Pakerort to Reval

Then began a wild but, in a curious way, rather enjoyable night. No misfortunes at sea are enjoyable in themselves. He is a liar who says they are and he is a fool who courts them. But when misfortune has come against your will, when it is there, when you have shaken hands with it, realized it thoroughly, and done what you think is the best possible thing to do, there comes a sort of release from further worry which is quite sensibly pleasant.

There was Racundra with her mainsail gone, proved incapable of beating under staysail and mizzen, rigged as they then were in a temporary manner, careering through steep seas in a pitch-dark night with no sidelights and a binnacle lamp that would not burn. On the face of it, misery. Yet there was no misery about it. While in that narrow bay I had been much afraid, but here, in the open sea, things were better. Besides, we were doing the thing which I had myself urged as the right thing to do. It was my own thing, this careering business out here in the dark, and I had the joy of possession. I was still afraid, of course, but knew where I was, and knew what I had to avoid. I had to prevent Racundra from being blown too far out to sea, to prevent her from working sideways to Nargon island, and to make headway if possible towards the shallow bay on this side of Surop, without going on the rocks off the near point of it and without getting into the bay until it was light enough to see what we were about. Wind and sea had clearly made up their minds to knock us and blow us to Finland, or, if we insisted on working sideways, to plant us on Nargon like many good ships before us. Racundra and I were of a different determination, and, as we careered in the dark over waves which always seem bigger at night, I had the definite impression that Racundra was enjoying it also in her fashion. I found myself, who do not sing in happier moments, yelling “Spanish Ladies” and “Summer Is Icumen In” and “John Peel” at the top of my voice. Then the Cook struggled up the companionway with a sandwich. She asked, with real inquiry, “Are we going to be drowned before morning?”

I leaned forward from the steering-well and shouted, “Why?”

“Because I have two thermos flasks full of hot coffee. If we are, we may as well drink them both. If not, I’ll keep one till tomorrow.”

We kept one. We drank the hot coffee from the other and ate a huge quantity of sandwiches. The more we ate the better things seemed. We grew accustomed even to the din. Douses of spray merely made it seem worth while to have put on oilskins. The howling of the wind and the recurrent crashing of the waters became monotonous. The Cook, who had been doing her work as calmly as Racundra, and like Racundra was enjoying it, fell asleep in the middle of a laugh. She was tired out, and when the next big splash woke her, I sent her below to lie down, knowing that there would be plenty of work for her in the morning, whereas there was nothing she could well do at the moment. I do not believe she has forgiven me yet.

After that, Pakerort light and Surop light and the faraway flash of Nargon were my companions. The riding light, the only one of our lamps that would burn except the swinging lamp in the cabin, I had under my knees in the steering-well. With an electric pocket-lamp I had a look at the binnacle now and again. So we went on, hour after hour, until I too fell asleep.

I suppose everybody who has spent long hours at the tiller of a little boat has done the same. But, I admit, I was startled the first time I woke to find myself in the steering-well of Racundra, holding a kicking tiller, with the dark in my eyes and a great wind in my face. The next time it happened I said to myself, “Done it again!” and began pinching myself as hard as I could, in muscles, in any places that seemed to hurt, in the effort to keep awake. It was no use. The lamp was burning all night in the cabin and light came up through the round windows in the cabin roof. I had shifted the riding light from the floor of the steering-well to the seat behind me. A faint divided light was thrown on the staysail and the upturned shape of the dinghy lashed underneath it on the foredeck, and these in successive dreams took different shapes. I found myself wrestling with a large and difficult collar-stud stuck in a stiff shirt, and only slowly came to understand that the collar-stud was the tiller and the white shirt spreading somewhere before me was the lonely staysail. A minute or two later the dinghy was the moulded base of a huge table and the staysail was a corner of a tablecloth most annoyingly put on crooked. “Do put that cloth straight,” I woke saying, and found myself, as before, keeping Racundra up into the wind.

I think that is the secret. One could not go to sleep at the tiller with the wind aft, but, when close-hauled, steering is done so much by feel, especially in the dark, that the ship takes care of the sleeping helmsman. I never once woke with sails flapping, and never once to find that I had fallen off the wind. Racundra took care of her skipper, who was far too tired to take care of himself. Then, suddenly, the sleeping fit passed from me and I was extraordinarily awake, most unpleasantly aware of what I took to be some martial idiot rushing about with a little ship of war showing no lights but the occasional disconcerting flash of a projector. Then came the lights of a steamer from the west (as I learnt afterwards, our old friend the Baltabor from Riga), also at that time, when we were bucketing about without sidelights, a thing of infinite hate. And then, suddenly, with a relief which let me know how great the strain had been, I knew that the eastern sky was distinguishable from the sea. Day was coming at last, and with day the possibility of doing more than hold our own, if indeed we had been doing that.

Day came, or the light before the day, and I found exultantly that I was now not sleepy at all. We had done much better than I had expected in the dark. We were well clear of Nargon and about two miles from Surop. I held on joyfully, no longer thinking of calling the Ancient, who at last, when the sun was up, came on deck and, with that little faith of his, as once before he had looked for Riga, now looked for Pakerort. Everything was hope. We could see what we were doing, and the Ancient dug out the trysail from the solid mass of gear and sails stowed in the forecastle during our hurried departure. We disentangled a halyard and got the trysail up, wore ship after an ineffectual attempt to go about, and stood in on the port tack for Fall and the hollow of the broad bay west of Surop, to get under the shelter of the land for repairs that would let us hoist the mainsail again, without which we were so badly crippled. At last we got into fairly smooth water. We drank the hot coffee from that other thermos flask. The Cook worked one of her miracles and produced great bowls of porridge. The Ancient Mariner made a wonderful job of a manila rope substitute for gaff jaws. This done, the Cook took the tiller while we took off the trysail and hoisted the main. Would it stand or would it not? It stood most beautifully, and with singing hearts we went about on the starboard tack, cleared the rocks by Surop and then, coming nearer to the wind, held on till close by Cape Basanova, the S.E. point of Nargon, where, long before, we had landed on our first voyage in Slug. Then we went about and stood due south, the wind having momentarily backed to the east. We stood into Zigelsko Bay. Reval was in sight for a moment, then blotted out by big rain-squalls. We went about thinking to clear Karlo, but the wind shifted too, and had such strength that even with eased mizzen it took all the strength I had to keep her off the point, which she seemed determined to ram. I ran her off a little whenever I got a chance, but there were moments when it was impossible to do anything but luff, and Karlo, now and again invisible in the squalls, seemed most unpleasantly close. These squalls were, I think, the toughest wind we had throughout the storm, and Racundra, forced over by them, and meeting the short steep waves of the entrance to Reval Bay, shipped more water than throughout the whole of the rest of the passage. The Ancient had left the forecastle hatch open under the overturned dinghy, and until the Cook, guessing what had happened, went forward and closed it from underneath, each wave that came over sent a deluge below. Holding on in the cabin in a sort of whirlwind of flying pots, pans, apples, pipes and other loose lumber, the Cook was persuaded we were going to run her bodily under water, but Racundra’s admirable nose took care of that. We had a wet but exhilarating time clearing Karlo, after which the squalls slackened, and we stood right across the bay towards the low hill and windmill by Miderando, went about there, and tacking with long legs and short, made our way up the bay towards the three ships of the Estonian Grand Fleet and the rock and spires of Reval, dim in the rain, with each tack getting more into shelter and finding things easier, until at last we rounded smoothly into the harbour, picked up a buoy, warped into a berth by the Yacht Club mole, made all snug and had a pretty decisive supper.