put everything in shape Bristol fashion. When we turned in at
nine o’clock the weather-promise was excellent. (If I had carried
a barometer I’d have known better.) By two in the morning our
shrouds were thrumming in a piping breeze, and I got up and gave
her more scope on her hawser. Inside another hour there was no
doubt that we were in for a southeaster.
It is not nice to leave a warm bed and get out of a bad anchorage
in a black blowy night, but we arose to the occasion, put in two
reefs, and started to heave up. The winch was old, and the strain
of the jumping head sea was too much for it. With the winch out
of commission, it was impossible to heave up by hand. We knew,
because we tried it and slaughtered our hands. Now a sailor hates
to lose an anchor. It is a matter of pride. Of course, we could
have buoyed ours and slipped it. Instead, however, I gave her
still more hawser, veered her, and dropped the second anchor.
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21
There was little sleep after that, for first one and then the
other of us would be rolled out of our bunks. The increasing size
of the seas told us we were dragging, and when we struck the
scoured channel we could tell by the feel of it that our two
anchors were fairly skating across. It was a deep channel, the
farther edge of it rising steeply like the wall of a canyon, and
when our anchors started up that wall they hit in and held.
Yet, when we fetched up, through the darkness we could hear the
seas breaking on the solid shore astern, and so near was it that
we shortened the skiff’s painter.
Daylight showed us that between the stern of the skiff and
destruction was no more than a score of feet. And how it did
blow! There were times, in the gusts, when the wind must have
approached a velocity of seventy or eighty miles an hour. But the
anchors held, and so nobly that our final anxiety was that the
for’ard bitts would be jerked clean out of the boat. All day the
sloop alternately ducked her nose under and sat down on her stern;
and it was not till late afternoon that the storm broke in one
last and worst mad gust. For a full five minutes an absolute dead
calm prevailed, and then, with the suddenness of a thunderclap,
the wind snorted out of the southwest–a shift of eight points and
a boisterous gale. Another night of it was too much for us, and
we hove up by hand in a cross head-sea. It was not stiff work.
It was heart-breaking. And I know we were both near to crying
from the hurt and the exhaustion. And when we did get the first
anchor up-and-down we couldn’t break it out. Between seas we
snubbed her nose down to it, took plenty of turns, and stood clear
as she jumped. Almost everything smashed and parted except the
anchor-hold. The chocks were jerked out, the rail torn off, and
the very covering-board splintered, and still the anchor held. At
last, hoisting the reefed main-sail and slacking off a few of the
hard-won feet of the chain, we sailed the anchor out. It was nip
and tuck, though, and there were times when the boat was knocked
down flat. We repeated the manoeuvre with the remaining anchor,
and in the gathering darkness fled into the shelter of the river’s
mouth.
I was born so long ago that I grew up before the era of gasolene.
As a result, I am old-fashioned. I prefer a sail-boat to a motor-
boat, and it is my belief that boat-sailing is a finer, more
difficult, and sturdier art than running a motor. Gasolene
engines are becoming fool-proof, and while it is unfair to say
that any fool can run an engine, it is fair to say that almost any
one can. Not so, when it comes to sailing a boat. More skill,
more intelligence, and a vast deal more training are necessary.
It is the finest training in the world for boy and youth and man.
If the boy is very small, equip him with a small, comfortable
skiff. He will do the rest. He won’t need to be taught. Shortly
he will be setting a tiny leg-of-mutton and steering with an oar.
Then he will begin to talk keels and centreboards and want to take
his blankets out and stop aboard all night.
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22
But don’t be afraid for him. He is bound to run risks and
encounter accidents. Remember, there are accidents in the nursery
as well as out on the water. More boys have died from hot-house
culture than have died on boats large and small; and more boys
have been made into strong and reliant men by boat-sailing than by
lawn-croquet and dancing-school.
And once a sailor, always a sailor. The savour of the salt never
stales. The sailor never grows so old that he does not care to go
back for one more wrestling bout with wind and wave. I know it of
myself. I have turned rancher, and live beyond sight of the sea.
Yet I can stay away from it only so long. After several months
have passed, I begin to grow restless. I find myself day-dreaming
over incidents of the last cruise, or wondering if the striped
bass are running on Wingo Slough, or eagerly reading the
newspapers for reports of the first northern flights of ducks.
And then, suddenly, there is a hurried pack of suit-cases and
overhauling of gear, and we are off for Vallejo where the little
Roamer lies, waiting, always waiting, for the skiff to come
alongside, for the lighting of the fire in the galley-stove, for
the pulling off of gaskets, the swinging up of the mainsail, and
the rat-tat-tat of the reef-points, for the heaving short and the
breaking out, and for the twirling of the wheel as she fills away
and heads up Bay or down.
JACK LONDON
On Board Roamer,
Sonoma Creek,
April 15, 1911
FOUR HORSES AND A SAILOR
“Huh! Drive four horses! I wouldn’t sit behind you–not for a
thousand dollars–over them mountain roads.”
So said Henry, and he ought to have known, for he drives four
horses himself.
Said another Glen Ellen friend: “What? London? He drive four
horses? Can’t drive one!”
And the best of it is that he was right. Even after managing to
get a few hundred miles with my four horses, I don’t know how to
drive one. Just the other day, swinging down a steep mountain
road and rounding an abrupt turn, I came full tilt on a horse and
buggy being driven by a woman up the hill. We could not pass on
the narrow road, where was only a foot to spare, and my horses did
not know how to back, especially up-hill. About two hundred yards
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23
down the hill was a spot where we could pass. The driver of the
buggy said she didn’t dare back down because she was not sure of
the brake. And as I didn’t know how to tackle one horse, I didn’t
try it. So we unhitched her horse and backed down by hand. Which
was very well, till it came to hitching the horse to the buggy
again. She didn’t know how. I didn’t either, and I had depended
on her knowledge. It took us about half an hour, with frequent
debates and consultations, though it is an absolute certainty that
never in its life was that horse hitched in that particular way.
No; I can’t harness up one horse. But I can four, which compels
me to back up again to get to my beginning. Having selected
Sonoma Valley for our abiding place, Charmian and I decided it was
about time we knew what we had in our own county and the
neighbouring ones. How to do it, was the first question. Among
our many weaknesses is the one of being old-fashioned. We don’t
mix with gasolene very well. And, as true sailors should, we
naturally gravitate toward horses. Being one of those lucky
individuals who carries his office under his hat, I should have to
take a typewriter and a load of books along. This put saddle-
horses out of the running. Charmian suggested driving a span.
She had faith in me; besides, she could drive a span herself. But
when I thought of the many mountains to cross, and of crossing
them for three months with a poor tired span, I vetoed the
proposition and said we’d have to come back to gasolene after all.
This she vetoed just as emphatically, and a deadlock obtained
until I received inspiration.
“Why not drive four horses?” I said.
“But you don’t know how to drive four horses,” was her objection.