Bedtime—A trance—Thunderings—Chart—Light dims—Night flies—First running—Newhaven—On the gridiron—Mr. Smith—Tumbledown walls—Derelict.

“Where is the yawl now?” was the question we had asked in the fog, and the natural answer was—that the chart would tell, of course. So let us look at the small slice of chart copied on page 245, which is crammed, you see, with figures of soundings, and names of banks, buoys, and beacons; but the only thing to be seen on the actual horizon around us, is the Owers light behind, and about N.W. in its bearing. The tide will soon turn against our progress towards the east, therefore we tack towards shore, so as to be within anchorage soundings should it become needful to stop, for the wind has just changed rather suspiciously, and we can even hear the sound of the drums at Portsmouth as they beat the taptoo. A few bright meteors shoot athwart the heavens above, reminding us that this is one of their usual epochs—the 14th of August.

Now we are in ten fathoms by the lead, and we must anchor here, for the tide has fully turned and the wind has lulled, and perhaps it will do to sleep for six hours now before going on again.

The beautiful phosphorescence of the sea on this occasion was an attractive sight, and I could follow the line of my hemp cable by the gleam of silver light which enfolded it with a gradually softened radiance from the surface of the sea, down—down to an unseen depth, where, in sooth, it was dark enough. [242]

The gentle motion of riding with a chain-cable is quite in contrast to that when anchored by a rope; for this latter will jerk and pull, while the heavier chain, laid in a drooping curve, acts as a constant spring that eases and cushions every rude blow.

I intended to start again with any freshening breeze, and to get into Littlehampton for the night; therefore the small anchor and the hemp cable were used so as to be more ready for instant departure, and well it was thus.

Time sped slowly between looking at my watch to know the tide change, and dozing as I lay in the cabin—the dingey being of course astern; until in the middle of the night, lapsing through many dreams, I had glided into that delicious state when you dream that you are dreaming. On a sudden, and without any seeming cause, I felt perfectly awake, and yet in a sort of trance, and lying still a time, seeking what could possibly have awakened me thus. Then there came through the dark a peal of thunder, long, and loud, and glorious.

How changed the scene to look upon! No light to be seen from the Owers now, but a flash from above and then darkness, and soon a grand rolling of the same majestic, deep-toned roar.

Now I must prepare for wind. On with the life-belt, close the hatches, loose the mainsail, and double reef it, and reef the jib. Off with the mizen and set the storm-sail, and now haul up the anchor while yet there is time; and there was scarcely time before a rattling breeze got up, and waves rose too, and rain came down as we sailed off south to the open sea for room. Sea room is the sailor’s want: the land is what he fears more than the water.

We were soon fast spinning along, and the breeze brushed all the haze away, but the night was very dark, and the rain made it hard to see. Now and then the thunder swallowed all other sounds, as the wild cries in the desert are silenced by the lion’s roar.

Sometimes there was an arch shining above as the flashes leaped across the upper clouds, and then a sharp upright prong of forked lightning darted straight down between, while rain was driven along by the wind, and salt foam dashed up from the waves. It seemed like an earthly version of that heavenly vision which was beheld in Patmos by the beloved John:—“And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings.” [244]

How well our English word “thunder” suits the meaning in its sound, far better than tonnerre or tonitru!

In the dark, a cutter dashed by me, crossing the yawl’s bows, just as the lightning played on us both. It had no ship-light up, shameful to say. I shouted out, “Going south?” and they answered, “Yes; come along off that shore.”

The Owers chart

From the bit of chart here copied (covering only a few miles) it will be understood what kind of shore we had to avoid. There was quite water enough for our shallow craft, but it was the twisting of currents and tides that made the danger here.

The breeze now turned west, then south, and every other way, and it was exceedingly perplexing to know at once what to do in each case, especially as the waves became short and snappish under this pressure from different sides, and yet my compass quietly pointed right, with a soft radiance shining from it, and my mast-light in a brighter glow gleamed from behind me [246] on the white crest of the waves.

At one time a heavy squall roughened the dark water, and taxed all my powers to work the little yawl; but whenever a lull came, or a chance of getting on my proper course again, I bent round to “East by North,” determined to make way in that direction.

In the middle of the night my compass lamp began to glimmer faint, and it was soon evident that the flame must go out. Here was a discomfort: the wind veered so much that its direction would be utterly fallacious as a guide to steer by, and this uncertainty might continue until the lightning ceased. Therefore, at all hazards, we must light up the compass again. So I took down the ship-light from the mizen shroud, and held it between my knees that it might shine on the needle, and it was curious how much warmth came from this lantern. Then I managed to get a candle, and cut a piece off, and rigged it up with paper inside the binnacle. This answered for about ten minutes, but finding it was again flickering, I opened the tin door, and found all the candle had melted into bright liquid oil; so this makeshift was a failure. However, another candle was cut, and the door being left open to keep it cool, with this lame light I worked on bravely, but very determined for the rest of my sailing days to have the oil bottle always accessible. Finally the wind blew out the candle, though it was very much sheltered, and the ship-light almost at the same time also went out suddenly. Then we lay to, backed the jib, opened the cabin hatch, got out the oil, thoroughly cleaned the lamp, put in a new wick, and lighted it afresh, and a new candle in the ship’s light; again we started all right once more, with that self-gratulation at doing all this successfully,—under such circumstances of wind, sea, and rain,—which perhaps was not more than due.

What with these things, and reefing several times, and cooking at intervals, there was so much to do and so much to think about during the night that the hours passed quickly, and at last some stray streaks of dawn (escaped before their time perhaps) lighted up a cloud or two above, and then a few wave-tops below, and soon gave a general grey tint to all around, until by imperceptible but sure advance of clearness, the vague horizon seemed to split into land and water, and happily then it was seen plainly that the Rob Roy had not lost way in the dark.

As soon as there was light enough to read we began to study Shoreham in the Pilot book, and neared it the while in the water; but though now opposite the Brighton coast, it was yet too faraway to make out any town, for we had stood well out to sea in the thunderstorm. All tiredness passed off with the fresh morning air, and the breeze was now so strong that progress was steady and swift.

It may be remarked how a coast often appears quite different when you are fifteen or twenty miles out to sea, from what it does when you stand on the beach, or look from a row-boat close to the land. So now we were puzzled to find out Brighton, one’s own familiar Brighton, with its dull half-sided street, neither town nor bathing-town, its beach unwalkable, and all its sights and glories done in a day. We might well be ashamed not to recognise at once the contour of the hills, which we had so often trudged over in column or in skirmish in the Volunteer Reviews.

The chain-pier was, of course, hardly discernible at a great distance. But the “Grand Hotel” at last asserted itself as a black cubical speck in the binocular field, and then we made straight for that; Shoreham being gradually voted a bore, to be passed by, and Newhaven adopted as the new goal for the day.

We had shaken out all reefs, and now tore along at full speed, with the spray-drift sparkling in the sun, and a frolicsome jubilant sea. The delights of going fast when the water is deep and the wind is strong—ah! these never can be rightly described, nor the exulting bound with which your vessel springs through a buoyant wave, and the thrill of nerve that tells in the sailor’s heart, “Well, after all, sailing is a pleasure supreme.”

Numerous fishing-vessels now came out, with their black tanned sails and strong bluff bows and hardy-looking crews, who all hailed me cheerily when they were near enough, and often came near to see. Fast the yawl sped along the white chalk cliffs, and my chart in its glazed frame did excellent service now, for the wind and sea rose more again; and at length, when we came near the last headland for Newhaven, we lowered the mainsail and steadily ran under mizen and jib. Newhaven came in sight, deeply embayed under the magnificent cliff, which, at other times I could have gazed on for an hour, admiring the grand dashing of the waves, but we had to hoist mainsail again, so as to get in before the tide would set out strongly, and so increase every minute the sea at the harbour’s mouth.

It was more than exciting to enter here with such waves running. Rain, too, came on, just as the Rob Roy dashed into the first three rollers, and they were big and green, and washed her well from stem right on to stern, but none entered farther. The bright yellow hue of the waves on one side of the pier made me half afraid that it was shallow there, and, hesitating to pass, I signalled to some men near the pier-head as to which way to go, but they were only visitors. The tide ran strongly out, dead in my teeth, yet the wind took me powerfully through it all, and then instantly, even before we had rounded into quiet water, the inquisitive uncommunicative spectators roared out, “Where are you from?” “What’s your name?” and all such stupid things to say to a man whose whole mind in a time like this has to be on sail and sea and tiller. [250]

During this passage from the Isle of Wight I had noticed now and then, when the waves tossed more than usual, that a dull, heavy, thumping sound was heard aboard the yawl, and gradually I concluded that her iron keel had been broken by the rock at Bembridge, and that it was swinging free below my boat. This idea increased my anxiety to get in safely; and to make sure of the matter we took the Rob Roy at once to the “gridiron,” and laid her alongside a screw-steamer which had been out during the night, and had run on a rock in the dark thunderstorm. The “baulks” or beams of the gridiron under water were very far apart, and we had much difficulty in placing the yawl so as to settle down on two of them, but the crew of the steamer helped me well, and all the more readily, as I had given them books at Dieppe, a gift they did not now forget.

Just as the ebbing tide had lowered the yawl fairly on the baulks, another steamer came in from France, crowded with passengers, and the waves of her swell lifted my poor little boat off her position, and rudely fixed her upon only one baulk, from which it was not possible to move her; therefore, when the tide descended she was hung up askew in a ludicrous position of extreme discomfort to her weary bones; but when I went outside to examine below, there was nothing whatever amiss, and gladness for this outweighed all other troubles, and left me quite ready for a good sleep at night.

For this purpose we rowed the yawl into a quiet little river, and lashed her alongside a neat schooner, whose captain and wife and children and their little dog ‘Lady’ were soon great friends, for they were courteous people, as might be expected in a respectable vessel; it is generally so.

Now the Rob Roy settled into soft mud for a good rest of three days, and I went to the Inn where “Mr. Smith” landed from France in 1848, after he had given up being King Louis Philippe.

The Inn traded upon this fact, and it had other peculiarities—very bad chops, worse tea, no public room, and a very deaf waitress! the whole sufficiently uncomfortable to justify my complaint, and it must be a very bad inn indeed that is not comfortable enough for me.

Here I was soon accosted by a reader of canoe books, and next day we inspected the oyster-beds, and a curious corn-mill driven by tide-water confined in a basin—one of the few mills worked by the power of the moon. Also we wandered over the new sea fortifications, which are built and hewed by our Government one week, and the week afterwards if there comes a shower of rain they tumble down again. This is the case, at any rate, with the Newhaven fortress, and we must only hope that an invading army will not attack the place during the wrong week.

Three steamers in a day, all crowded with Exhibition passengers, that was a large traffic for a small port like Newhaven; but it did not raise the price of anything except ham sandwiches, and I bought my supplies of eggs and butter and bread, and walked off with them all, as usual, to the extreme astonishment of an aristocratic shop-woman.

In crossing a viaduct my straw hat blew off into a deep hole among mud, and I asked a boy to fetch it. The little fellow was a true Briton. He put down his bundle, laboriously built a bridge of stones, and at imminent risk of a regular mud-bath, at length clasped the hat. His pluck was so admirable, that he had a shilling as a reward, which, be it observed, was half the price of the hat itself two months before, a “No. 2” hat, useful to shop in.

This incident put an end to quiet repose, for the boy-life of the town was soon stirred to its lowest depth, and all youngsters with any spirit of gain trooped down to the yawl, waiting off and on for the next day also, in hopes of another mishap as a chance of luck to them.

The dingey too had its usual meed of applause; but one rough mariner was so vociferous in deriding its minuteness, that at last I promised him a sovereign if he could catch me, and he might take any boat in the port. At first he was all for the match, and began to strip and prepare, but his ardour cooled, and his abuse also subsided.

Many Colchester boats were here, nearly all of them well “found,” and with civil crews, who were exceedingly grateful for books to read on the Sunday, and, resting among them, was a little yacht of five tons, which had been sent out with only one man to take her from Dover to Ryde. Poor fellow! he had lost his way at night and was unable to keep awake, until at last two fishermen fell in with the derelict and brought him in here, hungry and amazed; but I regarded him with a good deal of interest as rather in my line of life, and I quite understood his drowsy feelings when staring at the compass in the black, whistling rain.