“Sorry! I’m scrubbing decks. Come up and bathe. Slept well?” I heard a voice saying from aloft.
“Fairly well,” I growled8, stepping out into a pool of water on the oilcloth. Thence I stumbled up the ladder, dived overboard, and buried bad dreams, stiffness, frowsiness, and tormented9 nerves in the loveliest fiord of the lovely Baltic. A short and furious swim and I was back again, searching for a means of ascent10 up the smooth black side, which, low as it was, was slippery and unsympathetic. Davies, in a loose canvas shirt, with the sleeves tucked up, and flannels11 rolled up to the knee, hung over me with a rope’s end, and chatted unconcernedly about the easiness of the job when you know how, adjuring12 me to mind the paint, and talking about an accommodation ladder he had once had, but had thrown overboard because it was so horribly in the way. When I arrived, my knees and elbows were picked out in black paint, to his consternation13. Nevertheless, as I plied14 the towel, I knew that I had left in those limpid15 depths yet another crust of discontent and self-conceit.
As I dressed into flannels and blazer, I looked round the deck, and with an unskilled and doubtful eye took in all that the darkness had hitherto hidden. She seemed very small (in point of fact she was seven tons), something over thirty feet in length and nine in beam, a size very suitable to week-ends in the Solent, for such as liked that sort of thing; but that she should have come from Dover to the Baltic suggested a world of physical endeavour of which I had never dreamed. I passed to the æsthetic side. Smartness and beauty were essential to yachts, in my mind, but with the best resolves to be pleased I found little encouragement here. The hull16 seemed too low, and the mainmast too high; the cabin roof looked clumsy, and the skylights saddened the eye with dull iron and plebeian17 graining. What brass18 there was, on the tiller-head and elsewhere, was tarnished19 with sickly green. The decks had none of that creamy purity which Cowes expects, but were rough and grey, and showed tarry exhalations round the seams and rusty20 stains near the bows. The ropes and rigging were in mourning when contrasted with the delicate buff manilla so satisfying to the artistic21 eye as seen against the blue of a June sky at Southsea. Nor was the whole effect bettered by many signs of recent refitting. An impression of paint, varnish22, and carpentry was in the air; a gaudy23 new burgee fluttered aloft; there seemed to be a new rope or two, especially round the diminutive24 mizzen-mast, which itself looked altogether new. But all this only emphasised the general plainness, reminding one of a respectable woman of the working-classes trying to dress above her station, and soon likely to give it up.
That the ensemble25 was businesslike and solid even my untrained eye could see. Many of the deck fittings seemed disproportionately substantial. The anchor-chain looked contemptuous of its charge; the binnacle with its compass was of a size and prominence26 almost comically impressive, and was, moreover the only piece of brass which was burnished27 and showed traces of reverent28 care. Two huge coils of stout29 and dingy30 warp31 lay just abaft32 the mainmast, and summed up the weather-beaten aspect of the little ship. I should add here that in the distant past she had been a lifeboat, and had been clumsily converted into a yacht by the addition of a counter, deck, and the necessary spars. She was built, as all lifeboats are, diagonally, of two skins of teak, and thus had immense strength, though, in the matter of looks, all a hybrid’s failings.
Hunger and “Tea’s made!” from below brought me down to the cabin, where I found breakfast laid out on the table over the centreboard case, with Davies earnestly presiding, rather flushed as to the face, and sooty as to the fingers. There was a slight shortage of plate and crockery, but I praised the bacon and could do so truthfully, for its crisp and steaming shavings would have put to shame the efforts of my London cook. Indeed, I should have enjoyed the meal heartily33 were it not for the lowness of the sofa and table, causing a curvature of the body which made swallowing a more lengthy34 process than usual, and induced a periodical yearning35 to get up and stretch—a relief which spelt disaster to the skull36. I noticed, too, that Davies spoke37 with a zest38, sinister39 to me, of the delights of white bread and fresh milk, which he seemed to consider unusual luxuries, though suitable to an inaugural40 banquet in honour of a fastidious stranger. “One can’t be always going on shore,” he said, when I showed a discreet41 interest in these things. “I lived for ten days on a big rye loaf over in the Frisian Islands.”
“And it died hard, I suppose?”
“Very hard, but” (gravely) “quite good. After that I taught myself to make rolls; had no baking powder at first, so used Eno’s fruit salt, but they wouldn’t rise much with that. As for milk, condensed is—I hope you don’t mind it?”
I changed the subject, and asked about his plans.
“Let’s get under way at once,” he said, “and sail down the fiord.” I tried for something more specific, but he was gone, and his voice drowned in the fo’c’sle by the clatter42 and swish of washing up. Thenceforward events moved with bewildering rapidity. Humbly43 desirous of being useful I joined him on deck, only to find that he scarcely noticed me, save as a new and unexpected obstacle in his round of activity. He was everywhere at once—heaving in chain, hooking on halyards, hauling ropes; while my part became that of the clown who does things after they are already done, for my knowledge of a yacht was of that floating and inaccurate44 kind which is useless in practice. Soon the anchor was up (a great rusty monster it was!), the sails set, and Davies was darting45 swiftly to and fro between the tiller and jib-sheets, while the Dulcibella bowed a lingering farewell to the shore and headed for the open fiord. Erratic46 puffs47 from the high land behind made her progress timorous48 at first, but soon the fairway was reached and a true breeze from Flensburg and the west took her in its friendly grip. Steadily49 she rustled50 down the calm blue highway whose soft beauty was the introduction to a passage in my life, short, but pregnant with moulding force, through stress and strain, for me and others.
Davies was gradually resuming his natural self, with abstracted intervals51, in which he lashed52 the helm to finger a distant rope, with such speed that the movements seemed simultaneous. Once he vanished, only to reappear in an instant with a chart, which he studied, while steering54, with a success that its reluctant folds seemed to render impossible. Waiting respectfully for his revival55 I had full time to look about. The fiord here was about a mile broad. From the shore we had left the hills rose steeply, but with no rugged56 grandeur57; the outlines were soft; there were green spaces and rich woods on the lower slopes; a little white town was opening up in one place, and scattered58 farms dotted the prospect59. The other shore, which I could just see, framed between the gunwale and the mainsail, as I sat leaning against the hatchway, and sadly missing a deck-chair, was lower and lonelier, though prosperous and pleasing to the eye. Spacious60 pastures led up by slow degrees to ordered clusters of wood, which hinted at the presence of some great manor61 house. Behind us, Flensburg was settling into haze62. Ahead, the scene was shut in by the contours of hills, some clear, some dreamy and distant. Lastly, a single glimpse of water shining between the folds of hill far away hinted at spaces of distant sea of which this was but a secluded63 inlet. Everywhere was that peculiar64 charm engendered65 by the association of quiet pastoral country and a homely67 human atmosphere with a branch of the great ocean that bathes all the shores of our globe.
There was another charm in the scene, due to the way in which I was viewing it—not as a pampered68 passenger on a “fine steam yacht”, or even on “a powerful modern schooner”, as the yacht agents advertise, but from the deck of a scrubby little craft of doubtful build and distressing69 plainness, which yet had smelt70 her persistent71 way to this distant fiord through I knew not what of difficulty and danger, with no apparent motive72 in her single occupant, who talked as vaguely73 and unconcernedly about his adventurous74 cruise as though it were all a protracted75 afternoon on Southampton Water.
I glanced round at Davies. He had dropped the chart and was sitting, or rather half lying, on the deck with one bronzed arm over the tiller, gazing fixedly76 ahead, with just an occasional glance around and aloft. He still seemed absorbed in himself, and for a moment or two I studied his face with an attention I had never, since I had known him, given it. I had always thought it commonplace, as I had thought him commonplace, so far as I had thought at all about either. It had always rather irritated me by an excess of candour and boyishness. These qualities it had kept, but the scales were falling from my eyes, and I saw others. I saw strength to obstinacy77 and courage to recklessness, in the firm lines of the chin; an older and deeper look in the eyes. Those odd transitions from bright mobility78 to detached earnestness, which had partly amused and chiefly annoyed me hitherto, seemed now to be lost in a sensitive reserve, not cold or egotistic, but strangely winning from its paradoxical frankness. Sincerity80 was stamped on every lineament. A deep misgiving81 stirred me that, clever as I thought myself, nicely perceptive82 of the right and congenial men to know, I had made some big mistakes—how many, I wondered? A relief, scarcely less deep because it was unconfessed, stole in on me with the suspicion that, little as I deserved it, the patient fates were offering me a golden chance of repairing at least one. And yet, I mused79, the patient fates have crooked83 methods, besides a certain mischievous
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CHAPTER II. The Dulcibella
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CHAPTER IV. Retrospect
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