porter what I seed afore.
‘“Lunnon,” says ’e.
‘“Yaou tould me there warn’t no daown train for twenty minutes,” I says.
‘“No more there ain’t,” ’e says; “that’s an up train.”
‘Well, that warn’t no use a argyin’ with he, and from what I could make of it that don’t fare to matter whether folks lives above Lunnon or below ut. No one don’t take no notice o’ that, but allus says they is a goin’ up to Lunnon.
‘They Lunnoners allus reckon to knaow more’n we country folk, but us knaow better an that. Yes, yes; up on the flood, daown on the ebb; and that ain’t a mite o’ use tryin’ to tell me different.’
’O, to sail to sea in a ship!To leave this steady, unendurable land!To leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks and the houses;To leave you, O you solid, motionless land, and, entering a ship,To sail, and sail, and sail!’
’O, to sail to sea in a ship!To leave this steady, unendurable land!To leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks and the houses;To leave you, O you solid, motionless land, and, entering a ship,To sail, and sail, and sail!’
’O, to sail to sea in a ship!
To leave this steady, unendurable land!
To leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks and the houses;
To leave you, O you solid, motionless land, and, entering a ship,
To sail, and sail, and sail!’
One day only was left to me, before the return of the Mate, to examine the gear and make sure that everything was ready for sea, as we proposed to cruise for a few days before going to our new quarters. The place we had chosen to live at was Newcliff on the Thames, where there was a school at which the boys’ names had already been entered.
All the standing and running rigging and the canvas were in good order; nevertheless the waterside pundits had plenty of sagacious criticisms to offer. Public attention was now diverted from the interior to life above decks. In particular there was not a new piece of rope or a new spar on board that was not discussed till all its merits or defects had been discovered or insinuated.
To a keen amateur seaman this reiteration isnever wearisome. He knows how to learn, because he knows that the most casual comment from a bargee or a smacksman is charged with experience. Many of these men have astonishing powers of memory and observation, powers as wonderful in their way as the sight and hearing of American Indians. Recognition of a vessel by the cut of her jib is easy enough, and has supplied our language with an idiom; but bargees and smacksmen will recognize one another’s vessels at great distances, though even at close range the vessels may seem to other people to be indistinguishable. A few men can recognize any craft they have ever seen if they catch sight of only the peak of her sail. Barge skippers who have been in the trade a lifetime will recall the details of almost every voyage they have made—the time of starting, the shifts of wind, the margin of time by which they saved their tide, what they saw on the way, and a dozen other things—never confusing one passage with another.
When you sail by bargees or smacksmen at anchor you behold them apparently staring aimlessly on to the sea or into the sky; but they are watching. Perhaps they seem to be looking the other way, but they have marked you pass and noticed, it may be, that your topping lift is too taut. This or any other detail is duly entered in the unwritten log of their memories. On shore they take their leisure on the quay, walking up and down,never more than a few steps each way, with eyes always on the anchorage. The arrival of a stranger, the way he anchors, the coming and going of dinghies, the manner in which they are brought alongside—everything is noted.
Now, the chief object of interest in the gear of theWill Ardingwas a new kedge anchor. To men accustomed to anchor near the shore and in very narrow swatchways nothing is more important than their ground tackle. They spend more anxious thought on that than on anything else. My new anchor was lying on the quay, and I could hear the comments of every passer by. I was flattered by an accumulation of approval. Sometimes I was below, and did not know who was speaking; nor did it much matter, since the language of all was interchangeable. I would simply hear a voice; and soon another voice would be saying the same thing over again. Imagine a succession of observations like this:
First Voice: ‘Yes, yes; that’s a good anchor, that is. As I was a sayin’ to Jim this mornin’, “That’s got good flues, that has, and a good stock. I lay she ’on’t never drag that,” I says, “if that git aholt in good houldin’ graound. No more she ’on’t faoul that. That’ll hould she in worse weather than what they’ll ever want to be aout in,” I says. “Then agin, that’s a good anchor for layin’ aout, for that ain’t a heavy anchor to handle in a bo’t,” I says. “None the more for that, she ’on’t never drag that.The chap what made that anchor knaowd what he was abaout.”’
Second Voice: ‘That’s a wonnerful good anchor, that is. That ’on’t never drag that if they let that goo in good houldin’ graound. I allus did like an anchor long in the stock, same as that. Yes, yes; that’ll hould she. That ain’t a heavy anchor for same as layin’ off in a bo’t, whereas them heavy anchors is wonnerful ill convenient. Yes, yes; they’ve got a good anchor there; that was made at Leigh, that was, and wonnerful good anchors that smith allus did make.’
Third Voice: ‘What do I think in it? I don’t want to think nawthen abaout that. Iknaowthat’s a good anchor. She ’on’t never drag that,do, that’ll hev to be wonnerful poor houldin’ graound. That anchor’s got good flues, that has, and she ’on’t never drag that nit faoul it. They’ll want to be in harbour time that anchor ’on’t hould she. That’s long in the stock, that is, but none the more for that that ain’t a heavy anchor, and yaou can lay that aout in a bit of a sea when maybe a heavier un ’ould be too much for yer.’
The next day the Mate and the elder boy returned, and the barge was christened with a new name.Will Arding, no doubt, had had some sufficient meaning for the late owner, but for us it meant nothing, and we had decided to call the bargeArk Royal.
Before the christening we moved from the quay into midstream. The warps ashore were cast off, and the clank, clank, clank, of the windlass sounded like the music of other worlds calling. We slowly hove off the barge until her stern swung round and she rode free to the flood-tide and the east wind. Sam Prawle was on board, as I had engaged him to come for our first cruise in order that I might learn the handling of a barge under a good instructor. We could not start till high water, because the wind was up river.
Meanwhile, the christening was performed. Several smacksmen came off in their boats for the ceremony. A bottle of champagne, made fast to the jib topsail halyards, was flung well outboard, and came back on to the barge’s bluff bows with a crash and an explosion of foam as the Mate said: ‘In the name of all good luck I christen youArk Royal!’
Everyone cheered; other champagne (not the christening brand) was handed round, and we all drank success and long life and happiness to one another and the ship. The Royal Cruising Club burgee was hoisted to the truck and the Blue Ensign at the mizzen peak.
Sam stowed the wine-glasses in their racks below; the good-byes were said; the smackies clambered over the side, sorted themselves into the cluster of dinghies astern, and lay on their oars to watch the start. The tide was on the turn, the great topsailflacked in the wind, the brails were let go, and Sam and I sweated the mainsheet home and set the mizzen.
TheArk Royal
TheArk Royal
She was feeling the ebb now, and she sheered first one way and then the other, gently tugging at her anchor as we hoisted the foresail and made the bowline fast to port. Once more the clank, clank, of the windlass; the short scope of the bower anchor came home sweetly, and theArk Royalwas free. I left Sam to get the anchor right up and flew aft to the wheel as she slowly gathered way.
We were off! Good-bye to the land and houses and rates and by-laws! We believed that we were entering on a better way of life. We have since made sure of it.
I think of that first sail still. The newness to us of theArk Royal’sgreat size; her height above the water; the grand sweep she took as she came about; the march from the wheel to the leeside to peer forward in bargee’s style to see whether there was anything in our way to leeward; the size of the wheel itself, and the many turns wanted to put the helm down or up, filled us with importance and pride as we tacked down the river. If you would know what my feelings were then you must think of your first boundary to square leg, your first salmon, your first gun, your first stone wall with hounds running fast.
That night we anchored at the mouth of theriver, and when the sails were stowed and the riding light had been hoisted, we ate our first dinner on board and tucked our elder boy into his bunk for the first time. Then beneath the stars, rocking gently on a scarcely perceptible easterly swell, we walked our decks in the flood-tide of happiness.
‘None of our relations know where we are or where we are going to,’ said the Mate. ‘Here we are now, and to-morrow, perhaps, we shall get to Mersea Island and pick up Margaret and Inky, and then we shall be complete. Is it real? Is it true?’
We sat on deck very late, too much occupied with the pleasure of existing to yield to sleep. The sky was continually changing as snowy clouds drifted across it. In the distance the Swin Middle light flared up like a bonfire every fifteen seconds. Here and there the lights of barges drooped tremulous threads of gold on the water.
Sam Prawle was invited aft; and regarding us now as freemen of the barge profession, he enlarged upon the advantages of barging (comparing it with the sport of yachting, which he seemed to think we had abandoned) with a confidential note in his voice that we had not precisely detected before. But his opinions on these weighty matters deserve a chapter to themselves.
‘Vous êtes tous les deux ténébreux et discrets:Homme, nul n’a sondé le fond de tes abîmes,O mer, nul ne connaît tes richesses intimes,Tant vous êtes jaloux de garder vos secrets!’
‘Vous êtes tous les deux ténébreux et discrets:Homme, nul n’a sondé le fond de tes abîmes,O mer, nul ne connaît tes richesses intimes,Tant vous êtes jaloux de garder vos secrets!’
‘Vous êtes tous les deux ténébreux et discrets:
Homme, nul n’a sondé le fond de tes abîmes,
O mer, nul ne connaît tes richesses intimes,
Tant vous êtes jaloux de garder vos secrets!’
Seated on the after cabin-top near the wheel, Sam Prawle made known to us thearcanaof barging. The comparison with yachting was to the disadvantage of yachting, and we felt that he would not have ventured to take this line had we still owned thePlaymate. On the other hand, we were gratified at being treated with frankness as members of his profession.
‘I don’t reckon,’ said Sam Prawle, ‘there ain’t nawthen as good as bargin’, same as on the water, my meanin’ is. Ye see, yaou gets home fairly frequent, yaou ain’t got no long sea-passages to make, yaou can see a bit o’ life in the taowns, and ef yaou’ve got a good little ould barge and freights is anyways good ye can make a tidy bit o’ money.
‘Then agin, in respect o’ livin’, most all barges carries a gun, and there’s some I could name as carries oyster drudges; then there’s a bit o’ fishin’ tobe done, and accordin’ to where yaou’re brought up there may be winkles, or mussels, or cockles, and, as I says, chance time a few oysters; so my meanin’ is the livin’ is good.
‘A course that don’t do for it to be knaown ye carries a drudge no more than that do to be seen pickin’ up oysters nit winkles in some places, same as on the Corporation’s graounds in the Maldon River. But outside them graounds that does no detriment. I dessay yaou remember some time back abaout they chaps what was caught pickin’ up winkles in the Maldon River. Well, the judge give it agin them, for a course the Corporation has all the fishin’ rights above them beacons. But the most amusingest part was, they chaps’ lawyer tried to make aout a winkle warn’t a fish, but a wild animal. Yes, yes; they lost right enough.
‘Us allus used to live wonnerful well on the ouldKate, for I had a mate, Bill Summers, who was a masterpiece at shoot’n’. He were suthen strorng, he were, and had masterous great limbs on ’im, but none the more for that he were a wonnerful easy-spoken chap. I’ve knaowed he caught a many times by same as keepers and that, but he allus had some excuse or spoke ’em fair. Leastways, he den’t never git into trouble.
‘I remember one November day there’d bin a heavy dag in the fore part o’ the day which cleared off towards the afternoon, and Bill went ashoreafter a hare or whatever he could git daown on they ould mashes away to the eastward there. A wonnerful lonely place that is—no housen nor nawthen but they great ould mashes. A course Bill den’t reckon there’d be anyone a lookin’ after the shootin’ daown there, but there were. But as I was a tellin’ yer, Bill most allus knaowed what to say to such as they. Well, just afore that come dark, about flight time, I raowed the boat ashore to the edge o’ the mud on the lookaout for Bill. I waited some time, and that grew darker and darker, and them watery birds and curlew kep’ all on a callin’, and one o’ they ould frank-herons come a flappin’ overhead, and that fared wonnerful an’ lonesome.
‘Well, I was jist a wonderin’ whether I hadn’t better goo and look for Bill in case he’d got stuck in one o’ they fleets what run acrost mashes, or had come to some hurt, for a man might lay aout there days and weeks afore anyone might hap to find ’im. Then I heard suthen and sees Bill a comin’ suthen fast along the top o’ the sea-wall with another chap a comin’ arter ’im. “Ullo,” I thinks, “Bill’s in trouble,” so I gives a whistle, and Bill answers and comes straight on daown the mud towards the bo’t with his gun in one hand and an ould hare or suthen in the other. When he gits half-way daown the mud Bill turns raound to the chap a follerin’ and says, “Do yaou ever read the noospapers, mate?”
‘The chap, he den’t say nawthen, so Bill stopsand ’as a look at ’is gun, and then he says agin werry slow, “Funny things you reads of ’appenin’ in the noospapers.”
‘Well, that chap den’t fare to come no further, and Bill finishes ’is walk daown the mud alone. Wonnerful easy-spoken chap, ’e was. Yes, yes; us allus had good livin’ on theKate.
‘Then agin, same as summer-time, maybe yaou’ve got a fair freight, or yaou’re doin’ a bit o’ cotcheling, and yaou’re a layin’ up some snug creek, and the tides ain’t just right for gittin’ away, and yaou has to wait three or faour days. Well, that’s wonnerful comfortable, that is, specially ef there’s a bit of a village handy. Or same as layin’ wind-baound winter-time, maybe twenty barges all together—and I remember sixty-two layin’ wind-baound at the mouth o’ the Burnham River once’t—well, that’ll be a rum ’un if there ain’t a bit o’ jollification goin’ on aboard some o’ they. Yes, yes; I allus says bargin’ is what ye likes to make it.
‘What other craft can a man take his missus in—leastways, ef he has a mind to? They what ain’t got little ’uns often takes their wives with ’em, and summer-time they can often manage without a mate in same as ninety-ton barges. A course, that’s a bit awk’ard ef ye gits into trouble, for a woman can’t do what a man can, and a man can’t allus say what he wants to ef he has the missus with him.
‘But that’s true, women’s wonnerful artful, andI’ve knaowed a woman say suthen more better than what a man could. When ould Ted Wetherby—a wonnerful hard-swearin’ man—took his missus with him, they was nearly run daown by a torpedo bo’t in the Medway. That young lootenant in charge pitched into Ted suthen cruel, but Ted he den’t say nawthen till that young chap was abaout in the middle of what ’e ’ad to say, and then ’e jist up and says, “Ush! Ladies at the hellum!” And then the lootenant turns on Ted’s missus, and tells she jist what he thought about Ted and the barge. Ted’s missus den’t say nawthen neither till they was jist sheerin’ off, and then she says, “I don’t take no more notus o’ what yaou say than ef ye ain’t never spoke.” Bill tould me he reckoned that lootenant were more wild than ef Bill ’ad spoke hisself.
‘Then agin, a skipper of a barge is most all the time his own master in a manner o’ speakin’. A course, some says yachtin’ is easier, and maybe it is, but I don’t hould with it. I’ve met scores o’ yacht skippers and had many a yarn along o’ they, but I’d rather be skipper of a little ould barge than any yacht afloat. My cousin, Seth Smith, is skipper of a yacht, and he’s tould me some o’ the wrinkles o’ yachtin’.
‘From what I can ’ear of it, there’s owners and owners. Accordin’ to some, they what don’t knaow nawthen fare to be the best kind to be with. Leastways, that’s a wonnerful thing haow long a yachtwill lay off a place the skipper and crew likes. I remember one beautiful little wessel a layin’ off the same blessed ould place week after week, so I ast a chap I knaowed if she den’t never git under way. “Well,” ’e says, “yaou see, the owner, he don’t knaow nawthen, and the skipper and crew belongs ’ere. Chance time they do get under way, but we most allus says o’ she ’ef there ain’t enough wind to blaow a match aout there ain’t enough wind for she to muster, and ef there’s enough wind to blaow a match aout that’s too much for she, as the sayin’ is.”
‘But there’s owners what sails their own wessels, and Seth says as haow they is good enough to be along with, for ef they gits into trouble they gits into trouble, and that ain’t nawthen to do with the crew.
‘But they owners what knaows a little is the worst, because they thinks they knaows everything, in a manner o’ speakin’, and the skipper has to be wonnerful careful. Yaou see, the trouble lays along o’ the steerin’. A course, most anyone can steer, though they don’t git the best aout of a wessel, but same as owners an’ they allus fare to reckon that steerin’ is everything, which a course it ain’t. Seth has tould me a score o’ times, he has, “Sam,” he says, “that’s a strain on a man, that is, for he’s got to keep all on a watchin’ his owner to see he keeps the wessel full or don’t gybe she, or one thing an’ another. Naow same as tackin’ up this ’ere littleould river,” he says, “or standin’ into shaoal water, ye just says to me comfortable like, ‘Shove the ould gal round,’ whereas my meanin’ is that ’on’t do for a yacht skipper to say that to his owner. No, no; that ’on’t do; he’s got to goo careful like. Maybe he’ll say, ‘What do you think abaout comin’ abaout sir?’ Then maybe—if there ain’t no visitors aboard—the owner’ll say, ‘Let ’er come.’ Then agin, maybe there’s visitors aboard, and the owner ’e takes a look raound and says, ‘In another length,’ or suthen o’ that.”
‘But ef the skipper’s bearin’ a hand with suthen, or for one thing or another he leaves that a bit late, so as he ain’t got time to ask the owner what e’ thinks and let him have his look raound so that fare as haow he’s in charge, but jist says, “Shove her round,” quick like, then the owner ain’t over and above pleased—especially if there’s visitors aboard, as I was a sayin’. That’s ill convenient, that is, for ef she don’t come raound quick enough she’ll take the graound, and then the skipper’s got to say a hill has graowed up or a landmark’s bin cut daown or suthen, and kaidge she off too; and a course, same as on the ebb, that’s a hundred to one she ’on’t shift till she fleet next tide. Yes, yes; a skipper’s got to be wonnerful forehanded as well as careful what ’e says.
‘I remember a friend o’ mine, Jem Selby, goin’ along of a gent who was wonnerful praoud o’ his cruises, what ’e did without a skipper. He on’y tookJem, he said, cos Jem were a deep-water man and hadn’t never been in a yacht afore, but on’y in same as barques and ships and wessels similar-same to that, and ’e wanted a man just to cook and put him ashore. Well, this gent and Jem brought the little yacht—I can’t remember her name—from Lowestoft daown to Falmouth, and the gent was wonnerful praoud o’ hisself, as they’d been aout in some tidy breezes. He was a tellin’ of his friends at Falmouth all abaout his adventures, and the gales o’ wind they had come through, when he turns to Jem, who was standin’ by, and says, “What do yaou say to goin’ raound Land’s End to-morrer, Jem?” “Well, I don’t knaow, sir,” says Jem; “yaou see, we’re a gettin’ near the sea now.” Maybe it were that, maybe it warn’t, but ’e den’t ast Jem to sail along o’ he next season.
‘Well, there yaou are now. Ye can’t do nawthen and ye can’t say nawthen. No, no; from what I can ’ear of it and from what I can see of it, yachtin’ ain’t in the same street as bargin’, as the sayin’ is. Let alone, some o’ they chaps never does a hand’s turn o’ work from one week to another ’cept maybe polish a bit o’ brass work.
‘Seth says as haow that ain’t a bad job to be in charge of a little yacht with a party o’ young chaps, same as on their holiday. Young chaps, same as they, never drinks without the skipper, and a course they most allus lives well, so the skipper do too. Then agin, yaou see they likes to do all thework, and the skipper just puggles abaout like and tells they what to do, though a course they wants lookin’ arter none the more for that. Maybe on dewy nights the skipper ’as to goo raound quiet like and ease up the halyards, for young chaps is all for havin’ everything smart and taut; but that ain’t nawthen, and he can most allus do that while they has their supper.
‘From what I see of it myself, I reckon young chaps same as they is a bit troublesome goin’ into harbour. I remember seein’ a party o’ faour come into Lowestoft in a little yacht—a doddy little thing, she were—with an ould fellow in charge. TheLord Nelsonwas just startin’ for Yarmouth, so they couldn’t berth until she’d gone, and as I happed to be standin’ by I made fast the lines the ould chap thraowed on the pier. Well, the band was a playin’ and the pier crowded with gals a watchin’ the yachts in the harbour, and they young chaps den’t fare to be able to keep quiet like with them gals a lookin’ on, and kep’ all on worritin’ the ould chap to knaow ef they hadn’t better give a pull on this or a pull on t’other. Then I seed the artful ould chap give one on ’em the headrope to hould and another the starn rope—though they might just as well a bin made fast—and another he give a fender to, and t’other one, what was the most worritsome o’ the lot, ’e took and made fast the jib sheets raound the bitts and tould he to pullon that. And he did. Lor’, that did make me laugh suthen.
‘Then agin, some o’ they young ’uns hears things what they den’t ought to. I remember young Abe Putwain, who used to sail along of a wonnerful larned ould gent what was always a lookin’ at things he got out o’ the water with one o’ they microscopes—a master great thing that were, accord’ to Abe. Well, this ould party and his friends was most allus argyin’ abaout suthen, and a course Abe could hear they through the fo’c’sle door. Abe was the most reg’lar chapel man I ever knaowed, and used allus to hould the plate by the door every Sunday till he took up along this larned gent what I’m a talkin’ abaout. Just abaout Christmas my mate left to take a skipper’s job, so bein’ at home I says to Abe, who I ain’t seen for some bit, “Will you come, mate, along o’ me, as yaour bo’t’s laid up?” So he come as mate, and one day, when we was sailing daown past the Naze and had just opened up Harwich Church, I says, “Well, mate, there’s the ould church!” I says, meanin’ the landmark. “Oh,” ’e says, scornful like. “You don’t ’ould with them idle superstitions, do yer?” he says. Well, that warn’t no use argyin’ with he, for he ain’t never bin to chapel since, and that’s what come o’ yachtin’, I reckon.’
‘Here are our thoughts—voyagers’ thoughts,Here not the land, firm land, alone appears, may then by them be said;The sky o’erarches here—we feel the undulating deck beneath our feet,We feel the long pulsation—ebb and flow of endless motion;The tones of unseen mystery—the vague and vast suggestions of the briny world—the liquid-flowing syllables.’
‘Here are our thoughts—voyagers’ thoughts,Here not the land, firm land, alone appears, may then by them be said;The sky o’erarches here—we feel the undulating deck beneath our feet,We feel the long pulsation—ebb and flow of endless motion;The tones of unseen mystery—the vague and vast suggestions of the briny world—the liquid-flowing syllables.’
‘Here are our thoughts—voyagers’ thoughts,
Here not the land, firm land, alone appears, may then by them be said;
The sky o’erarches here—we feel the undulating deck beneath our feet,
We feel the long pulsation—ebb and flow of endless motion;
The tones of unseen mystery—the vague and vast suggestions of the briny world—the liquid-flowing syllables.’
The riding light was already garish in the early sunshine when we turned out the next morning. The fragrance of the breeze coming in faint puffs off the land, the clean taste of the air, the cries of the sea birds, and the tender haze that overhung the land, set all our senses tingling. Yet what a creature is man! As we stood by the main rigging there came wafted aft to us from the forehatch the bubbling sound and the smell of frying bacon, and we could scarcely endure the delay of staying to wash down the decks, though that was a duty to be performed before hunger might be satisfied honourably.
We got under way soon after breakfast, but the wind was fluky and we drifted rather than sailed.About low water we anchored in a clock calm to wait for the easterly breeze which we knew would come later, for the gossamers hung on the rigging. In the afternoon the wind duly ‘shot up at east,’ as the fishermen say, and we fetched over the Dengie flats, opened the Blackwater, and bore away for Mersea Island to pick up the other children.
We anchored in the Deeps, for there was no room for such a large vessel as ours in our old haunts up the creeks, but before the anchor was down two small figures in white came running down King’s Hard. Inky and Margaret had been watching for us. We soon had the sailing dinghy going off for them. How pleased they were, how excited about their cabins, how astonished at finding their toys ready for them!
At last, then, our scheme was complete. The family was reassembled under a new roof, and that roof was a deck.
We met several sailing friends at West Mersea, and found our old yacht, thePlaymate, from whose owners we heard an account of their first trip to Mersea. Off the entrance they hailed the man on board the watchboat, to ask the way into the quarters. The watchman, who had known thePlaymatefor years, and had seen her going in and out scores of times, answered the question in the spirit in which he supposed it had been asked.He had not heard that the vessel had changed hands.
‘Go on.Yaouknaow,’ he shouted back.
‘No, we don’t,’ bawled the new owners.
‘Go on.Yaouknaow,’ he repeated, as thePlaymateforged on.
‘No, we don’t,’ yelled the new owners, becoming nervous of running aground.
‘Yaou let the ould girl goo herself, then.Sheknaow the way in!’ was the last they heard.
During our short cruise we found out how best to arrange everything on board so as to avoid breakages in a sea. Our furniture, of course, had not been specially made for a ship; some of it had already been screwed to the walls or bulkheads; the rest of it could be quickly wedged. The shelves were all fitted with ledges, so that china and silver had only to be laid flat behind the ledges. On deck we hung thin boards over the windows, as these might easily be broken.
At Osea Island in the Blackwater we took in eight hundred gallons of water. We then visited Heybridge, Brightlingsea, and Wivenhoe, and still left ourselves ample time to make the passage to Newcliff and settle down comfortably before the boys were due at their school.
To revisit the Essex sea-marshes is always to discover something new. The dim low land may be called dreary compared with the more vivaciousSolent, but when the spell of this Dutch-like scenery has been laid on you it has touched your heart for ever.
Not all people who are in love with Essex have always been so. The charms of the county inland, as well as on the coast, have to be discovered gradually, because they are widely spread.
Essex has no cathedral which gathers up the interest to one point. Yet its houses are an epitome of its history and character; they look as though they were part of the landscape, as though they had grown up with the trees. Some houses in Essex—farmhouses and inns—often welcome you with a clean white face, but the complexion of a whole village seen far off is nearly always red, and a thin spire generally tapers above the roofs. Churches and houses alike were built with the materials which were ready to hand. There is much timber in the building, because Essex has few quarries. In hundreds of churches, too, you may see the relics of the Roman occupation. The Roman bricks are worked into the lower parts of the walls; flint commonly comes above the brick, and stout timbers are used not only for the roof, but in the whole construction. Sometimes the spire is made entirely of wood, and there is surely something beautiful and touching in the exaltation to this use of the characteristic material of the county. When a beam was wanted for a house, or a roof for achurch, chestnut was the wood, no doubt because of the belief that no insect takes kindly to it. The great building age of what is now rural Essex must have come immediately after the suppression of the monasteries, and you can hardly go into an Essex village without finding a Tudor house. If it be a manor-house, it may have a moat or a monkish fishpond; and perhaps the pigeon tower, which dates from the times when the lord of the manor had his rights of pigeonry, is still standing. The old inns have a spaciousness which informs you of the well-being of agricultural Essex when they were built. Where the land is good there the inns are good also; where the land is poor the inns are built on niggard lines. You can come across Essex villages—such as the Rodings, the Lavers, and the Easters—which for remoteness of air and unsophistication could not be matched except in counties so distant from London as Cornwall and Cumberland.
Certainly Essex has no great hills, even as it has no great buildings. But the value of hills is relative. From many places in Essex only about sixty feet above the sea there are wide views, and you may gaze upon the Kentish coast thirty miles away on the other side of the Thames. The secret of the Essex coast is the illusion of immensity. The dome of sky is scarcely interrupted by the small frettings of land and wood along the edges. In this vast atmospheric theatre a change of weather may beseen at almost any point of the compass planning its tactics on a clear hard line of horizon, and thence swinging up the sky, showing the soft white flags of peace or the threatening front of a battle formation. One even has an important sense of the monstrous nearness of natural forces when the ‘inverted bowl’ is filled with a dark low-flying scud that seems to be crushing down on you in a kind of personal assault.
Men who have become captivated by the marshes have been able to measure the gradual and unconscious change in their feelings about hills and flat lands by a visit to some such spot as the Italian Lakes. The beauty of the lakes has always to be admitted—the purity of the water, the affluence of the colour, the abrupt fall of the hills to the water, the sweetness of the glinting villages perched high up as though resting in a long and difficult climb to the sky. But at the end of a week the visitor may have found himself insisting on these beauties; he has felt that the sense of them is slipping away. He who needs to argue with himself is losing ground. He becomes unreasonably conscious that the water is imprisoned, and does not lead to the sea round the distant headland; that the sky is filched away; and that the winds are false, being misdirected by the hills and simply blowing up or down a long corridor, so that Nature is frustrated in these coddled and enchanted haunts.
In shallow estuaries like those of Essex the tides have necessarily to be studied more carefully than in deep waters. The ebb tide runs faster than the flood; for the ebb is hurried seawards, pressed on its flanks as it goes, by the weight of water that pours off the flats from either side of the channel. The flood comes in from the sea like a cautious explorer. It is as though it could afford to be slow because it has the authority of the sea behind it. Moreover, it has nothing to do with the joy and madness of escape from confinement, but daily performs a sober function of renewal. It is a deliberate, sightless creature, pushing before it sinuous fingers with which it gropes its way through the crushed jungles of matted weed.
For the gulls, the redshanks, the stint, the herons, and the curlew, the important moments of the day are when the water first leaves the banks and a refreshed feeding-ground is once more laid bare. But to the yachtsman the vital time is when the sea advances, bringing its salt breath among the drowsier inland scents, raising the weed from the dead, and changing into sensitive buoyant things the smacks and yachts which have been stranded on their sides, heavy and immobile for hours.
There are two yachtsmen at least who are almost ashamed to confess how childish in its reality is their pleasure in watching the return of the tide over the flats or up some shallow creek. They havenot counted the number of times they have leaned over the side of a yacht, knowing she could not float for an hour or more, watching the tiny crabs scuttle into fresh territories as the oily flood bearing yellow flecks of tide-foam brims silently over one level on to the next; watching each weed being lifted and supported by the water until its whole length waves and bends in the tide like a poplar in a breeze; watching the angle at which the yacht has been lying correct itself until she sits upright in the mud; watching, perhaps, in the proper season, the swish and flutter of the water, and the little puffs of disturbed mud drifting away like smoke, as mullet thresh their way through the entrancing green submarine avenues. And then there is always the thrill of the moment when the rising water touches with life the dead hull of a yacht, and turns her into a creature of sensitiveness and grace swaying to the run of the tide. One moment she is as a rock against which you might push unavailingly with all your might; the next she has sidled off the ground, and will sheer this way and that in response to a finger laid upon the tiller.
As the tide rises towards its height you may see smacks—oyster dredgers, trawlers, shrimpers, and eel boats—filling the shining mouth of the estuary. The lighting of this part of the coast is like nothing else in England. A pearly radiance seems to strike upwards from the sea on to the underpart of theclouds, which borrows an abnormal glow. In these waters, when the sea is not grey it is generally shallow green, and sometimes, when there are thunder-clouds with sunshine, it becomes an astonishing jade. At sunset the vapours over the marshes burn like a furnace, and the cumulus clouds sometimes glow underneath with the dusky fire of a Red Underwing moth. When the water has left the flats the lighting does not change appreciably, because the gleaming mud, glossy and shining like the skin of the porpoises which sport along the channels, has the quality of water. The most characteristic effect is the mirage, which swallows up the meeting-point of sea and sky in a liquid glare, exalts the humblest smack with the freeboard and towering rigging of a barque, and separates the tops of trees from visible connection with the land, so that they appear to be growing out of air and water. Often one might fancy that the trees of the Blackwater and the Crouch, thus seen in the distance, were the palm-trees of some Polynesian island.
On the marshes, or reclaimed lands, which are inside the sea-walls, and are intersected by tidal dykes called fleets, sea-fowl and woodland birds mingle: curlew with wood pigeons, plover with starlings, rooks and gulls, feeding harmoniously. Here and there the mast and brailed-up sail of a barge sticking out of grazing-land tell of a creekwinding in from some hidden entrance, and remind you that in Essex agriculture and seamanship are on more intimate terms than are perhaps thought proper elsewhere.
Outside the sea-walls are salt marshes (‘salts’ or ‘saltings’) which are covered only by the higher tides. In the early summer the thrift colours them with pink and white, and later a purple carpet is spread by the sea lavender. The juicy glasswort (called ‘samphire,’ though it is not the samphire of Dover Cliff in ‘Lear’) changes from a brilliant green to scarlet. Herons wade in the rivulets; the whistle of the redshanks, the mournful cry of the curlew, and the scream of the gulls which fringe the edge of the water like the white crest of a breaking wave, sound from end to end of these marshes. In the winter you may hear the honking of Brent geese. But by far the most beautiful sight is hundreds of thousands of stint or dunlins on the wing together. These birds are also called ox-birds, and the fishermen call them simply ‘little birds.’ When they wheel, as at the word of command, the variations in their appearance are almost beyond belief; now they are wreathed smoke floating across the sky, and scarcely distinguishable from the long smudge that pours from the funnel of a steamer on the horizon; now the sun catches their white underparts, and they are a storm of driven snowflakes; now they present the razor edge of the wing, and then disappear in the glare as by magic; again they turn the broadest extent of their wings, and a solid and heavy mass blackens the sky.