[ ]

THE
VOYAGE ALONE
in the
YAWL “ROB ROY,”

FROM LONDON TO PARIS, AND BY HARVE
ACROSS THE CHANNEL TO THE ISLE OF WIGHT,
SOUTH COAST, &c., &c.

By JOHN MACGREGOR, M.A.,

captain of ‘the royal canoe club,’
author of ‘a thousand miles in the rob roy canoe,’
‘the rob roy on the baltic,’
‘the rob roy on the jordan,’ &c.

SIXTH EDITION.

LONDON:
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & COMPANY
limited.
St. Dunstan’s House,
Fetter Lane, Fleet Street, E.C.
1893

(All rights reserved.)

LONDON:
printed by william clowes and sons, limited
stamford street and charing cross.

PREFACE.

In the earlier part of this voyage, and where it was most wished for, along the dangerous coast of France, fine weather came.

Next there was an amphibious interlude to the Paris Exhibition, while the Rob Roy sailed inland.

Thence her course over the sea brought the yawl across the broad Channel (100 miles) to Cowes and its Regattas, and to rough water in dark nights of thunder, until once more in the Thames and up the Medway she was under bright skies again.

Cooking and sleeping on board, the writer performed the whole journey without any companion; and perhaps this log of the voyage will show that it was not only delightful to the lone sailor, but useful to others.

Blackheath, Kent,
May, 1880.

The Author’s profits from the preceding Editions were devoted to Prizes for Boys in the following Training Ships:—

The ‘Chichester’ in the Thames.
The ‘Arethusa’ in the Thames.
The ‘Cumberland,’ in the Clyde.
The ‘Indefatigable,’ in the Mersey.
The ‘Havannah,’ in the Severn.

The profits will again be devoted to similar Prizes as explained in the Appendix.

CHAPTER I.

Project—On the stocks—Profile—Afloat alone—Smart lads—Swinging—Anchors—Happy boys—Sea reach—Good looks—Peep below—Important trifles—In the well—Chart—Watch on deck—Eating an egg—Storm sail.

It was a strange and pleasant life for me all the summer, sailing entirely alone by sea and river fifteen hundred miles, and with its toils, perils, and adventures heartily enjoyed.

The two preceding summers I had paddled alone in an oak canoe, first through central Europe, and next over Norway and Sweden; but though both of these voyages were delightful, they had still the drawback, that progress was mainly dependent on muscular effort, that food must be had from shore, and that I could not sleep on the water.

In devising plans to make the pleasure of a voyage complete then, many cogitations were had in the winter, and these resulted in a beautiful little sailing-boat; and once afloat in this, the water was my road, my home, my very world, for a long and splendid summer.

The perfect success of these three voyages has been due mainly to the careful preparation for them in the minute details which are too often neglected. To take pains about these is a pleasure to a man with a boating mind, but it is also a positive necessity if he would ensure success; nor can we wonder at the fate of some who get swamped, smashed, stove-in, or turned over, when we see them go adrift in a craft which had been huddled into being by some builder ignorant of what is wanted for the sailor traveller, and is launched on unknown waters without due preparation for what may come.

I resolved to have a thoroughly good sailing-boat—the largest that could be well managed in rough weather by one strong man, and with every bolt, cleat, sheave, and rope well-considered in relation to the questions: How will this work in a squall?—on a rock?—in the dark?—or in a rushing tide?—a crowded lock; not to say in a storm?

The internal arrangements of my boat having been fully settled with the advantage of the canoe experiences, the yacht itself was designed by Mr. John White, of Cowes—and who could do it better? She was to be first safe, next comfortable, and then fast. If, indeed, you have two men aboard, one to pick up the other when he falls over, then you may put the last of the above three qualities first, but not prudently when there is only one man to do the whole.

The Rob Roy was built by Messrs. Forrestt, of Limehouse, the builders for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, and so she is a lifeboat to begin with. Knowing how much I might have to depend on oars now and then, my inclination was to limit her length to about 18 ft., but Mr. White said that 21 ft. would “take care of herself in a squall.” Therefore that length was agreed upon, and the decision was never regretted; still I should by no means advise any increase of these dimensions.

One great advantage of the larger size, was that it enabled me to carry in the cabin of my yawl, another boat, a little dingey [3] or punt, to go ashore by, to take exercise in, and to use for refuge in last resource if shipwrecked, for this dingey also I determined should be a lifeboat, and yet only eight feet long. The childhood of this little boat was somewhat unhappy, and as she grew into shape she was quizzed unmercifully, and the people shook their heads very wisely, as they did at the first Rob Roy canoe. Now that we can reckon about three thousand of such canoes, and now that this little dingey has proved a complete success and an unspeakable convenience, the laugh may be forgotten. However, ridicule of new things often does good if it begets caution in changes, and stimulates improvement. Good things get even benefit from ridicule, which may shake off the plaster and paint, though it will not shiver the stone.

Thoroughly to enjoy a cruise with only two such dumb companions as have been described, it is of importance that the man who is to be with them should also be adapted for his place. He must have good health and good spirits, and a passion for the sea. He must learn to rise, eat, drink, and sleep, as the water or winds decree, and not his watch. He must have wits to regard at once the tide, breeze, waves, chart, buoys, and lights; also the sails, pilot-book, and compass; and more than all, to scan the passing vessels, and to cook, and eat, and drink in the midst of all. With such pressing and varied occupations, he has no time to feel “lonely,” and indeed, he passes fewer hours in the week alone than many a busy man in chambers. Of all the people I have met with who have travelled on land or sea alone, not one has told me it was “lonely,” though some who have never tried the plan as a change upon life in a crowd, may fear its unknown pleasures. As for myself, on this voyage I could scarcely “get a moment to myself,” and there was always an accumulation of things to be done, or read, or thought over, when a vacant half-hour could be had. The man who will feel true loneliness, is he who has one sailor with him, or a “pleasant companion” soon pumped dry; for he has isolation without freedom all day (and night too), and a tight cramp on the mind. With a dozen kindred spirits in a yacht, indeed, it is another matter; then you have freedom and company, and (if you are not the owner) you are not slaves of the skipper, but still you are sailed and carried, as passive travellers, and perhaps after all you had better be in a big steamer at once—the Cunard’s or the P. and O., with a hundred passengers—real life and endless variety. However, each man to his taste; it is not easy to judge for others, but let us hope, that after listening to this log of a voyage alone, you will not call it “lonely.”

The Rob Roy is a yawl-rig, so as to place the sailor between the sails for “handiness.” She is double-skinned to make her staunch and dry below, and she is full-decked to keep out the sea above. She has an iron keel and kelson to resist a bump on rocks, and with four water-tight compartments to limit its effects if once stove in. Her cabin is comfortable to sleep in, but only as arranged when anchored for the purpose:—sleep at sea is forbidden to her crew. Her internal arrangements for cooking, reading, writing, provisions, stores, and cargo, are quite different from those of any other yacht; all of them are specially devised, and all well done; and now on the 7th of June, at 3 p.m., she is hastily launched, her ton and a half of pig-iron is put on board for ballast, the luggage and luxuries for a three months’ voyage are loaded in, her masts are stepped, the sails are bent, the flags unfold to the breeze, the line to shore is slipped, and we are sailing from Woolwich, never to have any person aboard in her progress but the captain, until she returns to the builders’ yard.

Often as a boy I had thought of the pleasure of being one’s own master in one’s own boat; but the reality far exceeded the imagination of it, and it was not a transient pleasure. Next day it was stronger, and so to the end, until at last, only duty forced me reluctantly from my floating freehold to another home founded on London clay, sternly immovable, and with the quarter’s rent to pay.

At Erith then the Royal Canoe Club held its first sailing match, when five little paddling craft set up their bamboo masts and pure white sails, and scudded along in a rattling breeze, and twice crossed the Thames. They were so closely matched that the winner was only by a few seconds first. Then a Club dinner toasted the prizemen, and “farewell,” “bon voyage” to the captain, who retired on board for the first sleep in his yawl.

The Sunday service on board the Training-ship ‘Worcester,’ at Erith, is a sight to see and to remember. The bell rings and boats arrive, some of them with ladies. Here in the ’tween decks, with airy ports open, and glancing water seen through them, are 100 fresh-cheeked manly boys, the future captains of Taepings and Ariels, and as fine specimens of the gentleman sailor-lad as any Englishman would wish to see. Such neatness and order without nonsense or prim awe. Health and brightness of boyhood, with seamen’s smartness and silence: I hope they do not get too much trigonometry. However, for the past week they have been skurrying up aloft “to learn the ropes,” skylarking among the rigging for play, and rowing and cricketing to expand muscle and limb; and now on the day of rest they sing beautifully to the well-played harmonium, then quietly listen to the clergyman of the “Thames Mission,” who has been rowed down here from his floating church, anchored then in another bay of his liquid parish, but now removed entirely.

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution had most kindly presented to the Rob Roy one of its best lifeboat compasses. The card of this compass floats in a mixture of spirits, so as to steady its oscillations in a boat, and a deft-like lamp alongside will light it up for use by night. Only a sailor knows the peculiar feeling of regard and mystery with which the compass of his craft becomes invested, the companion in past or unknown future perils, his trusty guide over the wide waste of waters and through the night’s long blackness.

Having so much iron on board, and so near this wondrous delicate needle, I determined to have the boat “swung” at Greenhithe, where the slack tide allows the largest vessels conveniently to adjust their compasses. This operation consumed a whole day, and a day sufficed for the Russian steamer alongside; but then the time was well bestowed,—it was as important to me to steer the Rob Roy straight as it could be to any Muscovite that he should sail rightly in his ship of unpronounceable name. [10]

While the compass was thus made perfect for use at one end of the boat, her anchors occupied my attention at the other.

It was necessary to carry an anchor heavy enough to hold well in strong tides, in bad weather, and through the long nights, so that I could sleep then without anxiety. On the other hand, the anchor must be also light enough to be weighed and stowed by one man, and this too in that precious twenty seconds of time, when in weighing anchor, the boat, already loosed from the ground but not yet got hold of by the sails, is swept bodily away by the tide, and faces look cross from yachts around, being sure you will collide, as a lubber is bound to do.

After considering the matter of anchors a long time, and poising too the various opinions of numerous advisers, the Rob Roy was fitted with a 50-lb. galvanized Trotman anchor and 30 fathoms of chain, and also with a 20-lb. Trotman and a hemp cable.

The operation of anchoring in a new place and that of weighing anchor are certainly among the most testing and risky in a voyage like this, where the circumstances are quite new on each occasion, and where all has to be done by one man.

You sail into a port where in less than a minute you must apprehend by one panoramic glance the positions of twenty vessels, the run of the tide, and set of the wind, and depth of the water; and this not only as these are then existing, but in imagination, how they will be six hours hence, when the wind has veered, the tide has changed, and the vessels have swung round, or will need room to move away, or new ones will have arrived.

These being the data, you have instantly to fix on a spot where there will be water enough to float your craft all night, and yet not so deep as to give extra work next morning; a berth, too, which you can reach as at present sailing, and from which you can start again to-morrow; one where there are no moorings of absent vessels to foul your anchor, and where the wind will not blow right into your sleeping cabin when the moonlight chills, and where the dust will not blind you from this lime barge, or the blacks begrime you from that coal brig as you spread the yellow butter on your morning tartine.

The interest felt in doing this feat well is increased by seeing how watchfully those who are already berthed will eye the stranger, often speaking by their looks, and always feeling “hope he won’t come too near me;” while the penalty on failure in the proceeding is heavy and sharp, a smash of your spars, a hole in your side, or a sleepless night, or an hour of cable-clearing to-morrow, or all of them; and certainly in addition, the objurgations of every yachtsman within the threatened circle.

Undoubtedly the most unpleasant result of bad management is to have damaged any other man’s boat; and I cannot but mention with the greatest satisfaction, that after so often working my anchors—at least two hundred times—and so many days of sailing in crowded ports and rivers, on no one occasion did the Rob Roy even brush the paint off any other vessel.

Not far from my yawl there was moored a fine old frigate, useless now for war, but invaluable for peace—the “‘Chichester’ Training-ship for homeless boys of London.” It is for a class of lads utterly different from those on the ‘Worcester,’ but they are English boys still, and every Englishman ought to do something for English boys, if he cares for the present or the future of England.

Pale and squalid, thin, heartless, and homeless, they were; but now, ruddy in the river breeze, neat and clean, alert with energy, happy in their wooden home, with a kind captain and smart officers to teach them, life and stir around, fair prospects ahead, and a British seaman’s honest livelihood to be earned instead of the miserable puling beggardom of the streets, or the horrid company of the prison cell; which, that they should lie in the path of any child of our land, adrift on the rough tide of time at ten years old, is a glaring shame to the millions of sovereigns in bankers’ books, and we shall have to answer heavily if we let it be thus still longer. [14]

The burgee flag of the Canoe Club flew always (white with our paddle across Ɔ C in cipher) and another white flag on the mizen-mast had the yawl’s name inscribed. Six other gay colours were used as occasion required. These all being hoisted on a fine bright day, and my voyage really begun, the ‘Chichester’ lads ‘boyed’ the rigging, and gave three ringing cheers as they shouted, “Take these to France, sir!” and the frigate dipped her ensign in salute, my flag lieutenant smartly responding to the compliment as we bade “good-bye.”

The Thames to seaward looks different to me every time I float on its noble flood. I have seen it from on board steamers large and small, from an Indiaman’s deck, the gunwale of a cutter, and the poop of an ironclad, as well as from rowboat and canoe, and have penetrated almost every nook and cranny on the water, some of them a dozen times, yet always it is new to see.

Thames river life is a separate world from the land life in houses. The day begins on the water full an hour before sunrise. Cheery voices and hearty faces greet you, and there seems to be no maimed, or sick, or poor. From the simple fact that you are on the river, there is a brotherhood with every sailor. The mode is supple as the water, not like the stiff fashion of the land. Ships and shipmen soon become the “people.” The other folks on shore are, to be sure, pretty numerous, but then they are ashore. Undoubtedly they are useful to provide for us who are afloat the butter, eggs, and bread they do certainly produce; and we gaze pleasantly on their grassy lawns and bushy trees, and can hear the lark singing on high, and peacocks screaming, and all are very pretty, and we are bound to try to sympathize with people thus pinned to the soil, while we are free in the fine fresh breeze, and glide on the bounding wave. N.B.—These very people are all the while regarding us with humane pity, as the “poor fellows in that little ship there, cabined, cribbed, confined.” Perhaps it is well for all of us that the stand-point of each, be it ever so bleak, becomes to him the centre of creation.

As the country lane has charms for the botanist which will sadly delay one in a summer stroll with such a companion, so to the nautical mind every reach on a full river has a constant flow of incidents quite unnoticed by the landsmen. In the crowd of ships around us, no two are quite the same even to look at, nor are they doing the same thing, and there are hundreds passing. What a feast for the eye that hath an appetite! The clink of an anchor-chain, the “Yo-ho!” of a well-timed crew, the flapping of huge sails—I love all these sounds, yes, even the shrill squeal of a pulley thrills my ear with pleasure, and grateful to my nostrils is the odour of tar.

Meanwhile we are sailing on to Sheerness; and no wonder that the Rob Roy fixes many a sailor’s eye, for the bright sun shines on her new white sails, and her brilliant-coloured flags flutter gladly in the wind as the waves glance and play about her polished mahogany sides, the last and least addition to the yacht fleet of England.

Rounding Garrison Point, at the mouth of the Medway, our anchor is dropped alongside the yacht ‘Whisper,’ where the kind hospitality to the Rob Roy from English, French, and Belgian, at once began, and it ceased only at the end of my voyage.

After our tea and strawberries, and ladies’ chat (pleasant ashore and ten times more afloat), the blue-jackets’ band on board the Guard-ship gives music, and the moon gives light, and around are the huge old war-hulks, beautiful, though bygone, and all at rest, with a newer, uglier frigate, that has no poetry in her look, but could speak forth loudly, no doubt, with a very heavy broadside, for her thundering salute made all the windows shudder as she steamed in gallantly.

The tide of visitors to my yawl began at Sheerness. Among them I caught a boy and made him grease the mast. His friends were so pleased with their visit, that when the Rob Roy came there again months afterwards, they brought me a present of fresh mussels, highly to be esteemed by those who like to eat them—everybody does not; but then was it not grateful to give them thus? and is not gratitude a precious and rare gift to receive?

The internal arrangements of the Rob Roy yawl are certainly peculiar, for they were designed for a unique purpose, and as there is no description (at least that I can find) of a yacht specially made for one-man voyages, and proved to be efficient during so long a sail, it may be useful here to describe the inside of the Rob Roy. Safety was the first point to be attained, as we have already mentioned, and this was provided for by her breadth of beam (seven feet), her strongly bolted iron kelson, her water-tight compartments, and her double skin, the outer one being of polished Honduras mahogany, and the inner of yellow pine, with canvas between them; also by her strong, firm deck, her undersized masts and sails, and her lifeboat dingey.

Next we had to consider the capacity for comfort; not for the sake of any luxurious ease which could be expected, but so as to take proper means to preserve health, maintain good spirits, and to economize the energy which would undoubtedly be largely taxed in downright physical muscular work, and which now would be liable any day to yield if overwrought by long-continued anxiety, wakefulness, and exertion.

For this purpose the actual labour bestowed upon maintaining the outward forms of a (partially) civilized life must be a minimum, and the action required in times of risk or danger must be as little encumbered as possible; and as every arrangement came frequently under review, and improvements were well considered in meditative hours, and many were put in practice during a stay at Cowes, where the very best workmen were at command, it may not unreasonably be asserted that for a solitary sailor’s yacht the cabin of the Rob Roy is at least a very good specimen of the most recent model, and perhaps the best that has been devised as a basis for the next advance.

Although at present I have no radical improvements to suggest upon the general plan, it is, of course, open to the refining experience of others; and I do not apologize for speaking of the fittings of a little boat as if they were mere trifles because it held only one man, when they may in any degree be useful to yachts of larger size, and thus to that noble fleet of roaming craft which renew the nerve and energy of so many Englishmen by a manly and healthful enterprise, opening a whole new element of nature, and nursing a host of loyal seamen to defend our shores.

From the sketch given at p. 23, and one partly in section at p. 41, it will be understood that the Rob Roy is fully decked all over except an open well near the stern which is three feet square, and about the same in depth; a strong combing surrounds both the well and the main hatchway as a protection in the sea. [20] This well or after compartment is separated from the next compartment by a strong bulkhead, sloping forward (p. 7) to give all the room possible for stretching one’s limbs and a change of posture, and also so as to form a comfortable sloping back inside in the cabin, while it supports a large soft pillow, the whole being used as a sofa to recline on while reading or writing, or finally being converted into a bolster by lowering it when the crew is piped to bed for the night, or at least such hours of it as the tide and wind may allow for sleep.

Fronting the seat the binnacle hangs with its tender thrilling compass inside, well protected by thick plate glass, and the lamp, which is always ready to be lighted up should darkness need it; for experience has showed me only too plainly that it will not do to postpone any preparation for night, or wind, or hunger, or shoal water, but that you should be always quite prepared for them all.

Above the binnacle is the chart; that is to say, a rectangular piece cut out from the larger sheet, and containing all that will be sailed in a day. The other parts, too, of the chart ought to be kept where they are accessible for ready reference.

Rain or the dashing of a wave or two soon softens the paper of the chart, and on one occasion it was so nearly melted away in this manner in a rough sea that I had to learn its lines and figures quickly off by heart, and trust to memory for the rest of the day.

To prevent another time such an awkward state of things, I made a frame with a glass front and movable back, and this allowed each portion of the chart to be placed inside, and to be well protected, an excellent arrangement when your hands are as wet as all other things around, and the ordinary chart would be soaked in five minutes.

The chart frame is also detachable from its place, as it is sometimes necessary to hold it near a lamp at night so as to read the soundings. To aid still further to decipher the chart at night and in dull afternoons, there is a small mounted lens in a leather loop alongside, which has often to be used. The compass [22] itself is so placed that you can see it well while either sitting or standing up, or when lying at full length on the deck, with the back against a pillow propped by the mizen mast, the blight sun or moon overhead, and a turn or two of the mainsheet cast about your body to keep the sleepy steersman from rolling over into the water, as shown next page.

This somewhat effeminate but decidedly comfortable attitude in which to keep one’s watch on deck, was not invented until farther on in the cruise; and it seems odd that I should so long have continued to sit upright for hours together (wriggling only a little at the constraint) for many a fine day before adopting for a change so obvious a posture, and thus effectually postponing any sense of weariness even in sailing for a whole day and night. Still it is only for light airs, gentle waves, or in deep rivers, or with long runs on the same tack, that the captain may do his duty while he lies on a sofa. In fresh breezes and rolling seas, or in beating to windward with frequent boards, such indulgence is soon cut short; and indeed the muscles and energies of the sailor are so braced up by the lively motion and refreshing blasts when there is plenty of wind, that no ennui can come; and there is quite enough play of limb and change of position caused by the working of the ship, while he soon learns by practice to steer by the action of any part of his body from head to feet being in contact with the tiller, that delicate and true sensorium of a boat to which all feeling is conveyed.

Sometimes I would sit low and out of sight, but with a glance now and then at the compass, while the tiller pressed against my neck. At others I would lie prone on the hatchway with my head upon both hands, and my elbows on the deck, and my foot on the tiller; while, again, every day it was necessary to cook and eat, all the time steering; the most difficult operation of all being to eat a boiled egg comfortably under these conditions, because there is the egg and the spoon, each in a hand, and the salt and the bread, each liable to be capsized with a direful result.

Uncovered and handy for instant use there lies a sharp axe at the bottom of the well, by which any rope may be cut, and a blow may be given to the forelock of an anchor or other refractory point needing instant correction, and near this again is the sounding lead, with its line wound on a stick like that of a boy’s kite. I soon found that much the best way to tell the fathoms, especially at night, was to measure the line as it was hauled in by opening my arms to the full stretch of one fathom between my hands.

In two large leather pockets fixed in the well, were sundry articles, such as a long knife, cords of various kinds, a foot measure of ivory (best to read off at night), and a good binocular glass by Steward in the Strand. [25]

Turning now to the left of the seat in the well, we open a door about a foot square, hinged so as to fall downwards and thus form a cook’s “dresser;” and now the full extent is visible of our kitchen range, at p. 41, or in nautical tongue here is the caboose of the Rob Roy.

It is a zinc box with a frame holding a flat copper kettle, a pan in which to heat the tin of preserved meat for our dinner to-day, and the copper frying-pan in which three eggs will be cooked sur le plât for our breakfast to-morrow.

The invaluable Rob Roy lamp [26] is below this frame, and a spare lamp alongside—a fierce blast it has, and it will be needed if there is bad weather, for then sometimes as a heavy sea is coming the kitchen is hastily closed lest the waves should invade it, but the lamp may still be heard roaring away inside all the same. An iron enamelled plate and a duster complete the furniture of our little scullery, all the rest of the things we started with having been improved out of existence, for simplicity is the heart of invention as brevity is the soul of wit.

If we desire to get at the tubular wooden flag box that some gay colours may deck our mast in entering a new harbour, this will be found inside the space aft of the caboose; and again, by reaching the arm still further into the hollow behind our seat, it will grasp the storm mizen, a strongly made triangular sail, to be used only in untoward hours, and for which we must prepare by lowering the lug mizen, and shifting the halyard, tack, and sheet. Then the Rob Roy, with her mainsail and jib reefed, will be under snug canvas, as seen at page 57.

But now it is bed-time, and the lecture on the furniture of the yawl may be finished some other day.

CHAPTER II.

Sheerness—Governor—Trim—Earthquake—Upset—Wooden legs—On the Goodwin—Cuts and soars—Crossing the Straits—The ground at Boulogne—Night music—Sailors’ maps—Ship’s papers—Weather—Toilette—Section.

Sheerness is on the whole a tolerable port to land at, that is, as long as you refrain from going ashore. The harbour is interesting and more lively than it appears at first sight, but the streets and shops are just the reverse.

The Rob Roy ran into this harbour seven or eight times during her cruise, and there was always “something going on.” The anchorage on the south of the pier is in mud of deep black colour, but not such good holding ground as it would seem to be, and then what comes up on the anchor runs like black paint upon your deck, and needs a good scrubbing to get rid of it from each palm of the anchor. Even after all seems to be cleared away thoroughly, there may be a piece only the size of a nut, but perverse enough to fasten upon the white creamy folds of your jib newly washed out, and then the inky stain will be an eyesore for days, until, for peace of mind, the sail must be scrubbed again. Trifles these are to the yachtsman who can leave all that to his crew, who sees only results, but when the captain alone is the crew, the realities of sea life must be endured as well as enjoyed, and yet surely he is the one to enjoy most keenly the luxury of a white spotless sail whose own hands have made it so.

If any sailor henceforth has me for his captain, and he has to “tidy up” my yacht, he may be sure of having a very considerate if not indulgent master—“Governor,” of course, I mean, for there are no “masters” any longer now, they are all promoted to the rank of “Governor.”

And the reason I should be considerate is that until you do it all yourself you cannot have any idea of the innumerable minutiæ to be attended to in the proper care of a yacht. Mine, indeed, was in miniature; but the number of little things was still great, though each little thing was more little. On the whole we should say that a yacht’s crew, even in port, have full employment for all their working hours if the hull, spars, sails, ropes, and boats, besides the cabin and stores, are always kept in that condition of order, neatness, cleanliness, readiness, and repair which ought to be little short of perfection when regarded with a critical eye.

In like manner as you drive out in a carriage and return, and the carriage and horses disappear into the stables for hours of careful work by the men who are there, so may the day’s sail in a yacht involve a whole series of operations on board afterwards. Inattention to these in the extreme can be observed in the boats of fishermen, and attention in the extreme in the perfect vessels of the Royal Squadron; but even a very reasonable amount of smartness requires a large expenditure of labour which will not be effectual if it be hurried, and which is, of course, worse than useless if it is done by inferior hands.

In perfect trim and “ship shape” now, we loosed from Sheerness, to continue the sail eastwards, and with a leading breeze and a lovely morning. This part of the Thames is about the best conjunction of river and sea one could find, with land easily sighted on both sides, yet fine salt waves, porpoises, and other attributes of the sea, and buoys, and beacons, and light-ships to be attended to, and a definite line of course determined on and followed by compass. A gale here is not to be trifled with, though in fine weather you may pass it safely in a mere cockle-shell, and the last time I had sailed here alone it was in an open boat, just ten feet long inside. Still the whole day may be summed up now, as it was in the log of the Rob Roy, “Fine run to Margate;” the pleasures of it were just the same as so often afterwards were met, enjoyed, and thanked for, but which might be tedious to relate even once.

The harbour here dries bare at low tide, and as seventeen years had elapsed since we had sailed into it, this bad habit of the harbour was forgotten, but more years than that may pass before it will be forgotten again, for as evening came, and the water ebbed, and I reclined unharnessed in the cabin, reading intently, there suddenly came a rude bumping shove upwards as from below, and then another—the Rob Roy had grounded. Soon there was a swaying this way and that, as if yet undecided, and at length a positive heel over to that; the whole of my little world within being canted to half a right angle, and a ridiculous distortion of every single thing in my bedroom was the result. The humiliating sensation of being aground on hard unromantic mud is tempered by the ludicrous crooked appearance of the contents of your cabin and by the absurd sensation of sleeping in a corner with everything askance except the lamp flame, which, because it burns upright, looks most awry of all, and incongruously flares on the spout of the teapot in your pantry.

And why this bouleversement of all things? Because I had omitted to bring a pair of “legs” with me, for a boat cannot stand upright on shore without legs any more than an animal.

Next time the Rob Roy came to Margate we made one powerful leg for her by lashing the two oars to the iron shroud, and took infinite pains to incline the boat over to that side so as to be turned away from the wind and screened from the tide, and I therefore weighted her down by placing the dingey and heavy anchor on the lee gunwale, and then with misplaced contentment proceeded to cook my dinner. At a solemn pause in the repast, the yawl, without other warning than a loud splash, perversely turned over to the wrong side, with deck to sea and wind, and every single thing exactly the contrary of what was proper. I had just time to plunge my hissing spirit-lamp into the sea, and thus to prevent the cry of “Ship on fire!” but had not time to put out my cabin-lamp, and this instantly bore its flame provokingly upright against the thick glass of the aneroid barometer, which duly told its fate by three sonorous “crinks,” and at once three starred cracks shot through its crystal front.

The former experience of the night as spent when one is thus arbitrarily “inclined to sleep” made me wish to get ashore; but this idea was stifled partly by pride and partly by the fact that there was not water enough to enable me to go ashore in a boat, and yet there was too much water besides soft mud to make it at all pleasant to set off and wade to bed. The recovery from this unwholesome state of things, with all the world askew, was equally notable, for when the tide rose again, in the late midnight hours, the sea-dreams of disturbed slumber were arrested by a gentle nudge, and then by a more decided heaving up of one’s bed in the dark, until at last it came level again as the boat floated, and all the things that were right when she was wrong turned over now at wrong angles, because the boat had righted. [32]

An excellent cure for all such little mishaps is to “imagine it is to-morrow morning,” for in the morning one is sure to forget all the night’s troubles; and so with the fiery rising sun on the sails we are floating out to sea.

In such a sunny day the North Foreland is a very comfortable-looking cliff, with pleasant country-houses on the top, and corn-fields growing round the lighthouse. Next there is Ramsgate, and then Dover pier. But now, and in weather like this, will be a proper occasion to practise manœuvres which will certainly have to be performed in bad times, so we stretched away out to the Goodwin Sands, where one is nearly always sure to find a sea running, and for several hours we worked assiduously at reefing the sails, and getting the little dingey out of the cabin and into the water, and vice versâ.

At least a short trial of my yacht in the Thames would have been advisable before starting on a long voyage, but as this was not possible now, it was of invaluable benefit to spend an afternoon at drill on the Goodwin; rightly assured that success in this journey could not be expected haphazard, but might be hoped for after the practice in daylight and fine weather of what had to be done afterwards in rough water and darkness. By this time, just a week in the Rob Roy, the little craft seemed quite an old friend. Her many virtues and her few faults were being found out. The happy life aboard had almost enchained me, but still I left the yawl at Dover, and ran up to London for the annual inspection of the London Scottish Volunteers; and having led his fine company of kilted Riflemen through Hyde Park, the Captain sheathed his claymore to handle the tiller again, eager for the voyage.

The new rough hairy ropes had chafed my hands abundantly, and they were red and black, and blistered, and swollen, and variously adorned by cuts, and bruises, and scars. When shall I ever get gloves on again, or be fit to appear at a dinner-table? These wounds, however, had taught me this lesson, “Do every act deliberately. Hasty smartness is slowest. When each single thing from morning to night has to be done by your own fingers, save them from bruises and chafes. Nothing is worse spent than needless muscular action. You will want every atom you have some day or other this week. Husband vital force.”

The Sappho schooner was at Dover, and her owner, Mr. Lawton, one of the Canoe Club, took leave of the Rob Roy, and sailed away to Iceland, while I started for Boulogne in the dawn, when all the scene around looked like a woodcut, pale and colourless, as I cooked hot breakfast at five o’clock. Nothing particular happened in this voyage across the Channel. It was simply a very pleasant sail, in a very fine day, and in a good little boat. The sight of both shores at once, when you are in the widest part of a passage, deprives it immediately of the romance and interest of being entirely out of sight of land and ships, and all else but water, and so there is absent that deeper stir of feeling which powerfully seized me in the wider traverse afterwards from Havre to Cowes.

Indeed, when you know the under-water geography of the channel near Dover, it is impossible not to feel that you are sailing over shallow waves; for though they seem to be deep and grand enough from Dover Castle or the Boulogne heights, the whole way might almost be spanned by piers and arches, and if you wished to walk over dry shod at the low spring-tide, you need only lay from shore to shore a twenty miles’ slice of undulated ground cut from the environs of London. The cellars of the houses would be at the bottom of the sea, but the chimney-pots would still be above it for stepping-stones.

The wind fell as we neared France, and a fog came on, and the tide carried us off in a wrong direction north to Cape Grisnez, where I anchored with twenty fathoms, to wait for the reflux six or seven hours. Often as we had to do the same thing in after days, there was always constant employment for every hour of a long stoppage like this, with a well-furnished tool-box, and a busy mind ever making additions, experiments, improvements, and with books to read. Not one single moment of the voyage ever hung heavy on the Rob Roy.

Trying to get into Boulogne at low water was an unprepared attempt, and met its due reward; for the thing had to be done without the benefit of my “Pilot-book,” which had been put away with such exceeding care, that now it could not anywhere be found—not after several rigorous searches all over the boat. Finally, concluding that I must have taken the book to London by mistake, we had to trust to nature’s light and go ahead. This does well enough for a canoe, but not for the sailing-boat, which, if once aground, and with a sea running, it would be utterly out of the power of one man to save. [36]

In encountering the first roller off the pier at Boulogne, she thumped the ground heavily. At the second, again, the masts quivered, and all the bottles rattled in my cellar. Instant decision turned her round from the third roller, and so after bumping the ground twice again in the retreat, we put out to sea, anchored, and got out the dingey, half-ashamed to be discomfited thus at the very first French port. After an hour or two spent in the dark, carefully sounding to discover the proper channel, and to get it well into my head, the anchor was weighed, and we entered in a poor sort of triumph upon midnight, slowly ascending the long harbour, but looking in vain for a proper berth. All was quiet, every one seemed to be in bed, until I came to the sluices at the end, which just then opened, and the rush of foaming water from these bore me back again in the most helpless plight, until I anchored near the well-known “Etablissement,” furled sails, rigged up hatch, and soon dropped fast asleep.

Now there is a peculiarity of the French ports which we may mention here for once for all, but it applies to every one of them, and has to be seriously considered in all your calculations as a sailing-master.

They are quiet enough up to a certain time of night, but as the tide serves, the whole port awakes, all the fishing vessels get ready to start. The quays become vocal with shouts, yells, calls, whistles, and the most stupid din and hubbub confounds the night, utterly destructive of sleep. This chorus was in full cry about two o’clock a.m. Soon great luggers came splashing along with shrieks from the crews, and sails flapping, chains rattling, spars knocking about, as if a tempest were in rage. Several of these lubberly craft smashed against the pier, and the men screamed more wildly, and at length one larger and more inebriated than all the rest, dashed in among the small boats where the Rob Roy slept, and swooping down on the poor little yawl, then wrapt in calm repose, she heeled us over on our beam-ends, and after fastening her clumsy, rusty anchor in my mizen shrouds (which were of iron, and declined to snap), she bore me and my boat away far off, ignominiously, stern foremost.

Certainly this was by no means a pleasant foretaste of what might be expected in the numerous other ports we were to enter, and, at any rate, that night’s sleep was gone. But in a voyage of this sort a night’s sleep must be resigned readily, and the loss is easily borne by trying to forget it, which indeed you soon do when the sun rises, and a good cup of tea has been quaffed, or, if that will not suffice, then another.

Vigorous health is at the bottom of the enthusiastic enjoyment of yachting; but in a common sailor’s life sleep is not a regular thing as we have it on shore, and perhaps that staid glazy and sedate-looking eye, which a hard-worked seaman usually has, is really caused by broken slumber. He is never completely awake, but he is never entirely asleep.

Boulogne is a much more agreeable place to reside at than one might suppose from merely passing through it. Once I spent a month there, and found plenty to see and to do. Good walks, hotels, churches, and swimming-baths; the river to row in, the reading-room to sit in, the cliffs to climb, and the sands to see.

At Dover the dock-people had generously charged me “nil” for dues. I had letters for France from the highest authorities to pass the Rob Roy as an article entered for the Paris “Exhibition;” and when the douane and police functionaries came in proper state at Boulogne to appraise her value, and to fill up the numerous forms, certificates, schedules, and other columned documents, I had hours of walking to perform, and most courteous and tedious attention to endure, and then paid for sanitary dues, “two sous per ton,” that was threepence. Finally, there was this insurmountable difficulty, that though all my ship’s papers were en règle, they must be signed “by two persons on board,” so I offered to sign first as captain and then as cook. They never troubled me again in any other port, probably thinking the boat too small to have come from a foreign harbour. In France the law of their paternal Government prevents any Frenchman from sailing thus alone.

The sun warmed a fine fresh breeze from the N.E. as we coasted from Boulogne, and to sail with it was a luxury all day. The first pleasure was the morning ablution, either by a wholesale dip under the waves, or a more particular toilette if the Rob Roy was then in full sail.

To effect this we push the hatch forward, and open the interior of the boat. If the water we float on is clean (whether it be salt or fresh) we dip the tin basin at once, but if we are in a muddy river or doubtful harbour we must draw from our zinc water tank, which holds water for one week. This tank is concealed by the figure of the cook kneeling in the opposite sketch, but it is next to my large portmanteau in the lower shelf.

A large hole in the top of the tank allows it to be filled at intervals through a tun-dish, while a long vulcanized tube through the cork to the bottom has an end hanging over. When I wish to draw water it is done by applying the mouth for a moment with suction, and the clear stream then flows by syphon action into a strong tin can of about eight inches cube, which holds fresh water for one day. By means of this tube, the end of which hangs within an inch or two of my face when in bed, I can drink a cool draught at night without trouble or chance of spilling a drop. On the tank top is soap, and also a clean towel, which to-morrow will be degraded into a duster, and “relegated,” the newspapers would say, to the kitchen, and from whence it will again be promoted backwards over the bulkhead to the washing-bag. This, you see, is the red-tape order of dealing with towels on board the Rob Roy.

On the left shelf of the cabin we find two boxes of japanned tin each about eighteen inches by six inches wide, as shown in the woodcut. Below the shelf is a portmanteau full of clothes. One of the boxes holds “Dressing,” another “Reading and writing.” The aneroid barometer, and my watch are seen suspended alongside. The boxes on the other side, shown in section at a future page, are marked “Tools” and “Eating,” while the pantry is beside them, with teapot, cup (saucer discarded), and tumbler, and a tray holding knife and fork, spoons, salt in a snuff-box (far the best cellar after trials of many), pepper (coarse, or it is blown away), mustard, corkscrew, and lever-knife for preserved meat tins, etc., etc. [42]

The north coast of France from Boulogne to Havre is well lighted at night, but the navigation is dangerous on account of the numerous shoals and the tortuous currents and tides. For about the first half of the distance the shores are low, and the water, even far out, is shallow. Afterwards the land rises to huge red cliffs, rugged and steep sometimes for miles, without any opening.

The real matter of importance, however, in coasting here is the direction of the wind. Had it been unfavourable, that is S.W., and with the fogs and sea which that wind brings, it would have been a serious delay to me—perhaps, indeed, a stopper on my voyage—seeing that I must sometimes enter a port at night so as to sleep in peace, for that could scarcely be pleasantly done if anchored ten miles from land, and with no one awake to keep a look-out. Fortunately, we had good weather on the worst parts of the French coast, and my stormy days were yet to come.

CHAPTER III.

Russian lamp—Breakfast—Store rooms—Mast-light—Run down—Rule of the road—Signal thoughts—Sinking sands—Pilot caution—French coast.

After a wash and morning prayers the crew are piped to breakfast, so we must now turn to the kitchen, which after constant use some hundred times I cannot but feel is the most successful “hit” in the whole equipment.

Much thought and many experiments were bestowed on this subject, because, first, it was well known that the hard and uneven strain of bone, muscle, and energy in a voyage of this sort needs to be maintained by generous diet, that cold feeding is a delusion after a few days of it, and that the whole affairs would fail, or at any rate, enjoyment of the trip would cease, unless the Rob Roy had a caboose, easy to work, speedy in result, and capable of being used in rain, wind, and rough weather, and by night as well as by day.

Of course, all stoves with coal or coke, or similar fuel were out of the question, being hard to light, dusty when lighted, and dirty to clean. Various spirit lamps, Etnas, Magic stoves, Soyers, and others, were examined and tried, and all were defective in grand points.

The wickless lamp used by the Alpine climber who occupies the responsible post of “Cook of the Canoe Club,” and modified (after consulting Professor Tyndall), is less than three inches each way, and it acts after the manner of a blow-pipe. It was also adopted in the Abyssinian expedition. In two minutes after lighting it pours forth a vehement flame about a foot in height, which with a warming heat boils two large cups full in my flat copper kettle in five minutes, or a can of preserved meat in six minutes. [44]

While the kettle is boiling we bring forward the box marked “Eating,” take the loaf of bread out of its macintosh swathing, prepare the egg pan with two eggs, the teapot, and put sugar into the tea-cup, and a spoonful of preserved milk (Amey’s is most convenient, being in powder; but Borden’s, in a kind of paste, is most agreeable); lastly, we overhaul the butter tin, a pot of marmalade or anchovies.

The healthful relish with which a plain hot breakfast of this sort is consumed with the fresh air all round, and the sun athwart the east, and the waves dancing while the boat sails merrily all the time, is enhanced by the pleasure of steering and buttering bread, and holding a hot egg and a tea-cup, all at once.

Then, again, there is the satisfaction of doing all this without giving needless trouble in cleaning up, for every whit of that work, too, is to be yours. A crumb must not fall in the boat, because you will have to stoop down afterwards and pick it up, seeing that whatever happens, one thing is insisted on—“the Rob Roy shall be always smart and clean.”

All the breakfast things are cleared away and put by, each into its proper place, and a general “mop up,” has effaced the scene from our deck, but we can still take a look below and notice what is to be seen.

Some of the articles chiefly important in the well of our boat have been already described, but only those on the left of the steersman sitting. Now, turning to the right we find a water-tight door, like that on the opposite side, to be opened by folding down, and it reveals to us, first the “Bread store,” a fourpenny loaf wrapped in macintosh, which makes the best of table cloths, as it may be laid on a wet deck, and can be washed and dried again speedily; next there is a butter keg (as in the coolest place), and a box of biscuits, and a flask of rum—the “Storm supply”—only to be drawn upon when things of air and sea are in such a state that to open the main hatch would be questionable prudence.

Here are, also, ropes, blocks, and purchases, as well as a “fender,” not to keep coals on the hearth, but to keep the mahogany sides of the Rob Roy safe from the rude jostlings of other craft coming alongside. Above these odds and ends is the “Spirit room,” a strong reservoir made of zinc, with a tap and screw plug and internal division not to be rendered intelligible by mere description here, but of important use, as from hence there is served out, two or three times daily, the fuel which is to cook for the whole crew. One gallon of the methylated spirits, costing four shillings and sixpence, will suffice for this during six weeks.

Above the spirit room will be found a blue light to be used in case of distress, and a box of candles, so that we may be enabled to rig up the mast-light if darkness comes, when it will not do to open the cabin. This ship-light is therefore carried here. It is an article of some importance, having to be strong and substantial, easily suspended and taken down, and one that can be trusted to show a good steady light for at least eight hours, however roughly it may be tossed about when you are fast asleep below, in the full confidence that nobody who sees your mast-light will run his great iron bows over your little mahogany bed-room. Yet I fear it does not do to examine into the grounds for any such confidence. Many vessels sail about in the dark without any lights whatever to warn one of their approach, and not a few boats, even with proper lights in them, are “accidentally” run over and sunk in the river Thames; while out at sea, and in dark drizzly rain or fog, it is more than can be expected of human nature that a “look-out man” should peer into the thick blackness for an hour together, with the rain blinding him, and the spray splash smarting his eyes, and when already he has looked for fifty-nine minutes without anything whatever to see. It is in that last minute, perhaps, that the poor little hatch-boat has come near, with the old man and a boy, its scanty crew, both of them nodding asleep after long watches, and their boat-light swinging in the swell. There is a splash, a crash, and a spluttering, and the affair is over, and the dark is only the dark again. Nobody on the steamer knows that anything has occurred, and only the fishermen to-morrow on some neighbouring bank will see a broken hull floating sideways, near some tangled nets.

I fully believe that more care is taken for the lives of others by sailors at sea than in most cases on land where equal risks are run; but there are dangers on the waves, as well as on the hills, the roads, and even in the streets, which no foresight can anticipate, and no precaution can avert.

The principal danger of a coasting voyage, sailing alone, is that of being run down, especially on the thickly traversed English coast, and at night.

As for the important question concerning the “rule of the road” at sea, which is every now and then raised, discussed and then forgotten again after some collision on a crowded river in open day has frightened us into a proper desire to prevent such catastrophes, it appears to me that no rule whatever could possibly be laid down for even general obedience under such circumstances, without causing in its very observance more collisions than it would avert, unless the traffic in the river were to be virtually arrested.

On land the “rule of the road” is well enough on a road, where vehicles are moving in one of two directions, but how would it do if it were to be insisted upon at the place where two streets cross? Now the Thames and other populous rivers are at times as much blocked and crowded by the craft that sail and steam on the water as the crossing at Ludgate Hill is by vehicles at three o’clock, that is, considering fairly the relative sizes of the objects in motion, and the width of the path they must take, their means of stopping or steering, and, above all, the great additional forces on the water which cannot be arrested—wind and tide—moreover, at this London crossing the traffic has to be regulated by policemen, not by a rule for the drivers, but by an external arbitrary director.

The wonderful dexterity of the cabmen, carmen, and coachmen of London is less wonderful than that of the men who guide the barges, brigs, and steamers on the Thames, and it is perfectly amazing that huge masses weighing thousands of tons, and bristling with masts and spars, and rugged wheels projecting, should be every day led over miles of water in dense crowds, round crooked points, along narrow guts, and over hidden shoals while gusts from above, and whirling eddies below are all conspiring to confuse the clearest head, to baffle the strongest arm and to huddle up the whole mass into a general wreck.

Consider what would be the result in the Strand if no pedestrian could stop his progress within three yards, but by anchoring to a lamp-post, and even then swinging round with force. Why, there would be scarcely a coal-heaver who would not be whitened by collision with some baker’s boy. Ladies in full sail would be run down, and dandies would be sunk by the dozen.

The fact is, that vessels on the wide sea are like travellers on a broad plain and not on a road at all, and the two cases do not admit of being dealt with by the same rule, and it is not wonderful that there should be many collisions in the open sea while there are so few in the Thames, the water street of the world. We may learn some lessons from land for safe traffic on water. The cabman who “pulls up” is sure to signal first with his whip to the omnibus astern of him, and the coachman who means to cross to the “wrong side” never does so without a warning to those he is bearing down upon. What is most wanted, then, on the open water, is some ready, sure, and costless signal, to say, “I am going that way” (right or left); for nearly all collisions at sea are caused by one ship not being able to know what the other is going to do. [50]

This is my thought on the matter after many thoughts and some experience: meantime while we have ate, and talked and thought, our yawl has slipped over six miles of sea, and we must rouse up from a reverie to scan the changing picture.

Glance at the barometer—note the time. Trim the sails, and bear away to that pretty fleet of fishing boats bobbing up and down as they trail their nets, or the men gather in the glittering fish, and munch their rude breakfasts, tediously heated by smoky stoves, while they gaze on the white-sailed stranger, and mumble among themselves as to what in the world he can be. The sun mounts and the breeze presses till we are at the bay of the Somme with its shifting sands, its incomprehensible currents, and its low and treacherous coast, buoyed and beaconed enough to puzzle you right into the shoals. The yacht, with my friend S--- in her, bound for Paris, has just been wrecked on that bank near Cayeux—unpleasant news now—and there is St. Valery, from whence King William the Conqueror sailed with his fleet for England, as may be seen on the curious tapestry at Bayeux worked by his Queen’s hands, and still almost as fresh as then. I never saw a place appear so differently from sea and from land as this strange port, so I ran in just to reconnoitre, and spent some hours with chart, compass, lead-line, and Pilot-book, trying my best, to make out the currents, but all to no purpose except to conclude that a voyage along this coast in bad weather would be madness, unless with a man to help.

But nearly all this part of the French coast is awkward ground to be caught in, especially where there are shifting or sinking sands, for if the vessel touches these, the tide stream instantly sucks the sand from under one side, while it piles it up on the other, and thus the hull is gradually worked in with a ridge on such side, and cannot be slewed off, but is liable to be wrecked forthwith. It was interesting to read here the account of this coast given by my Pilot-book, which had at last been dug out of its hiding-place. The reader need not peruse this official statement, but to justify my remarks on the dangers it is given below in a note. [52]

CHAPTER IV.

Thunder—In the squall—The dervish—Sailing consort—Poor little boy!—Grateful presents—The dingey’s mission—Remedy—Rise and work.

The aneroid barometer in my cabin pointed to “set fair” for many a day, and just, too, when we required it most to be fine, that is along the French coast. Had the Rob Roy encountered here the sort of weather she met with afterwards on the south coast of England, we feel quite assured she must have been wrecked ashore or driven out to sea for a miserable time.

So it was best to keep moving on while fine weather lasted, for there was no knowing when this might change, even with the wind as now in the good N.E. The Pilot-book says, upon this (and pray listen to so good an authority—my only one to consult with), “Gales from N. to N.E. are also violent, but they usually last only from 24 to 36 hours, and the wind does not shift as it does with those from the westward. They cause a heavy sea on the flood stream, and during their continuance the French coast is covered with a white fog, which has the appearance of smoke. This is also the case with all easterly winds, which are sometimes of long duration, and blow with great force.”

In the evening, as a sort of practical comment on the text above, there was sudden fall of the wind, and then a loud peal of thunder. Alert in a moment, we noticed, far away in the offing, the fishing boats dip their sails and reef them, so we knew there would soon be a blow, and we resolved to reef, too, and just in time. My life-belt, [55] therefore, was at once strapped on, and two reefs put in the mainsail, and one in the jib, and the storm mizen was set, all in regular order, when up sprung a fine west breeze, just as we were opposite Treport, a pretty little bathing town under some cliffs, where my night-quarters were to be.

The book already referred to gave a rather serious account of the difficulties of entering Treport, its shingle bar, and the high seas on it, and the cross tide and exceedingly narrow entrance; but in an hour more the Rob Roy had come close to all these things, and rose and fell on the rollers chasing each other ashore.

The points to be kept in line for entering the harbour were all clearly set forth in the book, and the signals on the pier were all faultlessly given, while a crowd gradually collected to see the little boat run in, or be smashed, and it was rather exciting to feel that one bump on the bar with such a sea, and—in two minutes the yawl would be a helpless wreck.

Among the spectators, the only one who did not hold his hat on against the wind, was an extraordinary personage who capered about shouting. Long curly hair waved over his face; his dress was hung round with corks and tassels; he swung a long life-line round his head, and screamed at me words which were of course utterly lost in the breeze. This dancing dervish was the “life saver,” marine preserver, and general bore of the occasion, and he seemed unduly annoyed to see me profoundly deaf to his noise as I stood on the after-deck to get a wider view, holding on by the mizen-mast, steeling with my feet, and surveying the entrance with my glass. All the people ran alongside as the Rob Roy glided past the pier and smoothly berthed upon a great mud bank exactly as desired, and then I apologized to the quaint Frenchman, saying that I could not answer him before, for really I had enough to do to steer my boat, at which all the rest laughed heartily—but we made it up next day, and the dervish and Rob Roy were good friends again.

Here we found the ‘Onyx,’ an English-built yacht, but owned by M. Charles, one of the few Frenchmen to be found who really seems to like yachting; plenty of them affect it.

He was enthusiastic in his hospitality, and I rested there next day, meeting also an interesting youth, an eager sailor, but who took sea trips for his health, and drove from some Royal Château to embark and freshen the colour in his delicate face, so pale with languor. We could not but feel and express a deep sympathy with one who loved the sea, but whose pallid looks were in such contrast to the rough brown hue and redundant health enjoyed so long by myself.

All was ataunt again, and then the two yachts started in company for a run to Dieppe, which is only about thirteen miles distant. We came upon a nest of twelve English yachts, all in the basin of this port, so my French comrade spent the rest of his time gazing at their beauty, their strength, their cleanliness, and that unnamed quality which distinguishes English yachts and English houses, a certain fitness for their special purpose. These graceful creatures (is it possible that a fine yacht can be counted as an inanimate thing?) reclined on the muddy bosom of the basin, but I would not put the Rob Roy there, it seemed so pent up and torpid a life, and with the curious always gazing down from the lofty quay right into your cabin, especially as next day I wished to have a quiet Sunday.

Instead of a peaceful day of rest the Sunday at Dieppe was unusually bustling from morning to night, for it was the “Fête Dieu” there. The streets were dressed in gala, and strewed with green herbs, while along the shop fronts was a broad festooned stripe of white calico, set off by roses here and there; the shipping, too, was decked in flag array, and guns, bells, and trombones ushered a long procession of schools and soldiers and young people coming from their “first communion,” who with their priests, and banners, and relics, halted round temporary altars in the open air, to recite and chant, while a vast crowd followed to gaze.

In a similar procession at St. Cloud, one division of the moving host was of the tiniest little children, down to the lowest age that could manage to toddle along with the hand of a mother or sister to help, and the leader of them all was a chubby little boy, with no head-gear in the hot sun but his curly hair, and with his arms and body all bare, except where a lamb-skin hung across. He carried a blue cross, too, and the pretty child looked bewildered enough. Some thought he was John the Baptist, many more pronounced it a ‘sottise.’

In the canoe voyages [60] of the two preceding summers, I had found much pleasure and interest in carrying a supply of books, pictures, and periodicals, and illustrated stories in various languages, which were given as occasion admitted to all sorts of people, and everywhere accepted with thanks, so that we could only regret the limit imposed on the number to be carried in a canoe, where every ounce of weight added to the muscular toil.

Relieved now from this restriction, the Rob Roy yawl was able to load several boxes of this literary cargo, most of them kindly granted for the special purpose of her voyage.

These presents were given away from day to day, and especially on Sunday afternoons, among the sailors and water-population wherever the Rob Roy roved. Thousands of seamen can read, and have time, but no books. Bargees lolling about, or prone in the sun, eagerly began a ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ when thus presented, and sometimes went on reading for hours. Fishermen came off in boats to ask for them, policemen and soldiers, too, begged for a book, and then asked for another for ‘a child at school.’ Smart yachtsmen were most grateful of all, and some even offered to pay for them; the navvies, lock-keepers, ferrymen, watermen, porters, dockmen, and guard-men of lighthouses, piers, and hulks, as well as many a Royal Navy blue-jacket, gratefully accepted these little souvenirs with every appearance of gratitude.

The distribution of these was thus no labour, but a constant pleasure to me. Permanent and positive good may have been done by the reading of their contents; at any rate, they opened up conversation, gave scope to courteous intercourse, often leading to kinder interest. They opened to me many new scenes of life, and some with darker passages and sorrowful groups in the evident but untold background. They were, in fact, the speediest possible introductions by which to meet at once with large bodies of fellow-men too much unknown to us, therefore forgotten, and then despised. The strata of society are not to be all crushed into a pulpy mass, but a wholesome mingling betimes does good, both to the heavy dregs below and to the ‘crême’ on the very top.

Thus encouraged, we launch the little dingey on Sunday for three or four hours’ rowing, and with a large leather bag well filled at starting but empty on its return; and instead of its contents we bring back in our memory a whole series of tales, characters, and incidents of water-craft life, some tragic, others comic, many ‘hum-drum’ enough, but still instructive, suggestive, branching out into hidden lives one would like to draw forth, and telling sorrows that are softened by being told. Of the French crews I began with here, not one of the first few could even read, while five or six English steamboats took books for all their men. On a preceding Sunday (at Erith), I did not meet one man, even a bargee who could not read, and all up the Seine only one in this predicament. Truly there is a sea-mission yet to be worked. Good news was told on the water long ago, and by the Great Preacher from a boat.

And while thus giving these books and papers to others, it may perhaps be allowed us also to add a few reflections suggested on returning from the scenes and people we have sailed amongst abroad. New scenes ought to be to the mind what fresh air is to the body, reviving it for work as well as gladdening it with play; and perhaps one can do more for human misery by withdrawing now and then from its close contact, than by constant action in its midst. Yet it must be admitted that the first impressions on one’s return from such a long vacation as the Rob Roy had are painfully acute. To come back and read up in an hour the diary of the three months’ work of our “Boys’ Beadle” (the agent employed by the Reformatory Union to look after and attend to the uncared-for street children), is to resume one’s post of contemplation of the dreadful picture of woe which crowds an endless canvas with suffering figures, and each case delineated in such a report means far more behind to the eye that can realize. Again, to walk past St. George’s Hospital next day and observe the stream of visitors with anxious steps going up the stairs, and those coming down with kind and thoughtful looks, as they leave their dearest relatives, and confidingly, in strangers’ hands, and to think what is up there. To find in letters awaiting one’s return the gaps made by death in the circle of acquaintance. These are salutary and sudden shocks to self-enjoyment of health and whole limbs, and they are loud calls for more than a gush of sympathy or a song of thankfulness, but for downright help by practical work. Still greater was the change from bounding along in florid health on merry waves of the wholesome sea, to a walk through the east end of London,—that morass of vice, and sighs, and savagery,—what is forced on the senses in an hour being not a hundredth of what is sunk below.

Perhaps it is well we do not always realize the amount of evil around us, of bad, I mean, that can be made good by efforts, some of which we are bound to make. If we knew how big the mountain is we might despair of digging it down by spadefuls, though the faith that digs is the one that can say with best hopes for obedience, “Be thou removed and cast into the sea.” Few children would have courage to begin the alphabet as a step to learning if they knew what a long and heavy road is to be trudged beyond.

And it may be remarked that in returning to one’s post of duty after a time of “leave,” there is at first a disposition rather to generalize about what ought to be done than to set to work and do it. It is natural, indeed, that before putting on the harness once more we should take a look at the collar and buckles, and at the load to be drawn, and it may be allowable to the soldier, while on his way to rejoin the ranks, to take just a glance at the line of march before he falls in.

Theorizing is soon cut short, however, by the clamour of work waiting to be done, and the absorbing interest felt in doing it, and perhaps too soon we forget all doubts as to whether the direction of our labours is after all the best, or whether time might not be saved by improving the instruments of our work, the object of using them being still the same.

Now there is a reflection suggested each time in frequent foreign travel which lasts longest on my mind after returning to England—“How is it that our lowest classes seem to be lower than the lowest abroad?”

Whether they are so or not is another question; but in all our great towns there is a mass of human beings whose want, misery, and filth are more patent to the eye, and blatant to the ear, and pungent to the nostrils, than in almost any other towns in the world. Their personal liberty is greater, too, than anywhere else. Are these two facts related to each other? Is the positive piggery of the lowest stratum of our fellows part of the price we pay for glorious freedom as guaranteed by our “British Constitution”? and do we not pay very dearly then? Must the masses be frowsy to be free?

The highest class of society can enjoy the benefits of our mode of government, with their rank and wealth secured, and prestige added. In return they surrender indeed the pleasure of downright tyranny and a small quota of their ample gold.

The middle class also can enjoy their freedom from oppression, and a nominal share in politics, and they pay by hard work for this.

But the wretched beings at the bottom of all, muddled, starved, and squalid, cannot enjoy freedom, and must not have “license.” They seethe by thousands in ignorance and foulness, and, with our “British Constitution” standing by in all its glory, they rot and perish, a multitude dark and unclean.

That all the luxury and congestion of wealth in the head of the body corporate, while its lowest limbs are in rags and pallid mortification, should be permitted by the head, blinded by plethora, and peacefully endured by the limbs, dispirited by inanition, is an astounding marvel. But there are twinges of pain now and then. The very quiet is only that of syncope, and any day it may be broken by a wild and furious paroxysm. Unless the permission of this evil by the head ceases, then the endurance of it by the limbs will cease.

If the rich are not mingled with the wretched, they are at least entangled with them, and by knots that cannot be untied, and will not be cut. The thief indeed, and the burglar, and more lately the lazy vagabond, and now the assassin, have forced us to consider them; and we even attend to the drunkard, provided he pleads for notice by rolling in our path.

Perhaps at last the wretched also will arrest us.

Is not the time come yet to rouse up head, and heart, and hand, to do more than we have even attempted, and to raise at the least the appearance of our lowest classes to the respectability now attained in countries we are apt to despise?

What is the specific? I have no new one, and no new reason for the old one, but it is easy enough to find tools to work with in this field, if only we are persuaded that work has to be done and we are willing to take our share. Numbers do this, and nobly, but far too few, and much is done, but not half enough. Thousands are yet idle here, who will not listen to God or their conscience or even their instinct in the matter, who live comfortably apart from the evil places, and so hear only now and then a message from the dying wafted on the sable wings of cholera or typhus. Is it not shabby this, to shirk their share of the work and the trouble, and to leave it to be done by softer hearts and a national purse?

It is these, who are moved neither by religion, nor humanity, nor self-respect, that a downright scolding may perhaps stir up; and if we can show them that the state of our lowest classes is a national shame, that we are beaten as in a battle and distanced in a race, then they will soon find the means by which national honour is to be retrieved. Half-a-dozen Englishmen are in danger of death in Africa, and we spend millions of money because they are Britons, and to sustain the British name; but thousands of Britons are living in wretchedness or dying in misery just far enough from our doors not to be seen, and less heard of than if they were in Zululand—to leave them as they now are is a scandalous national disgrace which every true Englishman who knows the facts is ashamed of and which, even if he ignores them at home, he is forced to feel abroad by the taunts of strangers.

Already we wonder that we ever kept the Thames as a common sewer; our sons will wonder, some day, that their fathers had a great human sink in every great town reeking out crime, disease, and disloyalty on the whole nation. I have seen the serfs in Russia, the slaves in Africa, the Jews in Asia, and the negroes in America; but there are crowds of people in England in a far worse plight than these—their very nearness to light, and happiness, and comfort, makes their misery more disgraceful.

National honour may be a lower motive to work with than love to Christ or love to man; but it moves more minds than either of these, and on a scale large enough to relieve us from a national disgrace which will cling to the nation until the nation rises in shamed earnest to shake it off.

CHAPTER V.

Cool—Fishwives—Iron-bound coast—Etretat—Ripples—Pilot-book—Hollow water—Undecided—Stomach law—Becalmed—Cape la Hève—The breeze—Havre de Grâce—Crazy.

So much for Sunday thoughts; but after the day had ended, there happened to me an absurd misery, of the kind considered to be comical, and so beyond sympathy, but which must be told, and it happened thus:—

The little yawl being anchored in the harbour had also a long rope to the quay, and by this I could draw her near the foot of an upright ladder of iron bars fixed in the stones of the quay wall, an ordinary plan of access in such cases. The pier-man promised faithfully to watch my boat as the tide sunk (it was every moment more and more under his very nose), and so to haul her about that she should not “ground” before my return; yet, when I came back at night, her keel had sunk and sunk until it reached the bottom, so she could not be moved with all our pulling. Moreover the tide had gone out so far as to prevent any boat at all from coming to the dock wall round the harbour. I tried to amuse myself for an hour while the tide might rise; but at length, impatient and sleepy and ready for bed, to be off to-morrow at break of day, I determined to get on board at once somehow or other.

Descending then by the iron bars until I reached the last of them, I swung myself on the slack of the strong cable hanging from above (and attached at the other end to my yawl), and which the man received strict orders to “haul taut” at the critical moment. Alas! in his clumsy hands the effect intended was exactly reversed; the rope was gently loosened, and I subsided in the most undignified, inevitable, and provokingly cool manner quietly into the water at 10.30 p.m. However, there was no use in grumbling, so I spluttered and laughed, and then went to bed.

Long before sunrise the Rob Roy was creeping out of the harbour of Dieppe against the strong wind at that point dead ahead; but I took the tow-line thrown down from the quay by some sturdy fishwives, who will readily tug a boat to the pier head for a franc or two, and thus save a good half-hour of tedious rowing against wind and tide. This rope was of a deep black colour, very fine, thin, and yet strong. There was no time to find out what it was made of, but it seemed to be plaited of human hair. As I was aft in my boat and steering, the line suddenly slipped and disappeared, and the Rob Roy was in great danger of going adrift on the other pier head, but the excellent dames speedily regained their long black tress, and coiled it and threw it to me again with great dexterity; and soon all was put right, and the sails were up, and the line cast off, and we plunged along in buoyant spirits.

It was a fair wind now, and with a long day in front, and the freshness of Monday after a good rest. Still this was a rather more anxious day than the others, because in those though we had passed over the dangers on the coast of the Somme, they were hidden by water; and on a sunny morning who can realize shoals that are so fatal in bad weather, but are concealed by the smiling calm of a fine day? Not so with the great beetling cliffs of sharp red flint now glittering alongside my course for miles and miles far beyond what the eye could reach. These formed an impressive object ever in sight, and generally begetting, as it was seen, an earnest hope that the weather might be good “just to-day.” This part of the coast, too, beside being iron-bound, has no port that is easy to enter, and the tides moreover are very powerful, so that, with either a gale or a calm, there would be a danger to meet.

It is obvious, of course, to the sailor who reads this that the difficulty of navigation along such a coast was much increased by my being alone. An ordinary vessel would put well out to sea, and go on night and day in deep water with a good offing, and its crew would take watch and watch until they neared the land again close to their destination.

But the course of the Rob Roy had to be within seven or eight miles of the shore, so as to keep within reach of a port at night, or at the worst near some shallower spot for anchorage; else, in the attempt to sleep, I might have been drifted twenty miles by the tide, perhaps out to sea, right away from our course, and perhaps ashore on the rocks. It had not yet become my plan to pass whole nights at sea as was necessary in the latter part of this voyage.

With these little drawbacks now and then, which threw rather a graver tone into the soliloquy of the lonely traveller, it was still a time of excessive enjoyment. The noble rocks towered up high on the left, and the endless water opened out wide on the right with only some dot of a sail, hull down, far far off on the horizon, a little lonely speck fixed in hard exile; but very probably the crew in that vessel too were happy in the breezy morn, and felt themselves and their craft to be the very “hub of the universe.”

In a nook of the cliffs was Etretat, now the most fashionable bathing-place of Northern France. Long pointed pillars of rock stood in the sea along this shore, one especially notable, and called the “Needle of Etretat.” Others were like gates and windows, with the light shining through. I thought of looking in here to escape the flood-tide which was against me, but I was deterred by the Pilot-book telling in plain words, “The Eastern part of the beach at Etretat is bordered by rocks which uncover at low water.”

The Rob Roy’s previous behaviour in a sea made me quite at ease about waves or deep water, but to strike on a rock would be a miserable delay, and somehow I became more cautious as to exposing my little craft to danger the more experience I acquired; certainly also she was valued more and more each day. This increase together of experience and of admiration, begetting boldness and caution by turns, went on until it settled down into a strange compromise,—extreme care in certain circumstances, and undue boldness at other times.

All over the British Channel there are patches of sand, shingle, or rock, which being deep down are not dangerous as regards any risk of striking upon them, but still even without any wind they cause the tide-stream to rush over them in great eddies, and confused babbling waves. The water below is in action, just like a waterfall tumbling over a hill, and the whirlings and seethings above look threatening enough until you become thoroughly aware of the exact state of the case, being precisely that which occurs above Schaffhausen, on the deeps of the Rhine, and which we have described in the account of a canoe voyage there.

These places are called by the French “ridèns,” or in England “ridges,” and in some charts, “ripples” or “overfalls,” and while there is sure to be a short choppy sea upon them, even in calm weather, the effect of a gale is to make them boil and foam ferociously.

A somewhat similar feature is the result when a low bank projects under water from a cape round which the tide is rushing; and as I determined not to risk going into Etretat, we had to face the tedious tossing about off one of these banks, described thus in the Pilot-book:—

“Abreast Etretat the shoal bottom, with less than eight fathoms on it, projects a mile to the N.N.W. from the shore, and when the flood-stream is at its greatest strength it occasions a great eddy, named by the mariners of the coast the Hardières, which extends to the northward as far as the Vaudieu Rock, and makes the sea hollow and heavy when the wind is fresh from the eastward.”

It was just because the wind was fresh from the eastward that I could hope to stem the tide and get through this place; but once in the middle of the hubbub, the wind went down almost to nothing, so that for three or four hours I could only hold my place at most, and the wearisome monotony here of “up and down” on every wave, with a jerk of all my bones each time, was one of the few dull and disagreeable things of the whole voyage.

A sea that is “hollow” is abominable. However high a wave is, it may still have a rounded and respectable shape, and it will then tilt you about smoothly; but a “hollow” sea splashes and smacks and twists and screws, and the tiring effects on the body, thus hit right and left with sudden blows, is quite beyond what would be anticipated from so trifling a cause.

At length, as the tide yielded, the wind carried me beyond the Hardières, on and on to Fécamp, where the Rob Roy meant to stop for the night. But, willing though I was to rest there, the appearance of Fécamp from the offing was by no means satisfactory. It did not look easy to get into, and how was I to get out of it to-morrow? The Pilot-book took a similar view of this matter. [77]

Yet we must put in somewhere, and this was the nearest port to the Cape Antifer, the only remaining point to be anxious about, and which we might now expect to round next day. On the other hand, there was the argument, “If the wind chops round to the west, we may be detained in Fécamp for a week, whereas now it is favourable; and if we can possibly get round to-day—Well what a load of anxiety would be done with if we could do that!” The thought, quite new, seemed charming, and, yet undecided, I thought it best to cook dinner at once and put the question to the vote at dessert.

It is very puzzling what name to give to each successive meal in a day when the first one has been eaten at 2 a.m. If this is to be considered as breakfast, then the next, say at nine o’clock, ought to be luncheon, which seems absurd, though the Americans call any supplemental feeding a “lunch,” even up to eleven o’clock at night, and you may see in New York signboards announcing “Lunch at 9 p.m. Clam Chowder.” [78]

Now, as I had often to begin work by first frying at one or two o’clock in the moonlight, and as it would have a greedy sound if the next attack on eatables were to be called “second breakfast,” the only true way of settling this point was to consider the first meal to be in fact a late supper of yesterday, or at any rate to regard it as belonging to the bygone, and therefore beyond inquiry, and so to ignore this first breakfast altogether in one’s arrangements. The stomach quite approved of this decision, and was always ready for the usual breakfast at six or seven o’clock, whatever had been discussed a few hours before.

The matter as to Etretat was decided then. We two were to go on, and to hope the wind would do so to. Then away sped we merrily singing, with the new and unexpected prospect of possibly reaching Havre that very day. From thence a month was to be passed in going up and down the Seine and at Paris; and what was to come after that? How come back to England? Why that problem must now be “blinked,” as a future if not an insoluble question, at any rate just as easy to solve a month hence as it is now.

For a long time the wind was favourable, and precisely as strong as was desirable, and the formidable looking Cape Antifer, which at mid-day seemed only a dark blue stripe on the distant horizon, gradually neared us till we could see the foam eddying round its weather-wasted base. Then came the steep high wall of flint cliff with shingle débris at its foot, but no one approach from top to bottom, if any bad thing happened,—no, not for miles.

This was a time of alternate hope and fear, as the wind gradually lulled away to nothing, and fog arose in the hot sun; the waves were tossing the Rob Roy up and down, and flapping the sails in an angry petulant way, very distressing if you are sleepy. For four hours this hapless state of things continued, yet we were already within five miles of Cape de la Hève, and, once round that, on the other side was Havre. How tantalizing to be so near, and yet still out of reach! If this calm ends in a west wind, we may be driven back anywhere by that and the tide. If it ends in a thunderstorm we shall have to put off to sea at once.

See there the lighthouses up aloft on the crag—two of them are lighted. Soon it will be dark around, and we shall at this rate have to enter Havre by night. All this time we were close to the cliffs, but the sounding-lead showed plenty of water, and when the anchor was thrown out the cable did not pull at all; we were not drifting but only rocked by the incessant tumble and dash of the sea, which, though of all things glorious when careering in the breeze, is of all most tiresome when rolling in a calm.

At this time I felt lonely, exceedingly lonely and helpless, also sleepy, feverish, discontented, and miserable. The lonely feeling came only twice more in the voyage; the other bad feelings never again.

Now, there are one or two sensations which after experience at sea seldom deceive you as to what they prognosticate, though it is impossible to give reasons for their hold upon the mind. One is the feeling, “I am drifting,” another, “The water is shoaling,” and the third, “Here comes a breeze.” Each of these may be felt and recognised even with your eyes shut. It does not come in through one sense or another, but it seems to grasp the whole system; and it is a very great convenience to have this faculty alive in these three directions, and to know when to trust it as a true impression.

On the unmistakable sensation that a breeze was coming, the rebound from inaction and grumbling, lying full-length on deck, to alert excitement was instantaneous and most pleasing. The anchor was rattled up in a minute, and it was scarcely stowed away before the genial air arrived, with ripples curling under its soft breath, once more exactly favourable.

Slowly the two lights above on the cliff seemed to wheel round as we doubled the Cape. Slowly two little dots in the distance swelled up into big vessels in full sail, and others rose from the far-off waters, all converging to the same port with myself; their very presence being companionship, and their community of purpose begetting a mutual interest. For these craft deep in the water the navigation here is rather intricate, though the excellent and uniform system of buoys employed in France does all that is possible to make the course clear; but my little boat, drawing less than three feet of water, could run safely even over the shallows, though, as a rule, I navigated her by the regular channels, as this gave me much additional interest in the bearings about every port.

When the lights at Havre hove in sight the welcome flashing was a happy reward to a long day’s toil, and as the yawl sped forward cheerily through the intervening gloom, the kettle hummed over the lamp, and a bumper of hot grog was served out to the crew. Soon we rounded into the harbour, quiet and calm, with everybody asleep at that late hour; and it was some time more before the Rob Roy could settle into a comfortable berth, and her sails were all made up, and bed unrolled, and the weary sailor was snoring in his blanket.

Next day the people on the quays were much amused by the curious manœuvres of my little dingey; its minute size, its novel form (generally pronounced to be like a half walnut-shell), its bright colour, and the extraordinary gyrations and whirlings which it could perform, for practice taught some new feat in it almost every day.

At night there was a strange sound, shrill and loud, which lasted for hours, and marred the calm eve and the quiet twinkling of the stars. This came from a hundred children collected by a crackbrained stranger (said to be English). These he gave cakes and toys to by day lavishly, and assembled them at night on the quay to sing chorus to his incoherent verses—a proceeding quite wonderful to be permitted by the police so strict in France.

CHAPTER VI.

The Seine—A wetting—Pump—Locks—Long reach—Rouen—Steering—A mistake—Horny hands—Henpecked—British flag—The captain’s wife.

Havre was a good resting-place to receive and send letters, read up the newspapers, get a long walk, and a hot bath, and fresh water and provisions. Bacon I found, after many trials to cook it, was a delusion, so I gave mine to a steamboat in exchange for bread. Hung beef too was discovered to be a snare—it took far too long to cook, and was tough after all; so I presented a magnificent lump to a bargee, whose time was less precious and his teeth more sharp. Then one mast had to come down in preparation for the bridges on the Seine; and therefore with these things to do, and working with tools and pen, all the hours were busily employed until, at noon on June 26, I hooked on to a steamer, ‘Porteur,’ with its stern paddles very common in France, to be towed up the river; a long and troublesome voyage of about 300 miles, so winding is the course to Paris by the Seine.

This mode of progress was then new to me, and I had made but imperfect preparations, so that when we rounded the pier to the west, and met the short, snappish sea in the bay, every wave clashed over me, and in ten minutes I was wet to the skin, while a great deal of water entered the fore-compartment of the yawl through the hole for the chain-cable at that time left open. [85] The surprising suddenness of this drenching was so absurd that one could only laugh at it, nor was there time to don my waterproof suit—the sou’wester from Norway ten years ago, the oilskin coat (better than macintosh) from Denmark last year, and the canvas trowsers.

A good wetting can be calmly borne if it is dashed in by a heavy sea in honest sailing, or is poured down upon you from a black cloud above; but here it was in a mere river-mouth, and on a sunny day, and there was no opportunity to change for several hours, until we stopped at a village to discharge cargo. The river at that place was narrow, and all the swell I thought was past; so, after a complete change of clothes, it was too bad to find in a mile or two the same story over again, and another wetting was the result. The evening rest was far from comfortable with my bedding all moist, and both suits of clothes wet through. One has therefore to beware of the accompaniments of being towed. The boat has no time to go over the waves, and, long rope or short, middle or side, steering ever so well, the water shipped when a heavy boat is swiftly towed must be as well prepared for as if it were in a regular gale on open sea.

The Rob Roy had now in the hold a great deal of water, and for the first time I had to apply the pump, which, having been carefully fitted, acted well. An india-rubber tube leading down to the keel was in such a position that I could immediately screw on a copper barrel and work the piston with one hand, so as to clear the stern compartment. By turning a screw valve I could let the water come from the centre compartment, if any was there, and then I went to the fore-compartment, about seven feet long, which held the spare stores, and a curiosity in the shape of a regulation chimney-pot hat to be worn on state occasions, but which was brought out once a week merely to brush off the green mould.

At noon the steamer set off again, dragging the yawl astern, and soon entered the first lock on the Seine, where the buildings around us, the neat stone barriers, and the dress and the very looks of the men forcibly recalled to my mind the numerous river locks passed in my canoe trips, but in so different a manner, by running the boat round every one of them on the gravel or over the grass.

The waste of time now in passing through each lock was prodigious. While nearing it the steamer sounded her shrill whistle to give warning, but still the lock was sure to be full of barges and boats. Then our cavalcade had to draw aside until the sluggish barges in front had all come out, and we went into the great basin with bumps, and knocks, and jars, and shouting. It required active use of the boathook for me to get the Rob Roy into the proper place in the lock, and then to keep her there. The men were not clumsy nor careless, but still the polished mahogany yawl had no chance with the heavy floats and barges in a squeezing and scratching match, and it was always sure to go to the wall.

Time seemed no object to these people, they were no doubt paid by the day. The sun shone upon them and it was pleasant simply to exist and to loiter in life, so why make haste? Finally we ascended as the lock filled, and then a second and a third joint cut off from our too long tail of barges had to be passed in also. After all, the captain and sometimes the whole crew deliberately adjourned to the lock-keeper’s house for a “glass” and a chat; and when that was entirely done, and every topic of the day discussed, they all came back and had another supplemental parliament on the steamer’s deck, like ladies saying “good bye” at a morning visit; so that, perhaps, in an hour from beginning it, the work of ten minutes was accomplished, and the engine turned again once more—a tedious progress. Thus it was that four nights and part of five days were passed in mounting the Seine.

The scenery on the banks is in many places interesting, in a few it is pretty, and it is never positively dull. The traffic on the river is considerable above Rouen; but as there are two railways besides, few passengers go by water. The architecture and engineering on this fine river are indeed splendid. The noble bridges, the vast locks, barrages, quays, barriers, and embankments are far superior to ours on the Thames, though that river floats more wealth in a day than the Seine does in a month.

The sailors and dockmen were eager for my cargo of books; and among the various odd ways by which these had to be given to men on large vessels, there is one shown in the sketch alongside, where the cabin-boy of a steamer looking through the round deadlight with an imploring request in his face, stretched out an eager hand to catch the book lifted up on the end of one of my sculls.

Then the neatness and apparent cleanliness of the villages, and the well-clothed, well-mannered people—all so “respectable.” France is progressing by great leaps and bounds, at least in what arrests the eye. Its progress in government, liberty, and politics, is perhaps rather like that in a waltz.

Life in a towed yacht, alone on the Seine, is a somewhat hard life. You have to be alert, and to steer for sometimes twenty hours a day, and to cook and eat while steering. At about three o’clock in the morning the steamer’s crew seemed suddenly to rise from the deck by magic, and stumble over coal-sacks, and thus abruptly to begin the day. We stopped about nine o’clock at night, and the crew flopped down on deck again, asleep in a moment, but not I for an hour or two.

As the grey dawn uncovered a new and cloudless sky, the fierce bubblings in the boiler became strong enough to turn the engine, and our rope was slipped from the bank. Savoury odours from the steamer soon after announced to me their breakfast cooking, and the Rob Roy’s lamp too was speedily in full blast. Eggs or butter or milk were instantly purveyed, if within reach at a lock; sometimes delicious strawberries and other fruits or dainties, the only difficulty was to cook at all properly while steering and being towed.

It is easy to cook and to steer at sea without looking up for many minutes. The compass tells you by a glance, and if not, the tiller has a nudge which speaks to the man who knows the meaning of its various pressures, through any part of his body it may happen to touch. But if you forget to steer constantly and minutely in a heavy boat towed on a river, she swerves in an instant, and shoots out right and left, and dives into banks or trees, or into the steamer’s side-swell, and the man at the wheel turns round with a courteous French scowl, for he feels by his tiller in a moment, and you cannot escape his rebuke.

There was no romance in this manner of progress up the river. The poetry of wandering where you will, and all alone, cannot be thrown around a boat pulled by the nose while you are sitting in her all day. The Rob Roy, with mast down, and tied by a tow-rope, was like an eagle limping with clipped pinion and a chained foot. Still, for the man not churlish, there is scarcely any time or place or person wholly devoid of interest, if he is determined to find it there.

The steamboat captain and crew were chatty enough; and when we towed a string of barges, the yawl was lashed alongside of one of these (and not at the end of the line), so that I visited my fellow-travellers, and soon became friends, and then interchanged presents. All this “Social Science” of the sailor was far better done by the French bargee than in England.

In both countries they frequently mistook me at first for a common sailor in charge of a yacht, for my dress told no more. As intercourse proceeded it was curious to watch the gradual recognition of the fact that this “sailor” talked and thought not just the same as others. Then they regarded me as an agent come to sell the pretty boat; but it was in England only that any of them could be made to believe that the owner of the Rob Roy “would not part with his boat, did not want a cook or cabin-boy, and was not at all anxious to see the end of his voyage.” Sometimes the conversation, begun as between equals, would gradually get the word “Sir” sprinkled over it; and once or twice—and this not in France—it came down at last to that “glass of beer,” sheepishly enough asked for, which of course instantly drowns the converse that has been free on one side and independent on the other.

“Workmen,” “working men,” “artizans,” or whatever they are, or whatever you may call them—I mean the class now being spoiled by petting in England—let them be told (perhaps it may be said plainest by their best friends) that there are just as many proud exclusives among them as in any other stratum of society, and that they have at least a full share too of conceit, foppery, and affectation.

It may be heresy to say so, but the “horny hand” has no necessary connection whatever with the “honest heart,” as is the fashion to assert on one side, and almost to believe on the other; and the friend who really does shake that hand with a brotherly feeling is the most likely and the best entitled to refuse to talk popular nonsense of this sort about the “people.”

For the night we stopped usually in towns, but once or twice we rested in a great bend of the river where the steamer was run straight into the trees and made fast ashore exactly as if it were on the Mississippi and not on the Seine.

That thousands of solitary fishermen should sit lonesome on the river was the same puzzle to me as it had been before in canoeing on other French streams. Their silence and patience, during hours of this self-inflicted isolation, were incredible for Frenchmen, fond as we at first think all of them to be of “billard,” café, or dancing puppies, of anything, in fact, provided it assumes to be lively.

One thing I am at last decided about, that it is not to catch fish these men sit there; and the only reasonable explanation I can find of the phenomenon is that all these meek and lone fishermen are husbands unhappy at home!

There are numerous sailing-boats and rowing-boats on the Seine; but I did not see one that there was any difficulty in not coveting—their standard of marine beauty is not ours. All rigs and all sizes were there, even to a great centre board cutter, twenty-five feet broad, and any number of yards long, in which the happy yachtsman could sail up and down between two bridges which bounded him on either side to a two miles’ reach!

The French national flag is perhaps the prettiest on the world’s waters; but as it is repeated to the eye by every boat and building, the sight of it becomes tiresome, and suggests that absence of private influence and enterprise so striking to an Englishman in every French work. Then again their sailors (not to say their landsmen) in very many instances do not even know our English flag when they see it, our union-jack or ensign flying free on every shore.

At first I used to carry the French flag as well as our British jack out of compliment to their country, but as I found out that even in some of their newspapers the Rob Roy was mentioned as a “beautiful little French yacht,” I determined that that mistake at any rate should not be fostered by me, so down came the tricolour, and my Cambridge Boat-club flag took its place.

In one reach of the river we came upon a very unusual sight for a week day, a French yacht sailing. Her flag was half-mast high, and she was drifting down the stream, a helpless wreck. A distracted sort of man was on board, and a lady, or womankind at least, with dishevelled locks (carefully disordered though), the picture of wan weary wretchedness, and both of these hapless ones entreated our captain to tow their little yacht home. But, after a knowing glance, he quickly passed them in silence, and another steamer behind us also rounded off so as to give the unhappy pair the widest possible berth. Perhaps both captains preferred English sovereigns to French francs.

I was charged about 3l. for being towed to Paris; but the various steamers (six in all) I employed on the river were every one well managed, and with civil people on board. Indeed, I became a favourite with one captain’s wife, a sturdy-looking body, always cutting up leaves of lettuce. She gave me a basin of warm soup, and I presented her with some good Yorkshire bacon. Next day she cooked some of this for me with beans, and I returned the present by a packet of London tea, a book, a picture of Napoleon, and another of “the Rob Roy on the Seine,” in the highest style of art attainable by a man steering all the time he is at the easel.

From all this it will be readily understood by any one who has travelled much in various ways that to be towed up the Seine is quite different from all other modes of progress, and that it brings you among a large, new, and sharply-defined class of people, who could scarcely be known, and certainly could not be studied so well in any other way.

Nor is the traveller less interesting to these people than they are to him. Often it was necessary to restrain the inquisitive French gamins, who would teaze a boat to pieces if not looked after; but it is always against the grain with me to be strict with boys, especially about boats, for I hold that it is a good sign of them when they relish nautical curiosities.

CHAPTER VII.

Dull reading—Chain boat—Kedging—St. Cloud—Training-Dogs—Wrong colours—My policeman—Yankee notion.—Red, White, and Blue.

The effect of living on board a little boat for a month at a time without more than three or four nights of usual repose, was to bring the mind and body into a curious condition of subdued life, a sort of contemplative oriental placid state in which both cares and pleasures ceased to be acute, and the flight of time seemed gliding and even, and not marked by the distinct epochs which define our civilised life. Although this passive enjoyment was really agreeable—and, in fine weather and good health, perhaps a mollusc could affirm as much of its existence,—certainly an experience of the condition I have described enables one to understand what is evidently the normal state of many thousands of hard-worked, ill-fed, and irregularly-sleeped labourers; the men who, sitting down thus weary at night, we expect to read some prosy book full of desperately good advice, of which one half the words are not needed for the sense and the other half are not understood by the reader. [98]

The last tug-boat we had to use was of a peculiar kind, and I am not aware that it is employed upon any of our rivers in Britain. A chain is laid along the bottom of the Seine for (I think) two hundred miles. At certain hours of the day a long solidly-built vessel with a powerful engine on board comes over this, and the chain is seized and put round a wheel on board. By turning this wheel one way or the other it is evident that the chain will be wound up and let down behind, while it cannot slip along the river’s bottom—the enormous friction is enough to prevent that, and therefore the boat is wound up and goes through the water. The power of this chain-boat is so great that it will pull along, and that too against the rapid stream, a whole string of barges, several of them of 300 tons’ burthen. The long fleet advances steadily though slowly, and the irresistible engine works with smokeless funnels, but there are groanings within, telling of tight-strained iron, and earnest undertoned breathings of confined steam.

Although the chain-boat is not often steered for the purpose of avoiding other vessels (these must take care of their own safety), yet it has to be carefully managed by the rudders (one at each end), so that it may drop the chain in a proper part of the river for the next steamer of the Company which is to use it. When two such boats meet from opposite directions, and both are pulling at the same chain, there is much time lost in effecting a passage, and again when the chain-boat and all its string of heavy craft arrives at a lock, you may make up your mind for a long delay. It is evident that we do not require this particular sort of tug-boat on the Thames below Teddington, for the strong tide up and down twice every day carries along thousands of tons of merchandize at a rapid pace, and one or two men will be enough to attend upon each barge. In fact we have the sun and moon for our tugs. These draw the water up, and the tide is the rope which hauls our ships along.

To manœuvre properly with the Rob Roy in such a case as this with the chain-boat required every vigilance, and strong exercise of muscular force, as well as caution and prompt decision, for I had sometimes to cling to the middle barge, then to drop back to the last, and always to keep off from the river-banks, the shoals, and the trees. On one occasion we had to shift her position by “kedging” for nearly half a mile, and this in a crowded part of the Seine too, where the current also was swift. On another occasion the sharp iron of a screw steamer’s frame ran right against my bow, and at once cut a clean hole quite through the mahogany. Instantly I seized a lump of soft putty, and leaning over the side I squeezed it into the hole, and then “clinched” it (so to speak) on the inside; and this stop-gap actually served for three weeks, until a proper repair could be made.

The lovely precincts of St. Cloud came in sight at dawn on the last day of June, prettier than Richmond, I must confess, or almost any river-town we can boast of in England; and here I was to rest while my little yawl was thoroughly cleaned, brightly varnished, and its inside gaily painted with Cambridge blue, so as to appear at the French Exhibition in its very best suit, and then at the British Regatta on the Seine.

Some days were occupied in this general overhaul, during which the excellent landlady of the hotel where I slept must have been more amazed even than she declared, to see her guest return each day clad in blue flannel, and spattered all over with varnish and paint, for the captain was painter as well as cook. Of course all this was exchanged for proper attire after working hours.

In the cool of the morning, three fine young fellows are running towards us over the bridge; with lithe and easy step, speed but not haste, and in white flannel and white shoes. They have come to contend at the regatta here, the first of an invasion of British oarsmen, who soon fill the lodgings, cover the river, and waken up the footpath early with their rattling run. Some of these are brown-faced watermen from Thames and Humber and Tyne, others are ruddy-cheeked Etonians or University men, or hard-trained Londoners, and others have come over the Atlantic; John Bull’s younger brothers from New Brunswick, not his cousins from New York. You might pick out among these the finest specimens of our species, so far as pluck and muscle make the man.

Few of the French oarsmen could be classed with any of the divisions given above. Rowing has not attained the position in France which it holds in England. For much of our excellence in athletics and field sports we have to thank our well-abused English climate, which always encourages and generally necessitates some sort of exercise when we are out of doors.

But it is a new and healthy sight on the Seine, these fine fellows running in the mornings, and it gives zest to our walk by the beautiful river.

Here also as we stroll about, two dogs gave us much amusement: one was a Newfoundland, who dashed into the water grandly to fetch the stick thrown in by his master. The other was a bulldog, who went in about a yard or so at the same time, and then as the swimmer brought the stick to shore the intruder fastened on it, and always managed somehow to wrest the prize from the real winner, and then carried it to his master with the cool impudence which may be seen not seldom when the honour and reward gained by one person are claimed and even secured by another. [102]

From the truck to the keel the Rob Roy had been thoroughly refreshed and beautified. The perfection of a yacht’s beauty is that nothing should be there for only beauty’s sake. In the strict observance of this rule the English certainly do excel every other nation; and whether you take a huge steam-engine, a yacht, or a four-in-hand drag, it is certainly acknowledged by the best connoisseurs of each, that ornament will not make a bad article good, while it is likely to make a good one look bad.

Even the flags of a yacht have each a meaning, and are not mere patches of pretty colours. Therefore they ought to be made, at all events, perfectly correct first, and then as pretty and neat as you please. I examined the flags of all the boats and yachts and steamers at the Exhibition; and there was wonderfully little taste in their display; nearly every one—English and foreign—was cut wrong, or coloured wrong, or too large for the boat that carried them. Even our Admiralty Barge, where specimens of boats from England were exhibited, had a flag flying, with the stripes in the ‘jack’ quite wrong. She was the only craft on that side of the Pont de Jena; but as it was the English side I anchored there, right opposite the sloping sward of the Exhibition, and I did this without asking any questions, for it is best now and then to do right things at once, and not to delay until time is wasted in proving them to be right.

Here I slept on board my little craft in perfect comfort, and could spend all the rest of the day on shore. Each morning about 7 o’clock you might notice a smart-looking French policeman standing on the grass bank of the Exhibition, and staring hard at the Rob Roy. He had come to see her captain at his somewhat airy toilette, and he was particularly interested, and even amazed, to witness the evolutions of a toothbrush, which were not only interesting but instructive as involving an idea perfectly new—hard also to comprehend from so distant an inspection. Surely he thought this strange implement must be a novelty imported from England for exhibition here.

As he gazed in wonder at the rapid exercise, I sometimes gave the curious instrument an extra flourish above or below, and the intelligent and courteous gendarme never rightly decided whether or not the toothbrush was an essential though inscrutable part of the yacht’s sailing gear. Our acquaintance, however, improved, and he kindly took charge of the boat in my absence; not without a mysterious air as he recounted its travels (and a good deal more), to the numerous visitors,—many of whom, after his explanations, left the Rob Roy quite delighted that they had seen “the little ship which had sailed from America!”

The boat “Red, White, and Blue” he thus confounded with mine—was at that time not far off, in a house by itself, amid the other wonders which crowded the gardens of the Exhibition.

The two venturesome Americans who came to Europe in this ship had but scant pleasure either in their voyage itself or in their visit to France and England. Storm, wet, and hunger on the wide Atlantic were patiently borne in hopes of meeting a warm welcome in Old England; but, instead, they had the cold chill of doubt. Many of their sufferings in both these ways were directly due to their own and their friends’ mismanagement, the stupid construction of their cabin, the foolish three-masted rig of their boat, the boastful wager of the boat’s builder, and their imprudence in painting up the boat on her arrival, and tarring the ropes; and, lastly, in allowing a mutilated paper to be issued as their “original log.”

Disappointed here, they turned to Paris, expecting better days. Fair promises were made. Steamers were to tow the boat up the Seine in triumph; but it was towed against a bridge and smashed its masts. Agents were to secure goodly numbers to visit her; but for three months scarcely any one paid for a ticket, until at length the vessel was admitted into the grounds of the Exhibition. Finally, the ruined Captain ran away to England, but cleverly contrived to carry his ship with him. Whatever may be thought as to the wisdom or advantage of making such a voyage and in such a boat, it is a very great pity that when it has been effected there should be a failure in appreciating its marvellous accomplishment.

The possibility of taking a boat across the Atlantic, with west wind prevailing and with no rocks or shoals to fear, is altogether beyond doubt. The ill-fate of two other boats that have tried the feat shews how dangerous it is to try. The success of another more recent trip of ‘man and wife’ in one boat is reassuring. But after examining, probably more than any body else, the evidence in their case—the men, the log, the documents, and affidavits, and the boat, and its contents, also the numerous doubts and criticisms from all quarters, both in London and Paris, and in Dover and Margate, I have good reason to believe that the “Red, White, and Blue” had no extraneous help in her voyage across that wide ocean. The unexplained wonder is that men able and willing to perform such a deed as this should be incapable of building and rigging their boat so as to do it comfortably.

CHAPTER VIII.

Presents—The Emperor—Anecdote—The Abbé in London—A vert—Singing girl—English bird—Model—Old friend—The Turks—Guzzling—The friture.

As they walked past the building where this travelled ship was shewn, many of the visitors seemed each to be reading a paper in his hands, while some have a gilt-edged book, and others a broadsheet with a large woodcut on it.

These people have come past that other building, which seems to be all windows; and let us stop there a few minutes to see why the groups crowd round, and reach out their hands, and go away reading.

If you heard that it is “only some tracts” being given away, and then turned away yourself, you have lost a wonderful sight: one that, well pondered upon, has wide suggestions to the mind that thinks; and a sight that, of its kind, was quite unexampled at any time and anywhere. Inside this building, and another near it, were hundreds of thousands of Bibles, Testaments, periodicals, papers, picture books and tracts, beautifully printed in the languages of visitors from distant lands, and mostly given free to those who will receive them.

Even in England, at none of our Exhibitions or any other place, had such a proceeding been permitted, doubtless from prudential reasons,—the fear of “giving offence” or exciting disturbance; so that it had been left to France, at a time when pleasure seemed the chief and only object of all, to brave these supposed dangers, and, despite all scruples, to give utmost freedom to the distribution of God’s Word and of man’s comments upon it. The example was not without fruit; at each subsequent Grand Exhibition, and even under the Republic in 1878, the Book of Law and Gospel has been freely given in the frivolous capital of France.

The fact is, if you mean to get at all the people, you cannot find them in the same place or reach them by the same road, or treat them in the same way; and all the people must be got at somehow.

As fast as they could give these books and papers out of the windows, several persons were delivering them into the open hands of the people, and when a window became vacant, and there was need of some one to help, the post was filled by the crew of the yawl.

We intended to stay only a short time, but six hours often passed before the interesting work could be left; I can never forget those hours, and the subsequent occasions of the same sort.

Every variety of person came quickly before us, of nationality, of manner, of dress, of language, and of bearing, as each drew near, took a paper, read a few lines, thanked the donor, and then went off reading as they walked, or with reflecting gaze, or simply astonished.

Hundreds of soldiers came to the window, sometimes a dozen of them at once, and these all asked for their ‘Empereur.’ This meant the special copy of the well-known periodical ‘British Workman,’ which was translated into French, and had a very large and well-done woodcut of Napoleon III. on its broad first page. The generosity of some good men supplied funds to give one of these Emperor papers to every soldier, policeman, and public employé; and much additional interest was attached to the paper because it was actually printed before their eyes at a press in the centre of the building, and because the press itself had borne off a gold medal for excellence of workmanship. [110]

Priests came often, and even returned to get tracts for their villages in distant parts of France. Germans asked for papers in “Allemand,” and numerous Italians and Spaniards asked for them in their languages. Two Russians came, but we had then no books in Russ; and at length four grave Mussulmen stood before me in turbans and flowing robes, with a suppliant but dignified air, while their interpreter said they wanted to buy a “dictionary to learn English from.” Now they will easily get these dictionaries in the “Beaconsfield Library” of Cyprus.

Although in frequent tours in foreign lands we had been accustomed to see minglings of the people from many nations, the sight at this window was more varied in the components of the constant flowing stream of human beings for hours and hours than we ever saw before.

Some years ago, travelling in Algeria with an Arab guide, I put up for the night at an old semaphore station, where was a French soldier in charge. It was far from any houses, and on a high hill, and he had a visit only every fortnight from his friends, who brought him provisions on mules’ backs. He willingly let me in, and spread a mattress for me on the floor alongside his own. The Arab he kept outside, and the poor fellow had to sleep coiled up on the doorstep.

The Frenchman was courteous and intelligent; but he had only one thing to read for many weeks, a vapid French novel. He said he would willingly read something better if he had it. At the next French town I searched for some better book, and this caused me to find the agent of the Bible Society, and so a parcel of books, religious and secular, were sent off to the telegraph station; but my attention once drawn to the French soldiers and their reading, it was impossible not to follow a subject so interesting and important. The regiment quartered in the town had but a few Testaments. [112] By a little exertion about a hundred copies were obtained and distributed. I saw the men reading these in the streets for hours under the trees, and I sailed in a man-of-war carrying the regiment to Mexico. Not one in five of these men survived that fearful campaign.

Priestly opposition to this giving of Testaments resulted in an appeal to the General in command. He asked the priests if the book was a “bad one,” and when it was not possible to say “yes,” he gave the book free course. Inquiry was excited by this opposition, and 1500 Testaments were received.

There was a remarkable contrast between the absence of public efforts by French Romanists to disseminate their opinions at the Exhibition and the unusual freedom for others, sanctioned by the late Archbishop of Paris. Various causes were at work to produce this very unexpected state of things, and they will not be alluded to here. But the points thus noticed remind one forcibly of what actually occurred in 1851, when the then Archbishop of Paris specially appointed the Abbé Miel, a learned and able man, to go to London and to do his best to further Romanism here during the Exhibition.

One of his first acts was to issue two small tracts on the supremacy of the Pope and of St. Peter; and some hundred thousand of these, beautifully printed, were distributed in London. A copy came to the hands of a clever layman, well skilled in the Romish controversy; and he saw immediately that this little tract, if not well answered, might do much harm.

After careful study of the subject, he wrote to the Abbé, calling attention to several important misquotations in the tract, which were evident when it was compared with original documents in the British Museum. The Abbé replied, that he was not responsible for the accuracy of the extracts, but that they had been given to him by the late Cardinal Wiseman.

The Protestant layman then wrote a series of letters in a well-known English newspaper, Bell’s Weekly Messenger, upon the subject treated in the tract, and for the time the matter dropped. Years afterwards he received a letter from the Abbé, stating that these newspaper articles had convinced him of the need of inquiry into the subject, and he went to Rome to consult his former instructors. Finally, this Abbé, selected as the champion of Rome by the Archbishop of Paris, and convinced by the arguments adduced by a layman in London, renounced the Romish church, and though offered promotion for his past services, he came to London and went straight to the house of the layman, whom he had not yet seen.

Often have I walked with that clever Abbé, riveted by his deeply interesting conversation, his new and fresh views of English life, his forcible exposures of those false estimates of Protestant truth which had for so many years blinded him, and his explanations of the machinery then in action at the Oratory, near the Strand.

But his former allies could not brook the desertion of so formidable a champion, and he was driven by their continual annoyance to seek another home. So he went to Ireland, and soon became the best teacher of the French language in Dublin, from whence he removed to America. Let us hope that there, at least, he is free to profess the truth he had found, and to be one of the instances—very rare indeed they are—of a consistent and steady Protestant, who had for years before been thoroughly imbued with those doctrines which gnaw at the very vitals of mental perception, and obliterate the sense of fairness, and which very seldom leave enough alive in the mind to hold even real truth firmly.

It will not be breaking the promise that our visit to the exhibition is not to involve us in a description of all its wonders, if we walk up-stairs and look into the Tunisian Café, attracted by the well-known drumming and the moaning dirge which Easterns call music. Tunis is best seen out of Tunis, for the broidered gold and bright-coloured slippers can then be enjoyed without those horrible scenes of filth—dead camels, open sewers, and maimed beggars which encase the shabby mud walls I have seen so near the marble ruins of old Carthage.

The café was full of visitors. English and Americans were admiring a pretty singing girl about fifteen years of age, who was beautifully dressed, and sitting with four very demure and ugly Orientals in the little orchestra.

Soon she rose and sang a song. Black eyes, blackest of hair, pale cheeks, languid grace. She is a fair daughter from the rising sun. “Yes, there is certainly something in their Eastern beauty which is quite beyond what Britons or Yankees see at home!”

But the words and music of the song seemed known to me. Surely she is now singing English while she shakes the golden sequins in her long jet hair and rattles her tambourine? We asked a waiter, and he said she could sing Turkish, Spanish, French, and English. At last being persuaded that her pronunciation of English was too distinct for a foreigner, we took the very bold measure of going up to the orchestra, and saying to the young lady, “You are English, are you not?” She stared, and held down her face, which still was pale, even if she blushed and answered “Yes, sir.” “Are you here alone?—no relation, no woman friend with you?” “Yes.” “And do they treat you well?” “Yes.” “From what part of England?” “From ---shire.”

I said she seemed to mean the words of the song she had sung,

‘I wish I were a bird, and I would flee away.’

and I asked if she could read, and would like a nice book. “Oh yes, I should, and very much.” Now there was a stall set up in the Exhibition by “The Pure Literature Society,” from 11, Buckingham Street, Adelphi, London, which selects about three thousand books from various publishers, but publishes none itself; gets no profits on its sales except thanks and satisfaction; so that its catalogue is likely to contain what it may wish should be read. [117] Here we selected a very interesting volume with many illustrations, suitable for the girl’s reading; and soon at the café again, I bowed to the senior fiddler, who nodded assent, and then the poor pale lonely girl had the pleasant book as a remembrance of home placed in her hands, and a promise given her that a good Christian lady would call that evening.

So perhaps our catalogue of nationalities at the Exhibition ought to be somewhat abridged, and not wholly founded upon the variety it presents to the eye; especially as in London, too, we may remember Punch’s crossing-sweeper, who, being dressed in Hindoo garb, begged from a passer-by with, “Take pity on the poor Irishman—Injun, I mane.”

On the Sunday the little dingey had its usual cargo, and the bargemen on the Seine, in the heart of Paris, were just as glad as others elsewhere to get something to read.

Among the curiosities exhibited in the English Naval Architecture building here was a very beautiful model of the Rob Roy canoe, presented to its owner by the builders, Messrs. Searle, who have already built some hundreds of such canoes on the principles first applied in that above mentioned; and to me it was even more gratifying to find in the Admiralty Barge, the Rob Roy canoe itself, with sails set and the flag of the Royal Canoe Club flying, and with maps of the paddling voyages through Europe.

Very speedily I launched my old travelling companion, and had a paddle up the river by moonlight, and it was surprising to find that scarcely any water leaked in, though the other boats which were hung up in the barge were found to be a good deal injured by the strong draught of wind rushing through the arch of the bridge, and then under the open sides of the shed, covered only by a roof. But then those other boats were new, and perhaps some were not built of such well-seasoned wood [119] as Messrs. Searle employ beyond all other boat-builders I know; whereas the weatherbeaten Rob Roy had been too long inured to wet and dry, sun and wind, heat and cold, to be affected with the rheumatism and ague which shook even the man-of-war’s boats on the barge.

The sketch (see next page), represents a man watering a horse, and who swum it out to my boat to get a paper, and then carefully placed the gift in a dry place ashore until he should be able to use it when he was dressed again.

My life at the Exhibition soon settled into a somewhat regular one. Seeing, seeing, seeing all day, and then returning to my quiet bed on the river at night, with a ‘Times’ newspaper to study, and books and letters. It was a variety to launch the dingey, and scull along the quays and visit the other yachts, all of them most hospitable to the Rob Roy. I ventured even to go alongside the Turkish vessel, the Dahabeeh, from the Nile, full of specimen “fellahs,” all hidden by a curtain of grey calico, except to those who had paid their franc for general entrance. We never observed any visitor actually on board this vessel; indeed, it required a bold inquirer to face those solemn Africans’ gaze, as they sat cross-legged on deck, and ate their soup from a universal bowl, or calmly inspired from their chibouques, and blew out a formal and composed puff of the bluest tobacco-smoke. It did, indeed, soon forcibly recall the feelings of Egyptian travel to see these men;—the red fiery sunsets, the palm-trees, and crocodiles, and obelisks, and Indian corn, and, over all, the thrumming, not unmusical sound of the tarabookrah—earthen drum—with the wailing melodies in a minor key of the “Chaldæans whose cry is in the ships.” [121]

So I ventured near in my dingey, and the imperturbable Egyptians were fairly taken by surprise. They soon rallied to a word or two in their language and an Englishman’s smile, and rapidly we became friends, and talked of Damascus and Constantinople, and finally decided that “Englishman bono!” The shape and minute dimensions of my dingey much astonished them; but they probably believed, that in that very craft I had come all the way from London.

The luxury of Paris must have at least some effect in making gourmands of the young generation, even if their fathers did not set the example. The operation, or rather the solemn function, of breakfast or dinner, is with many Frenchmen the only serious act in life. When people can afford to order a dinner in exact accordance with the lofty standard of excellence meant by its being “good,” the diner approaches the great proceeding with a staid and watchful air, and we may well leave him now he is involved in such important service. But with the octroi duty for even a single pheasant at two shillings and sixpence, there are many good feeders who cannot afford to “dine well,” and the fuss they make about their eatables is something preposterous. It is a vice—this systematic gluttony—that seems to be steadily increasing in France for the last twenty years, at least in its public manifestation, and moreover it is an evil somewhat contagious.

One evening, while some of us had dinner at the Terrasse in St. Cloud, a family entered the room, and were partly disrobing themselves of bonnets and hats for a regular downright dinner, when the waiter came, and in reply to the order of a “friture” he calmly said they had none.

At this awful news the whole party were struck dumb and pale, and they leant back on their chairs as if in a swoon. The poor waiter prudently retreated for reinforcements, and the landlady herself came in to face the infuriate guests.

“No friture!” said the father. “No friture, and we come to St. Cloud?” he muttered deeply in rage. His wife proceeded to make horribly wry faces, whereat Rob Roy irreverently laughed, but he was not observed, for they noticed nothing of the external trifling world. The daughters heaved deep sighs, and then burst into voluble and loud denunciations. Then the son (who wanted dinner at any rate, and the objurgations might do afterwards) proposed at once to leave the desolate, famine-stricken spot.

But though this was debated warmly, it was not carried. They had already anchored, as it were, and they resolved to dine “starving,” and to grumble all the time of dinner when no one subject was talked about except the friture. It was a miserable spectacle to witness, but confirming the proposition, not at all new, that the French care more about eating than even John Bull.

CHAPTER IX.

Paris Regatta—Absentees—Novelties—New Brunswickers—Steam yachts—Canoe race—Canoe chase—Entangled—M. Forcat—Challenge.

While the voyage in the Rob Roy’s dingey on Sunday was such as we have described, it was a busy time a little further down the river at St. Cloud, being the first day of the Paris Regatta, which continued also on the Monday, and then our British Regatta occupied the next four days. These two were under separate committees. The British Regatta was managed by experienced oarsmen, and His Royal Highness the Commodore of the Canoe Club was patron—not a merely nominal patron but presiding frequently at the committee meetings held at Marlborough House, and generously contributing to the funds. The Emperor of the French also gave us his name, and prizes to the amount of 1000l. were offered in a series of contests open to all the world. In these better days now the rowing world of France could lately count upon the patronage of their distinguished Foreign Minister, M. Waddington, who rowed in the same boat with me at Cambridge—‘ages ago.’

But this experiment of holding an international regatta in a foreign country was quite novel, and there were difficulties around it which it is not convenient to detail.