From the Island of Dagö to the Island of Moon

At Heltermaa we were to stay for longer than we wished. We lay there from the 12th to the 17th of September, watching the barometer and the sky and getting sharp pains in the backs of our necks from looking up the mast at the wimpel, which for all that time showed us a wind in our teeth, while, as we could see from the bowing spar-buoys outside, there was a current to match it. To beat S. against wind and stream was hopeless. So we lay there and talked of how when our own wind came we would fly southward through the Moon Sound and then run from end to end of the Riga Gulf in a single twenty-four hours. When our wind came we actually did that run in many hours less, and most of it under almost bare poles, but our wind was a long time in coming. Meanwhile there was plenty of wind of the wrong sort, which blew our flag to pieces and unravelled it until there was hardly any of it left. The Ancient made a new long wimpel from a strip of red bunting, and when I joked with him for hoisting a Bolshevik flag, replied: “It’ll give the wind a fright and make it blow the other way.” But the wind seemed rather to relish it, and blew on day after day.

The second day after our arrival there was half a gale from the S.E., and a heavy swell came through the wooden piles of the pier. The schooner from Worms had warped into the quay to load apples and we had shifted to make room, and then tied up to the schooner, hoping for better protection. But that night, at two o’clock in the morning, a loud crack brought me on deck, barefoot and in pyjamas, to meet the Ancient, who had tumbled up out of the forehatch at the same moment, and the two of us, just in time, hanging on a rope with all the strength we had, held Racundra, while we fixed a new warp to replace the stout one that had parted. It had chafed through in spite of heavy parcelling, and thereafter we not only served and parcelled it where it crossed the schooner’s railing, but spliced it as if it were a broken limb, binding chips of firewood round it, so that it lay snug in a wooden shell. Even that had worn thin before we left, but the rope was kept in perfect condition, and the dodge is one to recommend to any other little cruisers in such circumstances.

Not all the inhabitants of Dagö were as friendly to us as those with whom I had talked on that first evening. Some are stern patriots, and show their feelings by refusing to talk the languages which, until in 1919 they became independent, had been imposed on them by force. All three of us knew a few words of Estonian and made what play we could with them, but when it came to serious business had to use Russian, German or Swedish. Now, there was one stout old man in top-boots who used to come down on the quay and seemed to have authority among the others. He had said “Good day” to us in Estonian once, and we had replied in Estonian, for politeness’ sake, and perhaps from pride in this small scrap of our uncertain vocabulary. But next day, when he came again, the Ancient, talking Russian, tried to learn from him where he could buy meat, and the Estonian flushed red and angry, and asked him what he was talking Russian for, when he had shown the day before that he could talk Estonian as well as himself. The poor Ancient tried to make him believe that he knew how to say “Good morning,” but did not know how to say anything else, but the Estonian would not be appeased, turned his back on him and took up a fine Napoleon attitude on the pierhead, “as if,” said the Ancient, “he would like to be the stone figure of a patriot.” Unfortunately, however, he was not content with being a stone figure, but tried to persuade others of his fellow-countrymen to have no dealings with us except in Estonian. After that there were two factions among the people who came down to the quay⁠—the patriots who would have nothing to do with us and the cosmopolitans who sold us what they had and made us presents of ripe apples and worms for our fishing, and, when in the middle of the night the little steamer came from Reval, woke us up with shouts from the quay, lest we should miss our share of the general happy excitement. The two factions came often to hot words, and among the younger members to blows; and we, who had hoped in Racundra to escape politics of any kind, found it a little tedious to be bones of contention. We felt, in our little ship in that foreign harbour, what a small nation must feel while its fate is being discussed by greater Powers.

During the days when we were not fishing, and, since the wind from the south was blowing the bait in the fishes’ mouth, catching plenty of good fish suppers, we walked on the island. We found a great number of fossils on the beach⁠—stone sponges and petrified shells of different shapes. We also found lucky stones, with natural holes in them, like (but how different from!) the lucky stone on Racundra’s cabin wall, that came from Coniston and the friendliest house in England. It was warm in the sunshine, and I saw a green woodpecker, but he is with us all the year, and from other signs it was only too clear that winter was falling swiftly upon us. The starlings were in great flocks. The leaves on the trees were turning and the nights were growing long. The very apples that were being brought down to the quay in little springless carts and carefully packed away in the hold of the schooner beside us were a warning that the days were coming when, in these waters at any rate, little ships cannot keep the sea. The Ancient began talking with persistent gloom about “the Equinotion time,” when the Gulf of Riga would be at its very worst. The autumn equinox of September 23rd was indeed close at hand; and we were held here as if by some malice of its own to wait for its notorious inhospitality.

However, when we had begun to think that we should have to run back to Reval, lay the yacht up there and get back to work, we were released in cat-and-mouse fashion and allowed to get a little farther S. Late in the night of September 16th there was a breath of wind from the W. We hardly dared to trust it, but, with faint hope, set alarm-clocks to wake us early. At half-past six next morning the wind freshened from the W. again, and ten minutes later we were swinging from the end of the pier on a single warp while we hoisted sail. Five minutes after that, with main and mizzen set, we cast off, rejoicing like prisoners released, and running up our staysail when we were already under way. By half-past seven we were well out into the Sound, and bore up on the starboard tack to pass about a mile E. of the island of Heinlaid. Thence we steered S. by E. and ¾ E., looking for the bell-buoy in the middle of the Sound.

The wind was one to stir the blood and we were all in the best of spirits, taking it in turns to go below and eat great quantities of porridge, when we sighted a biggish steamer coming up from the S., with buff funnel and black top to it, and the peculiar bows that belong to our friend the Baltabor. As she came nearer, however, the Ancient, whose eyes are usually better than mine, decided that she was not the Baltabor but a German. “Yet her bows are awfully like,” I said, “though she has hardly had time to go to England and back since she steamed out of Reval harbour with the Pelorus she had promised to lend us still on board.” These words I said as I turned to go below, but I was not halfway down the companion steps when I was stopped by the Baltabor’s siren. I had gone down for the strong binoculars, but did not need them now. Yes; the Baltabor it was, and⁠ ⁠… quick with that ensign Whalley has sent a man to the jack staff. Up goes our ensign, flutters at the mizzen top, dips halfway down and up again, while our big friend’s ensign, about as broad as our mainsail, does the same. It was the very pleasantest of greetings between the big and little British ships meeting each other on this cold, sunny September morning on a sea so utterly unlike the seas of England. Moreover, we were doing 5.6 knots at the time, and that was a mighty satisfaction, as the last occasion on which Baltabor had seen us under sail was when we were slowly tacking through the Mühlgraben by Riga, and we were afraid she might have been given a poorish notion of our speed.

We sighted our bell-buoy close on the port bow, just where it should have been, and this, together with Baltabor and the sun and the blue water and the keen air and the wind that suited Racundra from truck to keel, all combined to make us delighted with ourselves and Fate. But we patted Fate on the back too soon. “We shall be in Riga tomorrow,” we cried, as we saluted the bell-buoy triumphantly, and steered southwards to bring the beacons of the island of Moon in a line. But, just as we did so, we found we were standing nearly close-hauled. The wind was backing to the S. again. We were now retracing the course we had followed when running up from Paternoster on the outward voyage, and at 10:45 passed the Moon light-buoy, finished with the Moon beacons and steered for those of Shildau Island. An hour later we were past Shildau, and at noon, the wind having gone definitely to S.W. and strengthened very much, were steering for the Kuivast anchorage, to bring up there and see what was going to happen next. The aged cutter that plies as ferryboat between Kuivast and the mainland passed on the port tack close across our bows and then went about. We raced them for the anchorage and beat them, anchoring at 12:30 close off the pier at Kuivast in two fathoms, stiff clay bottom, and getting our sails down in time to watch the cutter bring up to the pier. Here were a number of cattle awaiting it, and we saw for the first time the fiery orange petticoats and black bodices which are the national costume of the women of Moon. We watched the women go on board with their cattle, and then, as it was clear that we were in for another southerly storm, put the covers on the sails. We had made good something over twenty-five miles.

There is no harbour at Kuivast, nothing but a short pier, crooked at the outer end, but enclosing so small a space that even the little steamers never attempt to enter it. The ferry-cutter tied up inside to load cattle, but had only just room, the rest of the space being occupied by two small waterlogged barges. The anchorage immediately off the pier is very good, as far as holding-capacity goes, but very bad as regards protection. We learnt later that we had dropped our anchor in the best possible place, as farther south the rock is very near the surface. Indeed, a schooner that anchored there dragged her hook and had to spend the night beating. The protection is even worse than appears, as we were to learn to our cost. On the chart the place would seem to be perfectly sheltered from all winds between S.W. and N.W. This is not so. With both southerly and northerly winds, owing perhaps to some trick of the variable current, the swell rushes across the wind and breaks over the Kuivast pier. Both English and German charts mark this place as the best anchorage. For smaller vessels, however, there is now a very much better stopping-place on the other side of the Sound. Of that, however, we knew nothing when we arrived.

The orange-petticoated women drove their cattle into the cutter, and for some time a few of the men of Moon watched us from the pierhead, but presently, as it began to blow harder, men and women alike went off to the shelter of the tumbledown houses. It was not till late in the afternoon, when the wind slackened, that the cutter thought fit to sail, when it made straight across the Sound to some landing-place on the other side. Then, not wishing to lose the chance of saying that I had at least talked with some of the people of Moon, I made up my mind to go ashore. The Ancient helped me to sling the dinghy overboard with the fore-halyard, and I tumbled in with the milk-can and pulled for the landing place.

Under the wall of a half-rained cottage close to the shore was a bench, and on it were four of the men of Moon, or rather, three men of Moon and a policeman in a neat grey uniform, who told me that he, too, was a foreigner in this place, since he had not been born on Moon, but on the larger island of Oesel. I greeted them with “Tere, tere” as I approached, and was answered in the same way. Then I tried English on the policeman. He knew what it was, though he could not speak it, and I heard him announce his discovery to the others. Then I tried Russian and found he could talk Russian just about as badly as I talk it myself. The others knew only two or three words of the language, but, unlike the patriots of Heltermaa, they were willing enough to use the words they knew, and, indeed, put them eagerly, by way of punctuation marks, into the conversation between the policeman and myself.

The policeman was a delightful fellow: asked where we were going, praised the speed of our little ship as compared with that of the ferry-cutter, told me not to use the water from the well by the pier, because it and everything cooked with it would taste of seaweed, but to take water from the other well by the inn. “At least,” he said, lest he should raise false hopes, “it used to be an inn.” When I asked for milk, he volunteered at once to take me to this ci-devant tavern, and, in case the man there or his wife did not understand to translate for me. With that we sauntered up the muddy lane together and passed without ceremony through the stone Gates of Moon.

From Racundra’s deck I had seen these two strange stone columns on either side of the road leading inland from the pier and had asked the Ancient what he made of them.

“Those,” said he, “mighta be the Gates of Moon, of which I have often heard tell. The barons that lived here did all for themselves as themselves liked best, and would allow no one to land on Moon without he went through those gates, and no one through those gates without he paid what the barons thought they could get from him.” This sounded a little too much like Huck Finn’s account of kings, so I had gone ashore with an open mind.

I asked the policeman what the pillars were.

“There are a lot of fairy tales about them,” said he, “but I think myself that they were set up in honour of the Emperor Nicholas I when he visited the island of Moon.”

That explanation at least was one of the fairy tales. The Ancient had been nearer the mark. Beside the pillars I now noticed a stone cross. Cross and pillars alike seemed to be of about the same age, something near 1600, I should think, but fixed on one of the pillars was a stone placard of later date, perhaps eighteenth or early nineteenth century. This placard was in German and Russian and set out a tariff of tolls⁠—so much for a carriage, so much for a cart, so much for a peasant’s cart, so much for a cow, so much for a peasant’s cow, so much for a man, and, finally, so much for a dog. There must have been some lively incidents in the attempted collection of tolls from sportive, energetic dogs, who might run in and out ten times in as many minutes while the toll-keeper was dealing with larger folk. The actual sums demanded had been obliterated. On the other pillar, opposite the tariff, was a coat-of-arms, I believe that of the old German castle town of Arensburg, a fat and bloated bird with upstretched neck, standing on two straight legs. No. It was clear enough that the Ancient’s story was nearer the truth and that the gates are the last memorials of the German rulers of Moon, who transferred their allegiance from Sweden to Russia on finding that the Russian Empire left them a freer hand in exploiting the Estonians than was given them by the more liberal-minded Swedes.

The Gates were the last symbol of the German civilization. The inn was the last symbol of the Russian. It was a typical Russian posting-station, a low, one-storied building, with pillars along the front of it, where, as throughout Russia only seven crowded years ago, it was possible to get bad food and good horses and a night’s lodging, the quality of which depended on the thickness of your skin. The Russian stoves were still there. So were the great beds, where from a dozen to twenty people could sleep together on straw or hay. The little counter, where the Imperial vodka was once sold, remained. But there were no horses, no vodka, no sleepers⁠—nothing, in fact, of former glory. The innkeeper, who seemed to be also harbourmaster, told me that he had once had some beer, but that there was none left. Once upon a time, he said, he had had some local kvass. Now he had nothing except⁠ ⁠… he pointed to a few packets of cigarettes. He had no tobacco. The policeman and I drank a couple of glasses of clear cold water, handed by the innkeeper over the counter where so many gallons of vodka had passed in days gone by. He then showed me the well, the only one, as both innkeeper and policeman enthusiastically agreed, where the water is fit for humans. And meanwhile the innkeeper’s daughter, a young woman whose round, flat jolly face might well be placed on the Gates of Moon as the emblem of her island, instead of that toll-fattened bird, went off and milked a cow, and gave me my can full of admirable milk, two quarts of it, for some Estonian marks, the value of which in English money would be about fourpence. With this I returned to the ship.