Stephen nodded. ‘There is nothing to say: only that I very deeply regret the unhappiness, all of it unnecessary. We are descending towards the sea.’
‘The sea, the sea!’ cried Brigid, leaping about in an ecstasy as they went down the shore to the waiting boat. ‘Oh what a wonderful sea!’ This was her first sight of it, and she was luckier than most. The tide was half out and from the harbour mouth a small swell sent in a series of waves that broke in white fan after fan on the pure hard sand: the water
itself was a living blue-green, perfectly clear. Very high overhead rode a sky of no determinate colour crowded with towering cumulus; on either hand the bay curved out in tawny cliffs, while from behind Shelmerston the remote and setting sun sent a warm, diffused, calm, even and comfortable light. She broke away, seizing three strands of sea-tangle and a piece of green fresh-curling weed, thrust them into her bosom and ran back.
‘How do you do, sir?’ she said to Bonden, offering her hand, and the boat’s crew welcomed her with infinite benevolence. ‘Let the Doctor’s little maid sit up in the bows,’
said Mould, and they passed her from hand to hand until she was perched on his folded jersey, calling out with delight as the boat shoved off.
‘Mrs Oakes, rna’am, you are very welcome aboard,’ said Reade, helping her up the side. ‘And you too, my dear. Doctor, sir, you have caught your tide as pretty as could be. I had scarcely started looking at my watch. Ma’am, how I hope you have an appetite. Our friends in the town have brought us the noblest soles that ever yet were seen.’ He showed them below, begging them to mind their heads, and returned to the deck.
The usual sounds followed their usual sequence – the cable coming aboard, the anchor being catted and fished, the boat run up to the davits; then even a moderately practised ear could make out the sound of halliards in their blocks and the deck leaned over under their feet: the ship was filled with a universal living sound, a vibration.
‘It is moving we are!’ cried Brigid. She escaped from the cabin and ran up on deck.
‘I must not behave like an old foolish mother-hen,’ thought Stephen, but he followed her nevertheless, and sitting abaft the tiller he watched her risk life and limb, very gently restrained in her wilder excesses by Padeen and the seamen, kind and endlessly patient: at one point he saw her ascend to the fore crosstrees, clinging to the rough and scaley neck of old Mould.
She was the ideal traveller, indefatigable, delighted with everything; and though the Ringle met a fine west-south-west swell when she was clear of the land, a swell that cut up somewhat on meeting the tide, she felt not the slightest qualm, nor, apparently, fear of any kind. She did not mind getting wet, either, which was just as well, since the Ringle was sailing due south-west with the breeze two points free and the choppy seas were coming aboard in packets over the starboard bow, soaking her at regular intervals as she clung to the foremost shrouds, each packet, green or white, being signalled by a delighted shriek.
Eventually, with darkness gathering, she was brought aft and below, dried, put down in front of a bowl of lobscouse (the Ringle’s only dish, apart from skillygalee or burgoo) and desired to ‘tuck in, mate, tuck in like a good ‘un.’ After two spoons she fell fast asleep, her head on the table, one hand still clutching a gnawed ship’s biscuit, so fast asleep that she was obliged to be carried off, perfectly limp, sponged more or less, and lashed into a small hammock.
‘Well, sir,’ said Reade at supper, ‘we could not have asked for a more prosperous breeze. This craft fairly loves the wind afore the beam and we have been making ten knots ever since we passed the Start with no more than what you see – no dimity, no gaff topsails even. I did suggest cracking on, ma’am, to show you just what she could do, but they would
have none of it. There was no actual downright mutiny, just disapproving looks and shaking heads, and I was told it was felt the barky should sail sweet, this being the little
maid’s first trip: though I must say I do not think she would turn a hair if we were scudding under bare poles, in danger of being pooped every other minute. Now ma’am, a trifle of this apple tart? The carpenter’s wife sent it down, one for his mess and one for ours, which I take very kind.’
‘The merest trifle, if you please. I love a good apple tart, and this one looks superb; but I am so sleepy that I am liable to disgrace myself and fall over sideways. It is no doubt the effect of the sea air.’
No doubt at all. The sea air did the same for all three passengers, who did not stir until the sun was well up, when they appeared, heavy-eyed, pale, and stupid, no one any better than the rest.
‘Good morning, sir,’ cried Reade, offensively bright. ‘What a brilliant day! We had a wonderful run in the night, and close in by Ushant we spoke the Briseis: old Beaumont –
you remember old Beaumont in the Worcester, sir? – was the officer of the watch, and he said some of the offshore squadron had exchanged signals with the Commodore on Thursday, standing south-west under an easy sail. But sir, I dare say you would like your breakfast. What will the little girl take?’
‘What indeed? Mrs Oakes,’ he called, ‘pray what are children fed on?’
‘Milk,’ said Clarissa.
The Ringle’s people looked tolerably blank; and discipline aboard a private tender under a midshipman not being as rigid
• as it might have been in a ship of the line, they freely exchanged their views. ‘If only I had thought,’ said Slade, ‘I should have brought a pailful along; and a pot of cream.’
‘Cheese is particularly good for young female bones,’ said the yeoman of the sheets. ‘My cousin Sturgis would have lent us his goat.’
In the end it was decided. that if ship’s biscuit and small beer were rejected – and Mrs Oakes rejected both out of hand
– then skillygalee was their only resource. Brigid therefore faced a bowl of very thin oatmeal gruel, sweetened with sugar and tempered with butter. She thought it the finest dish she had ever eaten, a more-than-birthday indulgence: she ate it up with naked greed and begged for more, and when at last she was told that she might get down skipped about the deck singing ‘Skilly-galee, skillygaloo, skillygalee ooh hoo hoo hoo’ with a persistence that only very good-natured men could have borne, as the Ringles did, until dinner changed the course of her mind. This being Thursday, she and all hands were allowed a pound of salt pork and half a pint of dried peas: a gallon of beer would also have made part of her ration, but she was advised not to insist upon it.
The breeze freshened in the afternoon: they took a reef in the foresail and the main, and the Ringle was filled with that happy sense of making a good passage: ten knots, ten and two fathoms, eleven knots, sir, if you please, watch after watch; and Brigid spent all her time in the bows, watching the schooner rise on the now much longer swell, race down, and split the next crest at great speed, flinging the spray to leeward in the most exhilarating fashion, always the same, always new. Once a line of porpoises crossed their hawse, rising and plunging like a single long black serpent; and once Stephen showed her a petrel, a little fluttering black bird that pittered on the white traces of broken waves; but otherwise the day was made up of strong diffused light, racing clouds with blue between, a vast grey sea, the continuous rush of wind and water, and a freshness that pervaded everything.
‘You was born with sea-legs, my dear,’ said Slade, as she came careering aft for supper.
‘I shall never go ashore,’ she replied.
Padeen slipped easily back into his place as a seaman, an ordinary seaman, for he did not possess the countless particular skills required to be rated able – skills he had, and many of them, but they were all to do with the land, he being profoundly a peasant, a peasant by breeding and inclination. Yet he was seaman enough to be perfectly at home aboard, and in the morning watch on Thursday Stephen found him fishing for mackerel in the Ringle’s bows.
It was still long before dawn: moderately thick weather with occasional showers, thunder out to sea: a long even swell: the wind quite strong in the west-north-west. The schooaer had been making long, long boards, beating steadily into it, and now she was on the starboard tack, close in with the land, with the ironbound northern coast of Spain hitherto unseen. Well ahead on the larboard bow the Vares light, high on a cape that ran far out to sea, showed fiery orange when it was not obscured by the squalls; and it was said that this light attracted the fish so often to be found within this bay. Whether this was so or not, the middle watch had caught a fine basketful, and that was why the clipper had lingered a little longer on this tack, drawing somewhat closer to the shore. She was under reefed fore and main sails, with the jib half in, easily stemming the tide, which ran fast round the cape, but making no great way with regard to the land.