Kuivast to Werder

I had a hard job not to spill the milk as I pulled back to Racundra. The wind was piping up again from the S.W. and the swell of which I have already spoken was beginning to come in. Racundra was jerking about in so lively a manner that I decided to put out our larger anchor (sixty-seven pounds) and the stout coir cable. The Ancient and I, hauling together, had as much as we could do in pulling the ship up towards the first anchor. We did this with the tiller lashed over, giving her something of a sheer, so that we should not be dropping the second anchor on the chain. We then let go and veered out fifteen fathoms or more of cable and chain. We lay in two fathoms, ample, for we draw only a little over half a fathom with our centreboard up. We then had supper and turned in.

But we got little rest that night. The wind increased to a gale, and, sheltered though we were, the current kept Racundra across both wind and swell, with the result that she rolled me out of my bunk on the top of the big iron pump that was stowed on the floor, sent things adrift that we had considered fast till doomsday, including a water-cask, fortunately empty, and used every loose thing in the ship to make a noise like a negro band. It was impossible to sleep. All that could be done was to sit on the bunks, wedge one’s knees firmly against the centreboard-case and count how many rolls Racundra could accomplish in a minute. Again and again the Ancient and I crawled over the deck to see if we were dragging. We took the covers off again, and had everything ready to make sail in a moment, but did not wish to do so unless obliged, as we did not then know where to seek shelter without going right back to Heltermaa. Racundra rolled until she took water on her decks over the railings, in spite of her notable freeboard. But the anchors held and morning found us still desperately rolling, in a swell that was splashing over the pier and made us glad that we had, according to our custom, taken the dinghy inboard for the night. It was too rough to launch the little boat again. The motion was such that we could not cook, nor even make tea. So we lived on cold bacon, tinned herrings and beer, and relieved our feelings by punching the barometer.

In the afternoon there was less wind. The barometer had fallen to 29.2, but now showed just the faintest inclination to rise, and at four o’clock, as there were patches of sunshine, I went ashore and took photographs, though it was still blowing in gusts that made it very hard to keep the camera steady. An hour later, however, the wind dropped suddenly, and the Ancient and I shouldered water-tank and barrel and went half a mile inland for the water that was fit for humans, as we began to hope that we should be off for Riga in the morning. I further took the opportunity of asking where the cutter lay at the other side of the Sound. She had not reappeared, so I was sure that she had on the other side a better shelter than was to be found here. I learnt that during the war a new harbour had been built at Werder, of which all my charts were ignorant. I got rough sailing directions. “Steer straight across for the southernmost of three white ruined houses, and when you come near you will see the harbour and can go into it. There are twelve feet of water, and tugs have wintered there.”

This sounded promising, so when in the morning, after a rather better night, we found a bright day, but with wind and strong current still against us from the S., I had the sails up soon after breakfast and we went across the Sound in plenty of time to come back if we should be disappointed in what we should find there. The cutter, held up yesterday by the bad weather, had returned to Kuivast, taken on board more red cattle and orange petticoats, and set sail on her way back just after we started. There was enough wind, however, to make Racundra a fast boat, and we had the wind on our beam, so we kept them well astern until we had gone far enough to see a decent-looking harbour with a schooner’s masts above it, but nothing to show on which side was the entry. When I can use local knowledge, I always prefer it to my own ignorance, so, much to the cutter’s astonishment, I brought Racundra to the wind, hove her to, and waited for them to catch us. But such was the modesty of the cutter’s crew that they never guessed why we were waiting, and themselves hauled up to the wind and proceeded extremely slowly, as if they thought we had perceived some special danger ahead. They stared with all their eyes. At last, however, they went on, and giving them a fair start, we let the staysail draw and proceeded after them. Just as we did so, the wind, which had been moderate, strengthened with a sudden squall, so that cutter and Racundra alike fairly foamed across the remaining distance. We saw that the cutter steered to northwards of the harbour mole, so we did the same, and a minute or two later, had rounded into as fine a little harbour for small ships as ever I hope to see. We anchored and then, deciding to stay, ran a warp out to the pier and berthed ourselves under the shelter of a huge stack of birch logs, which, since they were much weathered, I concluded had been there some time and were not likely to fly about our heads.

We had found this harbour of Werder, or Wirtsu, as the Estonians call it, just in time. That night the wind came from the N.W. with rain and such violence that the waves breaking on the mole flung great bits of themselves not only over the mole but clean over the woodpile, fifteen feet across and as many high, and down with heavy splashes on Racundra’s cabin roof on the other side. A big open cutter, rather like the ferryboat, lying beside us was half filled during the night by the water tossed across the mole. At six in the morning the wind was blowing from the N. with similar force, but swung round to S. again at eleven, giving us a comparatively calm afternoon and evening.

I spent the better part of that day fishing on the sheltered side of the pier, and caught upwards of fifty little fish⁠—killos, boneless little creatures like sardines, extremely good to eat. I also had a pleasant talk with an elderly Robinson Crusoe, master and owner of a little open boat, smaller even than Racundra, who was doing his best to get his things dry after the tempestuous night. He had spent the summer carrying stones at Reval, and now was sailing home for the winter in his own little boat to a bay some half a dozen miles south of Werder. His boat was filled with all manner of treasure acquired during the summer⁠—bits of old iron, empty bottles, a lump or two of good oak, salt, tobacco and other valuables. The salt and such things he stowed in a cuddy forward. He slept under his sails and cooked on a little open stove in the stern. He was plucking a duck for his dinner when I got into talk with him. He had shot it the day before, while sheltering behind a little rocky island farther north. He showed me his gun, a fowling-piece that might have been the envy of Man Friday. He knew a little English, having sailed three years on English ships. He also knew Lettish, a rare accomplishment among Estonians, in whose folklore devils talk Lettish to each other, which is also the language spoken in hell. He had travelled enough to lose such national prejudices, and sat there, plucking and cooking his duck, talking with obvious pride with the Ancient and me, with each in his own language. In the calm of the evening he put to sea, and the last we saw of him was the dark blot of his sail as he rowed and poled his boat over the shallows and into the Gulf, in this way avoiding the current. At night, when the storm rose again, with fierce rain-squalls, we feared for him, but there was no need. He knew the coast, as he had told us, like the palm of his hand; and the lighthouse-keeper, who visited us in the morning, told us that he had seen the little boat both at dusk and dawn, and that our friend had spent the night snugly in smooth water behind some rocks, with white waves on every hand.

The next day the wind was from the S.W. and for the next five days swung to and fro, blowing nearly all the time with tremendous force. For all that time the ferry cutter was unable to cross from Werder to Kuivast. Peasants from Werder and the mainland and men of Moon and their orange-skirted dames came to the harbour and day after day hung desolately about the cutter in wind and rain, at night getting what shelter they could in the forest. “This is the Equinotion time,” said the Ancient philosophically, “and this is what musta be.” He, however, could afford to be philosophic, for he had made his berth tight and comparatively dry, and so was much better off than the unfortunate islanders waiting in the woods for the ferry to take them home.

It was a wild time. Late one evening we watched a big schooner, close-hauled, trying to make the entrance of the Sound from the south. (This was during a northwester.) As she came she pointed nearer the wind and made less and less headway, and it became clear that she could not make the entrance without tacking. They hung on till the last minute and then tried to go about. She would not stay. Again and again the sails flapped and filled again, while the schooner lost ground. Finally, with jibs wildly flogging, she let go her anchor. Down came the sails one after another, and we watched her heaving half her length out of the water, dipping her nose under and rearing again. The anchor held for ten minutes. Then, not slowly as with dragging anchor, but in a sudden rush, with parted cable, she was swept away southwards behind the point, broadside on, a helpless thing, just as dark fell. What became of her I do not know. The lighthouse-keeper told us that she did not go on the rocks, but was swept clear of them to the south. He saw no attempt made to hoist sail. “They were tired out,” he said, “tired beyond work, and seeing they were drifting clear, perhaps made up their minds to let her drift till forty miles south, when they would maybe be rested and have a chance of getting into shelter in the Pernau bight.”

During that same blow, another schooner under jib and reefed foresail, coming from the north, swept at terrific speed into our harbour, let go her anchor without standing upon the order of its going, far too near the shore, and, while it dragged, rowed desperately in their small boat and made fast a warp to the pier with perhaps ten seconds to spare in saving her. The men from the other schooner that had been there when we arrived jumped to lend a hand, and she was presently berthed alongside the quay. The men of this schooner had brought with them a mixed cargo from the town of Reval, salt fish, kerosene and farming-tools; and during the next two days the people of the country brought them in exchange corn in sacks, four or five sacks stuffed into each rickety little springless cart. They also brought them a fine sheep, which was killed and skinned on the quay and its flesh then cut up, weighed, paid for and put into a barrel with salt, provision for their voyage. They were taking the corn to Petrograd. The other schooner here was loading firewood for Reval.

There was nothing to be done with the weather, for though now and again the wind veered northwards it always backed swiftly to the S.W., while the sea remained in frothy tumult. It was as if the Equinox had amused himself by setting N.W. and S.W. to fight each other, and now one and now the other got the mastery in a struggle the tension of which hardly slackened for a moment. I made a curve of our barometer readings on squared paper during that week, but it might have been taken for a graphic record of the progress of a grasshopper. When we came to Werder the barometer was at 29.28. After that it bobbed up and down between 29 and 29.55. It had been 29.9 when we left Hapsal to get into this bout of bad weather. Often it was nearly impossible to stand on the quay, and we were thankful for our woodpile, behind which was comparative peace. There was no village nearer than six miles away, and we ran out of eggs, meat, potatoes, bread and, worst of all, tobacco. The few houses by the old pier that was used before the building of the harbour are in ruins, and we should have been in a very bad way if it had not been for the keeper of the Werder Lighthouse, which, by the way, is not in the least like the picture of it still reproduced on the English charts, but is a plain wooden framework replacing the old tower, which was blown up during the war. The lighthouse-keeper lives with his wife and three children in a wooden shanty close by, on a desolate spit of bare ground running out from the woods into the sea. He used to come and sit in the cabin of Racundra and I used to visit him in his shanty. The only blemish on his conversation was that, like his brother of Runö, similarly isolated from the world, he took an interest in politics, and wanted to know what we were doing about Egypt. However, he made up for that by selling us milk, butter and potatoes, and he also gave me some tobacco of his own growing, raw leaves not yet dry, which I hung over the cabin lamp till they crackled, and then broke them up and smoked them, and found them a very great deal better than no tobacco at all.

Our most interesting visitors, however, were two seal-hunters from Runö. I saw them buffeting their way along the quay afar off, and knew at once what they must be. No other men wear pale homespuns bound with black and hairy sealskin shoes. No other men go abroad with long telescopes and crooked sticks. No other men on reaching our woodpile would climb upon the top of it, crouching low against the wind, and, steadying the end of the telescope by using the stick as a support, would search so patiently the distant rocks. Presently they were close to us, and stood there, one young man, one elderly, looking down at Racundra from the quay with eyes so simple that you would think they had never been troubled by a thought. The Ancient talked with them and told me that they begged⁠ ⁠… for what? For glass bottles, the one thing they do not make upon their island. They needed bottles for oil, for carrying water, for what not? We gave them a lot of empty beer-bottles. They took off their caps and shook our hands. Then they asked if they might come on board. They came and went down into the cabin, fingering everything, enormously, inarticulately interested.

“A strong ship,” said the younger, at last. “We too have a strong ship, with five little ones which she carries inside her.”

“And where is your ship?”

“Over there, a half-hour’s walk, in a better harbour than this.”

“And are there five of you?”

“Yes, five. Three we left on an island off the coast of Oesel, with their three boats. We are now two. In four weeks we shall sail back along the Oesel coast and find our men, and then we go to Runö again.”

“Have you got many seals?”

“Only one. The weather is too bad for them, but later we shall have more.”

There was a little more simple question and answer of this kind. Then they saw my camera and asked what it was. I told them, and the younger one understood at once, and said that they had seen photographs that had been taken on Runö by some Swedish visitor, who had afterwards sent them to the island. They were delighted when I suggested making a picture of their ship. They wanted me to come at once, but I told them that for picture-making I needed a good light, and not a raging storm with wind and hail. If it should clear later I would come. With that we all gravely shook hands and they went off.