Sailing Continued—The Pinta—New Formosa.
In the morning the wind blew south, coming down the length of the New Sea. Though it was light and steady it brought larger waves than they had yet sailed in, because they had so far to roll. Still they were not half so high as the day of the battle, and came rolling slowly, with only a curl of foam now and then. The sails were set, and as they drifted rather than sailed out of the sheltered harbour, the boat began to rise and fall, to their intense delight.
“Now it’s proper sea,” said Mark.
“Keep ready,” said Bevis. “She’s going. We shall be across in two minutes.”
He hauled the mainsheet taut, and kept it as the governor had told him, as flat as a board. Smack! The bow hit a wave, and threw handfuls of water over Mark, who knelt on the ballast forward, ready to work the foresheets. He shouted with joy, “It’s sea, it’s real sea!”
Smack! smack! His jacket was streaked and splotched with spray; he pushed his wet hair off his eyes. Sish! sish! with a bubbling hiss the boat bent over, and cut into the waves like a knife. So much more canvas drove her into the breeze, and as she went athwart the waves every third one rose over the windward bow like a fountain, up the spray flew, straight up, and then horizontally on Mark’s cheek. There were wide dark patches on the sails where they were already wet.
Bevis felt the tiller press his hand like the reins with a strong fresh horse. It vibrated as the water parted from the rudder behind. The least movement of the tiller changed her course. Instead of having to hold the tiller in such a manner as to keep the boat’s head up to the wind, he had now rather to keep her off, she wanted to fly in the face of the breeze, and he had to moderate such ardour. The broad mainsail taut, and flat as a board, strove to drive the bow up to windward.
“Look behind,” said Mark. “Just see.”
There was a wake of opening bubbles and foam, and the waves for a moment were smoothed by their swift progress. Opposite the harbour the New Sea was wide, and it had always seemed a long way across, but they had hardly looked at the sails and the wake, and listened to the hissing and splashing, than it was time to tack.
“Ready,” said Bevis. “Let go.”
Mark let go, and the foresail bulged out and fluttered, offering no resistance to the wind. Bevis pushed the tiller over, and the mainsail having its own way at last drove the head of the boat into the wind, half round, three-quarters; now they faced it, and the boat pitched. The mainsail shivered; its edge faced the wind.
“Pull,” said Bevis the next moment.
Mark pulled the foresheet tight to the other side. It drew directly, and like a lever brought her head round, completing the turn. The mainsail flew across. Bevis hauled the sheet tight. She rolled, heaved, and sprang forward.
“Hurrah! We’ve done it! Hurrah!”
They shouted and kicked the boat. Wish! the spray flew, soaking Mark’s jacket the other side, filling his pocket with water, and even coming back as far as Bevis’s feet. Sish! sish! The wind puffed, and the rigging sang; the mast leaned; she showed her blue side; involuntarily they moved as near to windward as they could.
Wish! The lee gunwale slipped along, but just above the surface of the water, skimming like a swallow. Smack! Such a soaker. The foresail was wet; the bowsprit dipped twice. Swish! The mainsail was dotted with spray. Smack! Mark bent his head, and received it on his hat.
“Ready!” shouted the captain.
The foresheet slipped out of Mark’s hand, and flapped, and hit him like a whip till he caught the rope. The mainsail forced her up to the wind; the foresail tightened again levered her round. She rolled, heaved, and sprang forward.
Next time they did it better, and without a word being spoken. Mark had learned the exact moment to tighten the sheet, and she came round quicker than ever. In four tacks they were opposite the bluff, the seventh brought them to the council oak. As the wind blew directly down the New Sea each tack was just the same.
Bevis began to see that much depended upon the moment he chose for coming about, and then it did not always answer to go right across. If he waited till they were within a few yards of the shore the wind sometimes fell, the boat immediately lost weigh, or impetus, and though she came round it was slowly, and before she began to sail again they had made a little leeway.
He found it best to tack when they were sailing full speed, because when he threw her head up to windward she actually ran some yards direct against the wind, and gained so much. Besides what they had gained coming aslant across the water at the end of the tack she shot up into the eye of the wind, and made additional headway like that. So that by watching the breeze, and seizing the favourable opportunity, he made much more than he would have done by merely travelling as far as possible.
The boat was badly built, with straight, stiff lines, a crank, awkward craft. She ought to have been a foot or so broader, and more swelling, when she would have swung round like a top.
Bevis might then have crossed to the very shore, though the wind lessened, without fear of leeway. But she came round badly even at the best. They thought she came round first-rate, but they were mistaken. Had she done so, she would have resumed the return course without a moment’s delay, instead of staggering, rolling, heaving, and gradually coming to her work again. Bevis had to watch the breeze and coax her.
His eye was constantly on the sail, he felt the tiller, handling it with a delicate touch like a painter’s brush. He had to calculate and decide quickly whether there was space and time enough for the puff to come again before they reached the shore, or whether he had better sacrifice that end of the tack and come round at once. Sometimes he was wrong, sometimes right. In so narrow a space, and with such a boat, everything depended upon coming round well.
His workmanship grew better as they advanced. He seemed to feel all through the boat from rudder to mast, from the sheet in his hand to the bowsprit. The touch, the feeling of his hand, seemed to penetrate beyond the contact of the tiller, to feel through wood and rope as if they were a part of himself like his arm. He responded to the wind as quickly as the sail. If it fell, he let her off easier, to keep the pace up; if it blew, he kept her closer, to gain every inch with the increased impetus. He watched the mainsail hauled taut like a board, lest it should shiver. He watched the foresail, lest he should keep too close, and it should cease to draw. He stroked, and soothed, and caressed, and coaxed her, to put her best foot foremost.
Our captains have to coax the huge ironclads. With all the machinery, and the science, and the elaboration, and the gauges, and the mathematically correct everything, the iron monsters would never come safe to an anchorage without the most exquisite coaxing. You must coax everything if you want to succeed; ironclads, fortune, Frances.
Bevis coaxed his boat, and suited her in all her little ways; now he yielded to her; now he waited for her; now he gave her her head and let her feel freedom; now, he hinted, was the best moment; suddenly his hand grew firm, and round she came.
Do you suppose he could have learnt wind and wave and to sail like that if he had had a perfect yacht as trim as the saucy Arethusa herself? Never. The crooked ways of the awkward craft brought out his ingenuity.
As they advanced the New Sea became narrower, till just before they came opposite the battlefield the channel was but a hundred yards or so wide. In these straits the waves came with greater force and quicker; they wore no higher, but followed more quickly, and the wind blew harder, as if also confined. It was tack, tack, tack. No sooner were the sheets hauled, and they had begun to forge ahead, than they had to come about. Flap, flutter, pitch, heave, on again. Smack! smack! The spray flew over. Mark buttoned his jacket to his throat, and jammed his hat down hard on his head.
The rope, or sheet, twisted once round Bevis’s hand, cut into his skin, and made a red weal. He could not give it a turn round the cleat because there was no time. The mainsail pulled with almost all its force against his hand. Just as they had got the speed up, and a shower of spray was flying over Mark, round she had to come. Pitch, pitch, roll, heave forward, smack! splash! bubble, smack!
On the battlefield side Bevis could not go close to the shore because it was lined with a band of weeds; and on the other there were willow bushes in the water, so that the actual channel was less than the distance from bank to bank. Each tack only gained a few yards, so that they crossed and recrossed nearly twenty times before they began to get through the strait. The sails were wet now, and drew the better; they worked in silence, but without a word, each had the same thought.
“It will do now,” said Mark.
“Once more,” said Bevis.
“Now,” said Mark, as they had come round.
“Yes!”
From the westward shore Bevis kept her close to the wind, and as the water opened out, he steered for Fir-Tree Gulf. He calculated that he should just clear the stony promontory. Against the rocky wall the waves dashed and rose up high above it, the spray was carried over the bank and into the quarry. The sandbank or islet in front was concealed, the water running over it, but its site was marked by boiling surge.
The waves broke over it, and then met other waves thrown back from the wall; charging each other, they sprang up in pointed tips, which parted and fell. Over the grassy bank above rolled brown froth, which was then lifted and blown away. This was one of those places where the wind always seems to blow with greater force. In a gale from the southwest it was difficult to walk along the bank, and even now with only a light breeze the waves ran at the stony point as if they were mad. Bevis steered between Scylla and Charybdis, keeping a little nearer the sunken islet this time, the waves roared and broke on each side of them, froth caught against the sails, the boat shook as the reflux swept back and met the oncoming current; the rocky wall seemed to fly by, and in an instant they were past and in the gulf.
Hauling into the wind, the boat shot out from the receding shore, and as they approached the firs they were already half across to the Nile. Returning, they had now a broad and splendid sea to sail in, and this tack took them up so far that next time they were outside the gulf. It was really sailing now, long tacks, or “legs,” edging aslant up into the wind, and leaving the quarry far behind.
“It’s splendid,” said Mark. “Let me steer now.”
Bevis agreed, and Mark crept aft on hands and knees, anxious not to disturb the trim of the boat; Bevis went forward and took his place in the same manner, buttoning his jacket and turning up his collar.
Mark steered quite as well. Bevis had learned how to work the boat, to coax her, from the boat and the sails themselves. Mark had learned from Bevis, and much quicker. It requires time, continued observation, and keenest perception to learn from nature. When one has thus acquired the art, others can learn from him in a short while and easily. Mark steered and handled the sheet, and brought her round as handily as if he had been at it all the time.
These lengthened zigzags soon carried them far up the broad water, and the farther they went the smaller the waves became, having so much the less distance to come, till presently they were but big ripples, and the boat ceased to dance. As the waves did not now oppose her progress so much, there was but little spray, and she slipped through faster. The motive power, the wind, was the same; the opposing force, the waves, less. The speed increased, and they soon approached Bevis’s island, having worked the whole distance up against the wind. They agreed to land, and Mark brought her to the very spot where they had got out before. Bevis doused the mainsail, leaped out, and tugged her well aground. After Mark had stepped ashore they careened the boat and baled out the water.
There was no tree or root sufficiently near to fasten the painter to, so they took out the anchor, carried it some way inland, and forced one of the flukes into the ground. The boat was quite safe and far enough aground not to drift off, but it was not proper to leave a ship without mooring her. Mark wanted to go and look at the place he thought so well adapted for a cave, so they walked through between the bushes, when he suddenly remembered that the vessel in which they had just accomplished so successful a voyage had not got a name.
“The ship ought to have a name,” he said. “Blue boat sounds stupid.”
“So she ought,” said Bevis. “Why didn’t we think of it before? There’s Arethusa, Agamemnon, Sandusky, Orient—”
“Swallow, Viking, Saint George—but that won’t do,” said Mark. “Those are ships that sail now and some have steam; what were old ships—”
“Argo,” said Bevis. “I wonder what was the name of Ulysses’ ship—”
“I know,” said Mark, “Pinta—that’s it. One of Columbus’s ships, you know. He was the first to go over there, and we’re the first on the New Sea.”
“So we are; it shall be Pinta, I’ll paint it, and the island ought to have a name too.”
“Of course. Let’s see: Tahiti?” said Mark. “Loo-choo?”
“Celebes?”
“Carribbees?”
“Cyclades? But those are a lot of islands, aren’t they?”
“Formosa is a good name,” said Bevis. “It sounds right. But I don’t know where it is—it’s somewhere.”
“Don’t matter—call it New Formosa.”
“Capital,” said Bevis. “The very thing; there’s New Zealand and New Guinea. Right. It’s New Formosa.”
“Or the Land of Magic.”
“New Formosa or the Magic Land,” said Bevis. “I’ll write it down on the map we made when we get home.”
“Here’s the place,” said Mark. “This is where the cave ought to be,” pointing at a spot where the sandy cliff rose nearly perpendicular; “and then we ought to have a hut over it.”
“Poles stuck in and leaning down and thatched.”
“Yes, and a palisade of thick stakes stuck in, in front of the door.”
“So that no one could take us by surprise at night.”
“And far enough off for us to have our fire inside.”
“Twist bushes in between the stakes.”
“Quite impassable to naked savages.”
“How high?”
“Seven feet.”
“Or very nearly.”
“We could make a bed, and sleep all night.”
“Wouldn’t it be splendid to stop here altogether?”
“First-rate; no stupid sillinesses.”
“No bother.”
“Have your dinner when you like.”
“Nobody to bother where you’ve been to.”
“Let’s live here.”
“All right. Only we must have a gun to shoot birds and things to eat,” said Bevis. “It’s no use unless we have a gun; it’s not proper, nor anything.”
“No more it is,” said Mark; “we must have a gun. Go and stare at Frances.”
“But it takes such a time, and then you know how slow Jack is. It would take him three months to make up his mind to lend us the rifle.”
“So it would,” said Mark; “Jack’s awful slow, like his old mill-wheel up there.”
“Round and round,” said Bevis. “Boom and splash and rumble,”—swinging his arm—“round and round, and never get any farther.”
“Not an inch,” said Mark. “Stop; there’s Tom’s gun.” He meant the bird-keeper’s.
“Pooh!” said Bevis, “that’s rotten old rusty rubbish. Isn’t there anybody we could borrow one of?”
“Nobody,” said Mark; “they’re all so stupid and afraid.”
“Donks.”
“Awful donks! Let’s sell our watches, and buy one,” said Mark. “Only they would ask what we had done with our watches.”
“I know,” said Bevis, suddenly kicking up his heels, then standing on one foot and spinning round—“I know!”
“What is it! Quick! Tell me!”
“Make one,” said Bevis.
“Make one?”
“A matchlock,” said Bevis. “Make a matchlock. And a matchlock is quite proper, and just what they used to have—”
“But the barrel?”
“Buy an iron tube,” said Bevis. “They have lots at Latten, at the ironmonger’s; buy an iron pipe, and stop one end—”
“I see,” said Mark. “Hurrah!” and up went his heels, and there was a wild capering for half a minute.
“The bother is to make the breech,” said Bevis. “It ought to screw, but we can’t do that.”
“Ask the blacksmith,” said Mark; “we need not let him know what it’s for.”
“If he doesn’t know we’ll find out somehow,” said Bevis. “Come on, let’s do it directly. Why didn’t we think of it before.”
They returned towards the boat.
“Just won’t it be splendid,” said Mark. “First, we’ll get everything ready, and then get shipwrecked proper, and be as jolly as anything.”
“Matchlocks are capital guns,” said Bevis; “they’re slow to shoot with, you know, but they kill better than rifles. They have long barrels, and you put them on a rest to take steady aim, and we’ll have an iron ramrod too, so as not to have the bother of making a place to put the rod in the stock, and to ram down bullets to shoot the tigers or savages.”
“Jolly!”
“The stock must be curved,” said Bevis; “not like the guns, broad and flat, but just curved, and there must be a thing to hold the match; and just remind me to buy a spring to keep the hammer up, so that it shall not fall till we pull the trigger—it’s just opposite to other guns, don’t you see? The spring is to keep the match up, and you pull against the spring. And there’s a pan and a cover to it—a bit of tin would do capital—and you push it open with your thumb. I’ve seen lots of matchlocks in glass cases, all inlaid gold and silver.”
“We don’t want that.”
“No all we want is the shooting. The match is the bother—”
“Would tar-cord do?”
“We’ll try; first let’s make the breech. Take up the anchor.”
Mark picked up the anchor, and put it on board. They launched the Pinta, and set sail homewards, Mark steering. As they were running right before the wind, the ship went at a great pace.
“That’s the Mozambique,” said Bevis, as they passed through the strait where they had had to make so many tacks before.
“Land ho!” said Mark, as they approached the harbour. “We’ve had a capital sail.”
“First-rate,” said Bevis. “But let’s make the matchlock.”
Now that he had succeeded in tacking he was eager to go on to the next thing, especially the matchlock-gun. The hope of shooting made him three times as ready to carry out Mark’s plan of the cave on the island. After furling the sails, and leaving everything ship-shape, they ran home and changed their jackets, which were soaked.