Runö to Paternoster

It was half-past one when we got away, and, as we were anxious to take no chances with the rocks on Runö’s northern corner, we sailed due east for a mile before putting Racundra on her course. I must point out here that until we reached Helsingfors, though our courses were duly set by compass, there was very considerable discrepancy between theory and practice. After the Runö landfall I allowed a full point for easterly deviation in the neighbourhood of north, and this proved to be about right when, in Finland, we had magnets put in and swung the ship. But on other points the error was even greater. Our logs also were of small use for navigation. Of the two, the German log did not work at all, and the American, which we used, was a most pessimistic affair. Unless we were going at our top speed in half a gale, it registered a little less than two thirds of the distance we actually covered, and, if we were not visibly and sensibly churning along, the log seemed to lose heart altogether and registered nothing at all. I think it had begun life on a motorboat and had no patience with our old-fashioned but superior ways. Its remarks were of use only in giving us the roughest ideas as to what we had been doing.

The wind was now S.S.W. but continued to back to the south, and at 3:40 we brought the booms over. It was a fine day and pleasant sailing, and, whatever the log might say, it was clear enough from our own wake that we were steadily moving towards the Estonian coast. The only question in our minds was where we were going to hit it and when. We did a lot of straightening up on board, drank coffee by the pint, and ate huge quantities of food. We were all greatly cheered by our speed after the dismal experience of yesterday’s calms, and the Ancient began to think we should be in Reval tomorrow and to talk of record passages.

“One time,” said he⁠—“one time I crossed the North Sea in twenty-four hours under sail.”

“Where was that?” I asked. “Harwich to the Hook?”

“No,” said he, with a sail-needle between his teeth, finishing the end of one of the halyards. “It was from that place up at the North of Scotland⁠ ⁠… like the Moon Sund, where we’re going.”

“Pentland Firth?”

“Ay. Pentland. Twenty-four hours from there to the Norwegian coast.”

“Pretty good sailing.”

“And I had my captain sick all the way. Yellow fever. That was how it was. We were in Mexico when he began ill, and I wanted him to go ashore. But he was Norwegian, and he would have it that back to Norway would put him right. And I thought myself, ‘Maybe the fresh airs at sea will put the fever under.’ But it was not like that. Every day he grew worse. I wanted to put up into one of the American ports to put him ashore, but he wouldn’t have it, and was all for carrying on and getting home to Norway. And we did carry on, too. I can’t tell you how long we were on the passage, but we had a west wind with us all the way, till we were near the Irish coast. I wanted them to put through the Channel, and let him see a doctor at Southampton, or one of them places. But he wouldn’t have it, and, sick as he was, set a course round by the north of Scotland. ‘ ’Tis the best way for Norway,’ he says. And we came through the Pentland Firth, and he was so bad that I was for hauling our wind and coming to Aberdeen. But he would have nothing of it. And the west wind held and plenty of it, and the captain in his fever shouting, whenever I spoke to him, not to take a foot of canvas off her. And we made the Norwegian coast in twenty-four hours. And then we went into Christiansund, where he was from, and as soon as the anchor was down he went ashore, and as he went I told him I’d come ashore and see him in the morning. But it was not like that. I never saw him again, for he died during the night.”

I had set a course that, if the error of the compass was about what it seemed to be, should bring Racundra within sight of the well-lit coast to the west of the Paternoster Lighthouse, so that we might learn our exact position in plenty of time, and was consequently delighted when at 10:15 we picked up a blinking light on the starboard bow. The Ancient took the tiller while I ran down below for a stopwatch. I timed it. One flash every three seconds. I looked at the chart which I had spread out on the writing-table in the cabin. No such light was to be found upon it. I looked again all along the coast of Oesel. No. There was a four-flash light on Laiduninna and nothing else between that and Paternoster. I ran my finger across the chart, which I was lighting with a little electric pocket-lamp. Away to west, far out of our supposed course, near the approach of Arensburg, a blinking light was marked, but the period of its flashes was not named. If it were that, then how humbled must be the pride of the navigator. I could feel the Ancient waiting in the dark to hear me, having timed the light by a method (the stopwatch) in which he did not believe, admit that I did not know what light it was or where we might be. It was a most unpleasant moment. So I said nothing at all.

“What course?” asked the Ancient.

“E.N.E.,” said I, to give myself time. I had just remembered that there was yet hope for my navigation. We were working by the big German chart of 1915, the only comparatively large-scale chart I had been able to get. But in the chart case was an English small-scale chart covering the Riga Gulf as well as much else, and this had been corrected up to the spring of this year. I pulled it out and spread it on the folding-table under the lamp in the cabin. And, as I looked from yellow splash to yellow splash (lights are marked in this way) going from west to east along the Oesel coast, behold, the very last light on that coast before the light of Paternoster at the entrance to the Sound was marked “1 flash ev. 3 sec.,” with the date “1920.” My expanding joy almost lifted off the cabin roof. I went on deck again a different man from that cringing, worried navigator who was glad that the dark hid the doubt in his face. For some few minutes I said nothing. Then, with all the ease I could assume, I said lightly, as if it were nothing: “Keep a look out for a flashing light on the starboard bow.” By changing our course we had brought my first treasure trove to port. “And then,” I added, “we should find another light to port, with a white flash every second; and when that turns to red, we shall have our course clear for the entrance.”

The Ancient answered not a word, but there was a new warmth in the night air, a new solidity in the floor of the steering-well, and various other minor indications of rewarded confidence. I went below and smoked a most satisfactory pipe.

We were not moving fast, and it was three hours later before we had the other two lights. But I was secretly glad we were moving slowly because, confidence or no confidence, I did not want to try too much and attempt the Moon Sound in the dark. In spite of the evidence of the English chart, I was glad enough to have our course confirmed by meeting at 3 a.m. a steamer going S.W., which I knew must have come out of the Sound. I took the hint and altered our course a little accordingly. A little later, the white light of Paternoster turned red and then our last doubts were gone, and, as the dawn rose, and with it the wind strengthened from the S.E., we found ourselves exactly in the entrance to the Sound, Paternoster Lighthouse on its island on our port, Werder on our starboard bow, islands and rocky coast stretching away behind us to the south and west, and before us the Sound itself.