Thunder—In the squall—The dervish—Sailing consort—Poor little boy!—Grateful presents—The dingey’s mission—Remedy—Rise and work.

The aneroid barometer in my cabin pointed to “set fair” for many a day, and just, too, when we required it most to be fine, that is along the French coast. Had the Rob Roy encountered here the sort of weather she met with afterwards on the south coast of England, we feel quite assured she must have been wrecked ashore or driven out to sea for a miserable time.

So it was best to keep moving on while fine weather lasted, for there was no knowing when this might change, even with the wind as now in the good N.E. The Pilot-book says, upon this (and pray listen to so good an authority—my only one to consult with), “Gales from N. to N.E. are also violent, but they usually last only from 24 to 36 hours, and the wind does not shift as it does with those from the westward. They cause a heavy sea on the flood stream, and during their continuance the French coast is covered with a white fog, which has the appearance of smoke. This is also the case with all easterly winds, which are sometimes of long duration, and blow with great force.”

In the evening, as a sort of practical comment on the text above, there was sudden fall of the wind, and then a loud peal of thunder. Alert in a moment, we noticed, far away in the offing, the fishing boats dip their sails and reef them, so we knew there would soon be a blow, and we resolved to reef, too, and just in time. My life-belt, [55] therefore, was at once strapped on, and two reefs put in the mainsail, and one in the jib, and the storm mizen was set, all in regular order, when up sprung a fine west breeze, just as we were opposite Treport, a pretty little bathing town under some cliffs, where my night-quarters were to be.

The book already referred to gave a rather serious account of the difficulties of entering Treport, its shingle bar, and the high seas on it, and the cross tide and exceedingly narrow entrance; but in an hour more the Rob Roy had come close to all these things, and rose and fell on the rollers chasing each other ashore.

The points to be kept in line for entering the harbour were all clearly set forth in the book, and the signals on the pier were all faultlessly given, while a crowd gradually collected to see the little boat run in, or be smashed, and it was rather exciting to feel that one bump on the bar with such a sea, and—in two minutes the yawl would be a helpless wreck.

Reefed in a squall

Among the spectators, the only one who did not hold his hat on against the wind, was an extraordinary personage who capered about shouting. Long curly hair waved over his face; his dress was hung round with corks and tassels; he swung a long life-line round his head, and screamed at me words which were of course utterly lost in the breeze. This dancing dervish was the “life saver,” marine preserver, and general bore of the occasion, and he seemed unduly annoyed to see me profoundly deaf to his noise as I stood on the after-deck to get a wider view, holding on by the mizen-mast, steeling with my feet, and surveying the entrance with my glass. All the people ran alongside as the Rob Roy glided past the pier and smoothly berthed upon a great mud bank exactly as desired, and then I apologized to the quaint Frenchman, saying that I could not answer him before, for really I had enough to do to steer my boat, at which all the rest laughed heartily—but we made it up next day, and the dervish and Rob Roy were good friends again.

Here we found the ‘Onyx,’ an English-built yacht, but owned by M. Charles, one of the few Frenchmen to be found who really seems to like yachting; plenty of them affect it.

He was enthusiastic in his hospitality, and I rested there next day, meeting also an interesting youth, an eager sailor, but who took sea trips for his health, and drove from some Royal ChÂteau to embark and freshen the colour in his delicate face, so pale with languor. We could not but feel and express a deep sympathy with one who loved the sea, but whose pallid looks were in such contrast to the rough brown hue and redundant health enjoyed so long by myself.

All was ataunt again, and then the two yachts started in company for a run to Dieppe, which is only about thirteen miles distant. We came upon a nest of twelve English yachts, all in the basin of this port, so my French comrade spent the rest of his time gazing at their beauty, their strength, their cleanliness, and that unnamed quality which distinguishes English yachts and English houses, a certain fitness for their special purpose. These graceful creatures (is it possible that a fine yacht can be counted as an inanimate thing?) reclined on the muddy bosom of the basin, but I would not put the Rob Roy there, it seemed so pent up and torpid a life, and with the curious always gazing down from the lofty quay right into your cabin, especially as next day I wished to have a quiet Sunday.

Instead of a peaceful day of rest the Sunday at Dieppe was unusually bustling from morning to night, for it was the “FÊte Dieu” there. The streets were dressed in gala, and strewed with green herbs, while along the shop fronts was a broad festooned stripe of white calico, set off by roses here and there; the shipping, too, was decked in flag array, and guns, bells, and trombones ushered a long procession of schools and soldiers and young people coming from their “first communion,” who with their priests, and banners, and relics, halted round temporary altars in the open air, to recite and chant, while a vast crowd followed to gaze.

In a similar procession at St. Cloud, one division of the moving host was of the tiniest little children, down to the lowest age that could manage to toddle along with the hand of a mother or sister to help, and the leader of them all was a chubby little boy, with no head-gear in the hot sun but his curly hair, and with his arms and body all bare, except where a lamb-skin hung across. He carried a blue cross, too, and the pretty child looked bewildered enough. Some thought he was John the Baptist, many more pronounced it a ‘sottise.’

In the canoe voyages [60] of the two preceding summers, I had found much pleasure and interest in carrying a supply of books, pictures, and periodicals, and illustrated stories in various languages, which were given as occasion admitted to all sorts of people, and everywhere accepted with thanks, so that we could only regret the limit imposed on the number to be carried in a canoe, where every ounce of weight added to the muscular toil.

Relieved now from this restriction, the Rob Roy yawl was able to load several boxes of this literary cargo, most of them kindly granted for the special purpose of her voyage.

These presents were given away from day to day, and especially on Sunday afternoons, among the sailors and water-population wherever the Rob Roy roved. Thousands of seamen can read, and have time, but no books. Bargees lolling about, or prone in the sun, eagerly began a ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ when thus presented, and sometimes went on reading for hours. Fishermen came off in boats to ask for them, policemen and soldiers, too, begged for a book, and then asked for another for ‘a child at school.’ Smart yachtsmen were most grateful of all, and some even offered to pay for them; the navvies, lock-keepers, ferrymen, watermen, porters, dockmen, and guard-men of lighthouses, piers, and hulks, as well as many a Royal Navy blue-jacket, gratefully accepted these little souvenirs with every appearance of gratitude.

The distribution of these was thus no labour, but a constant pleasure to me. Permanent and positive good may have been done by the reading of their contents; at any rate, they opened up conversation, gave scope to courteous intercourse, often leading to kinder interest. They opened to me many new scenes of life, and some with darker passages and sorrowful groups in the evident but untold background. They were, in fact, the speediest possible introductions by which to meet at once with large bodies of fellow-men too much unknown to us, therefore forgotten, and then despised. The strata of society are not to be all crushed into a pulpy mass, but a wholesome mingling betimes does good, both to the heavy dregs below and to the ‘crÊme’ on the very top.

Thus encouraged, we launch the little dingey on Sunday for three or four hours’ rowing, and with a large leather bag well filled at starting but empty on its return; and instead of its contents we bring back in our memory a whole series of tales, characters, and incidents of water-craft life, some tragic, others comic, many ‘hum-drum’ enough, but still instructive, suggestive, branching out into hidden lives one would like to draw forth, and telling sorrows that are softened by being told. Of the French crews I began with here, not one of the first few could even read, while five or six English steamboats took books for all their men. On a preceding Sunday (at Erith), I did not meet one man, even a bargee who could not read, and all up the Seine only one in this predicament. Truly there is a sea-mission yet to be worked. Good news was told on the water long ago, and by the Great Preacher from a boat.

And while thus giving these books and papers to others, it may perhaps be allowed us also to add a few reflections suggested on returning from the scenes and people we have sailed amongst abroad. New scenes ought to be to the mind what fresh air is to the body, reviving it for work as well as gladdening it with play; and perhaps one can do more for human misery by withdrawing now and then from its close contact, than by constant action in its midst. Yet it must be admitted that the first impressions on one’s return from such a long vacation as the Rob Roy had are painfully acute. To come back and read up in an hour the diary of the three months’ work of our “Boys’ Beadle” (the agent employed by the Reformatory Union to look after and attend to the uncared-for street children), is to resume one’s post of contemplation of the dreadful picture of woe which crowds an endless canvas with suffering figures, and each case delineated in such a report means far more behind to the eye that can realize. Again, to walk past St. George’s Hospital next day and observe the stream of visitors with anxious steps going up the stairs, and those coming down with kind and thoughtful looks, as they leave their dearest relatives, and confidingly, in strangers’ hands, and to think what is up there. To find in letters awaiting one’s return the gaps made by death in the circle of acquaintance. These are salutary and sudden shocks to self-enjoyment of health and whole limbs, and they are loud calls for more than a gush of sympathy or a song of thankfulness, but for downright help by practical work. Still greater was the change from bounding along in florid health on merry waves of the wholesome sea, to a walk through the east end of London,—that morass of vice, and sighs, and savagery,—what is forced on the senses in an hour being not a hundredth of what is sunk below.

Perhaps it is well we do not always realize the amount of evil around us, of bad, I mean, that can be made good by efforts, some of which we are bound to make. If we knew how big the mountain is we might despair of digging it down by spadefuls, though the faith that digs is the one that can say with best hopes for obedience, “Be thou removed and cast into the sea.” Few children would have courage to begin the alphabet as a step to learning if they knew what a long and heavy road is to be trudged beyond.

And it may be remarked that in returning to one’s post of duty after a time of “leave,” there is at first a disposition rather to generalize about what ought to be done than to set to work and do it. It is natural, indeed, that before putting on the harness once more we should take a look at the collar and buckles, and at the load to be drawn, and it may be allowable to the soldier, while on his way to rejoin the ranks, to take just a glance at the line of march before he falls in.

Theorizing is soon cut short, however, by the clamour of work waiting to be done, and the absorbing interest felt in doing it, and perhaps too soon we forget all doubts as to whether the direction of our labours is after all the best, or whether time might not be saved by improving the instruments of our work, the object of using them being still the same.

Now there is a reflection suggested each time in frequent foreign travel which lasts longest on my mind after returning to England—“How is it that our lowest classes seem to be lower than the lowest abroad?”

Whether they are so or not is another question; but in all our great towns there is a mass of human beings whose want, misery, and filth are more patent to the eye, and blatant to the ear, and pungent to the nostrils, than in almost any other towns in the world. Their personal liberty is greater, too, than anywhere else. Are these two facts related to each other? Is the positive piggery of the lowest stratum of our fellows part of the price we pay for glorious freedom as guaranteed by our “British Constitution”? and do we not pay very dearly then? Must the masses be frowsy to be free?

The highest class of society can enjoy the benefits of our mode of government, with their rank and wealth secured, and prestige added. In return they surrender indeed the pleasure of downright tyranny and a small quota of their ample gold.

The middle class also can enjoy their freedom from oppression, and a nominal share in politics, and they pay by hard work for this.

But the wretched beings at the bottom of all, muddled, starved, and squalid, cannot enjoy freedom, and must not have “license.” They seethe by thousands in ignorance and foulness, and, with our “British Constitution” standing by in all its glory, they rot and perish, a multitude dark and unclean.

That all the luxury and congestion of wealth in the head of the body corporate, while its lowest limbs are in rags and pallid mortification, should be permitted by the head, blinded by plethora, and peacefully endured by the limbs, dispirited by inanition, is an astounding marvel. But there are twinges of pain now and then. The very quiet is only that of syncope, and any day it may be broken by a wild and furious paroxysm. Unless the permission of this evil by the head ceases, then the endurance of it by the limbs will cease.

If the rich are not mingled with the wretched, they are at least entangled with them, and by knots that cannot be untied, and will not be cut. The thief indeed, and the burglar, and more lately the lazy vagabond, and now the assassin, have forced us to consider them; and we even attend to the drunkard, provided he pleads for notice by rolling in our path.

Perhaps at last the wretched also will arrest us.

Is not the time come yet to rouse up head, and heart, and hand, to do more than we have even attempted, and to raise at the least the appearance of our lowest classes to the respectability now attained in countries we are apt to despise?

What is the specific? I have no new one, and no new reason for the old one, but it is easy enough to find tools to work with in this field, if only we are persuaded that work has to be done and we are willing to take our share. Numbers do this, and nobly, but far too few, and much is done, but not half enough. Thousands are yet idle here, who will not listen to God or their conscience or even their instinct in the matter, who live comfortably apart from the evil places, and so hear only now and then a message from the dying wafted on the sable wings of cholera or typhus. Is it not shabby this, to shirk their share of the work and the trouble, and to leave it to be done by softer hearts and a national purse?

It is these, who are moved neither by religion, nor humanity, nor self-respect, that a downright scolding may perhaps stir up; and if we can show them that the state of our lowest classes is a national shame, that we are beaten as in a battle and distanced in a race, then they will soon find the means by which national honour is to be retrieved. Half-a-dozen Englishmen are in danger of death in Africa, and we spend millions of money because they are Britons, and to sustain the British name; but thousands of Britons are living in wretchedness or dying in misery just far enough from our doors not to be seen, and less heard of than if they were in Zululand—to leave them as they now are is a scandalous national disgrace which every true Englishman who knows the facts is ashamed of and which, even if he ignores them at home, he is forced to feel abroad by the taunts of strangers.

Already we wonder that we ever kept the Thames as a common sewer; our sons will wonder, some day, that their fathers had a great human sink in every great town reeking out crime, disease, and disloyalty on the whole nation. I have seen the serfs in Russia, the slaves in Africa, the Jews in Asia, and the negroes in America; but there are crowds of people in England in a far worse plight than these—their very nearness to light, and happiness, and comfort, makes their misery more disgraceful.

National honour may be a lower motive to work with than love to Christ or love to man; but it moves more minds than either of these, and on a scale large enough to relieve us from a national disgrace which will cling to the nation until the nation rises in shamed earnest to shake it off.