Through the Moon Sound

The actual entrance to the Sound is a couple of miles wide, with the little island of Virelaid on the western side and the larger mass of Werder on the eastern, each with its lighthouse. Then, though in some parts of it the shores recede and in places are over twenty miles apart, the actual channel narrows, twists and turns with such sharpness that big ships have more than once gone aground through attempting a corner too fast or at a time when the current was too strong against them. I suppose there are few sections of sea chart on which so many wrecks are marked. There is, of course, no tide, but the water rises and falls according to the prevailing winds, which also determine the direction of the strong current in the narrows. The Russian battleship Slava is still to be seen high out of water on the Kumora Shoal. The British merchantman Toledo, after three years of waiting, was only last autumn hauled off the shoal by the Erik Stone. Few British skippers care to attempt the passage by night, and one of the most careful, who did so venture, lost several plates from his ship’s bottom as his reward.

We, of course, were attempting it by day, and, as dawn broke and at 5:30 we had Paternoster Lighthouse abeam, the wind strengthened mightily from the south, and, from the slant of the spar-buoys, we could see that we had not only the wind but also a strong current with us. We had the most favourable possible conditions. At the same time, I was not going to take any risks on Racundra’s maiden trip. With our shallow draught we could, no doubt, have cut off many corners. We draw, even with the centreboard down, no more than seven and a half feet. Our good friend Baltabor, on her way to Reval from Riga, avoids the Sound and goes round outside the islands if she draws over fourteen feet. I decided to attribute fourteen feet to the modest, the admirable Racundra, and pilot her through exactly as if she were a big ship. In this way we should have ample margin for the correction of any errors due to eccentricities of current or the like.

Passing Paternoster, we opened Kuivast on the island of Moon, a little anchorage where there is a landing-stage, a coastguard station, an inn and a telegraph. I had meant to stop there an hour or two, but the conditions for passing the Sound were so good that I visited Kuivast only through the binoculars. Two or three schooners were at anchor there, waiting for a favourable wind to take them south. The inn looked tempting enough, but, there it was: that glum log of ours was spinning merrily as a top, the sun was bright, the wind fair and strong, the wooded island of Shildau showed ahead, through the glasses I could already see one of the pair of beacons that, kept in line over our stern, would guide us through the next bit of the channel; after all, there were plenty of stopping-places ahead, and we could visit Kuivast homeward bound. So I put the island of Moon resolutely aside and looked over the bows at Shildau, and searched the pale blue windswept water before us for a bell-and-light buoy, which I presently found. Racundra foamed past it, and I brought it in line over her stern with the lighthouse on Sareots Point, the western end of Werder. The sun shone, the wind blew, and there was the second beacon on Shildau, at first hard to see, close down on the shore under a background of dark-green pines. And then Shildau was abeam, then on our quarter, and behold, that dimly discerned second beacon grew clearer, separated itself from the trees, stood out, moved slowly nearer and nearer, close to, and at last was in line with the first. Up to starboard with the helm, over with the booms, and off goes Racundra, with those two beacons in line over her stern, through the narrowest stretch of channel, a lane between the shoals close by the N.E. corner of the island of Moon. And there, sure enough, on the low green ridge of that island, seeming at first to be in impossible positions, but straightening themselves out as we sped along, were two tall beacons of open ironwork, fantastic, unmistakable things, each with a dark iron corkscrew or snake twisting from the top to bottom in a narrow iron cage. Woods, windmills, green pastureland, houses, and those beacons, looking like Mr. Wells’s monsters from another planet striding over the earth, all changed places in a vast quadrille as Racundra hurried on her way. Suddenly the two monsters began noticeably to draw nearer to each other. They were within shouting distance of each other. They were in close converse. They were one. The corkscrew of one monster linked with the corkscrew of the other, the two cages merged into a single cage, and then, to port with the helm and sharply, and Racundra, shaking the waters from her beloved nose, was off again almost at right-angles from her former course, while the Shildau beacons slid rapidly apart, and this new pair remained in magic unity. I took a bearing on the Moon beacons and compared it with the chart, and got additional confirmation of the error I had assumed from our Runö landfall. That was at ten minutes past eight in the morning, and the log was reading 38.4. Half an hour later it was reading 41.6, so that even its pessimism was compelled to admit that Racundra was doing her six knots.

We were now in apparently open water, but the chart was of a different opinion, and, mindful of our temporary fourteen feet, we kept those beacons in line for seven miles, when we passed the light-buoy in the middle of the Sound. Away to the west was the wide shallow inland sea between the islands of Dagö and Oesel. To the east we could see small scraps of islets and knew that beyond them was the narrow bay of Matsalu, from which, more than seven hundred years ago, the Estonians sailed out and away to Sweden, and burnt Sigtuna, the Swedish capital, and carried away its silver gates. After passing the light-buoy, we held on our course for another seven miles or so, when we sighted the murderous Erik Stone, a square rock sticking up alone out of the waters; a rock no bigger than a king’s throne, as it is said by some to have been; a rock painted red all over by my ingenious friend Captain Konga, with whom, as you shall hear in another place, I spent two nights on the wreck of the Toledo, aground upon the shoal of which this stone is the uppermost point. Then, the water had been lower, and there was a little island to be seen, and seabirds upon it, but now there was nothing but the stone itself. Far away to the west was the coast of Dagö, and, with strong glasses, we could see the white house and a red roof by the little harbour of Heltermaa. Far away to the east a fantastic iron beacon rose out of the sea, showing where was the narrow passage to Hapsal between the shoals of Odroraga and Rukeraga. We meant to return that way, but we were moving too fast to have time to spare for dreaming about passages to come. There was the Erik Stone; there on the starboard bow the dark woods of the island of Worms; there, as if floating in the sea, the handful of low buildings on the tiny island of Harry; and somewhere ahead another bell-buoy to be found and passed to make the channel along the eastern side of Harry and avoid the rocks off Worms.

The sun shone; the wind blew stronger and stronger; short, stout little waves raced us, caught us, passed foaming and gurgling under our keel and rushed ahead of us to the open Baltic. We were off Worms almost before we had left the Erik Stone, so it seemed. And there sheltering under the wooded island of Worms were the vessels bound south, schooners and cutters at anchor, watching us with envy as we flew past, waiting for the wind to change that was no good to them and suited us so well. Worms, like Runö, is one of the Swedish islands belonging to Estonia. In all the harbours along the coasts of this part of the Baltic you meet stout little ships with Swedish names and the words “fran Wormsö” painted on their broad sterns. You can tell a Worms ship at first sight. You have no need to seek the painted letters. No others have the same combination of beam and lofty freeboard fore and aft. A beautiful sheer these little ships have, with a high afterdeck, the sides of which tumble home with an effect no less practical than lovely⁠—a downward curve to the broad midships and then a proud upward sweep to the bows; in every line the sense of solidity, breadth, ability to keep the seas, and an unbroken tradition of simple-minded builders. The ships are mostly iron-fastened nowadays, but the older art is preserved, and I have seen fine schooners, not more than five years old, in which the fastenings, like timbers and planking, were of wood. For a moment we thought to turn aside, to slip in here under the lee of the island, to make this a stage of our journey and to talk with some of the little anchored fleet. But what would a Worms skipper think of us if we wasted a fair wind? It was not yet noon and the wind showed signs of rising still more. The barometer had fallen and was still falling. The wind would hold, and, going at this speed, we should be in Reval before midnight. So Worms slipped astern and we held on out into the Baltic, still among shoals, but with nothing visible on either hand except the glaucous white-splashed water.