The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" Part 7

They contended first in a race where it was not allowed to use "outrigged" boats (so called because they are so narrow that the oars cannot work on the gunwale, but are rigged out on iron frames).

Moreover, they rowed in a broad, heavy, clumsy-looking craft, with common oars like those used at sea, and they pulled a short jerky stroke, and had to go round a winding French course-indeed with apparently every disadvantage; yet they came in first, beating English and French, and winning 40_l_.

The same crew went in next for another race, and in another boat, an outrigger they had brought with them from the Dominion of Canada, and again they were first, and won 40_l_. more. {128} At once "Les Canadiens" became the favourites and heroes of the day. Englishmen cheered them because they were the winners, and some Frenchmen cheered them because they supposed the men were French, whereat the hardy Canadians smiled with French politeness, but muttering the while round protestations, intelligible only to English ears.

The river Seine was made unusually lively during the summer by the movement upon it of a whole fleet of steamers of all shapes and sizes, and with flags often exceedingly 'coquet.' Little screw yachts or steam launches flitted up and down, sometimes so small as to admit only three or four people on board, with a bit of awning to deflect the sun; others were crowded with pa.s.sengers. This style of locomotion is peculiarly adapted to Parisians. It has all the heat, bustle, and noise that can be desirable in nautical pleasures, and yet it almost avoids those highly inconvenient undulations which open water has too often the bad taste to a.s.sume. The completion of the Thames Embankment and of the purification of our river has already made water travelling more fas.h.i.+onable in London. Soon, perhaps, the Representative of some powerful Trades-union or incorrupt Borough, will see by the Westminster Clock that it is time to go down to the "House," and will order his double-screw steamer round to the water steps near his terrace door; and no coachman in those days need apply for a place unless he can steer.

Even now, the number of miniature steamers, tug-boats, and private yachts on the Thames is large and increasing; while a few years ago not one was to be seen. Most of these are pretty little things, and the best of all craft to be handled safely in the crowded waterway. The mult.i.tude of them one sees at Stockholm shews what may be seen some day in Middles.e.x.

Several English screw yachts had come to Paris. Mr. Manners Sutton kindly lent his to the Regatta Committee, and the steam launch of the Admiralty Barge was also used, so that the umpire was able to follow each race in a proper position for seeing fair play, while the Rob Roy was anch.o.r.ed at the winning-post, to guard the palm of victory. Here, too, various bomb-sh.e.l.ls were fired high into the air at the end of each race, and were supposed to correspond in number with the place of the winning boat on the programme; but somehow they so exploded as effectually to confuse the audience they were meant to enlighten as to "who had won:"

which uncertainty, we all know, is one of the princ.i.p.al excitements of a regatta, and it can be sometimes prolonged even until the day afterwards.

The other features of these rowing matches on the Seine may be left to the reader's imagination if he has seen a regatta before; and if he has not seen one, he could not well apprehend the thing by reading. The canoe races, however, being more novel, have another claim on attention.

One of these races was for fast canoes, and to be decided only by speed.

The other was a "canoe chase," in which dexterity and pluck were required for success.

For the canoe race three Englishmen had brought from the Thames three long boats with long paddles, and they were the three fastest canoes in England, so far as could be proved by previous trials. Against these, three French canoes were entered, all of them short, and with short paddles. One of these, propelled by an Englishman (resident in Paris), came in easily first, and the second prize was won by a Frenchman. Here, surely, was a good sound lesson to English canoe-men who wished to paddle fast on still water, in a boat useless for any other purpose, and slower at last than a skiff with two sculls. Accordingly, we accepted the beating with thanks.

The 'Canoe Chase,' first inst.i.tuted at our Club races on the Thames, was found to be an agreeable variety in nautical sport, and very amusing.

Therefore, two prizes were offered at the Paris Regatta for a canoe chase, open to all the "peoples." Five French canoes entered, but there was only one English canoeist ready in his Rob Roy to meet all comers (the Hon. A. F. Kinnaird).

The canoes were drawn up on land alongside each other, and with their steins touching the lower step of the "Tribune" or Grand Stand. It was curious to observe the various positions taken up by the different men, as each adopted what he thought was the best manner of starting. One was at his boat's stern; another, at the side, half carried his canoe, ready to be "off;" another grasped the bow; while the most knowing paddler held the end of his "painter" (or little rope) extended from the bow as far as it would reach.

All dashed off together on being started, and ran with their boats to the water. The Frenchmen soon got entangled together by trying to get into their boats dry; but the Englishman had made up his mind for a wetting, and it might as well come now, at once, as in a few minutes after, so he rushed straight into the river up to his waist, and therefore being free from the crowding of others, he got into his boat all dripping wet, but foremost of all, and then paddled swiftly away. The rest soon followed; and all of them were making to the flag-boat anch.o.r.ed a little way off, round which the canoes must first make a turn. Here the Englishman, misled by the various voices on sh.o.r.e telling him the (wrong) side he was to take, lost all the advantage of his start so that all the six boats arrived at the flag-boat together, each struggling to get round it, but locked with some other-opponent in a general scramble. Next, their course was back to the sh.o.r.e, where they jumped out and ran along, each one dragging his boat round another flag on dry land, amid the cheers and laughter of the dense group of spectators, who had evidently not antic.i.p.ated a contest so new in its kind, and so completely visible from beginning to end. Again, das.h.i.+ng into the water the little struggling fleet paddled away to another flag-boat, but not now in such close array.

Some stuck in the willows or rushes, or were overturned and had to swim; and the chance of who might win was still open to the man of strength and spirit, with reasonably good luck. Once more the competing canoes came swiftly back to sh.o.r.e, and were dragged round the flag, and another time paddled round the flag-boat; and now he was to be winner who could first reach the sh.o.r.e again and bring his canoe to the Tribune: a well-earned victory, won by the Hon. A. F. Kinnaird, far ahead of the rest.

[Picture: The struggle]

The whole affair lasted not much longer than might be required to write its history; but the strain was severe upon pluck and muscle, and called forth several qualities very useful in life at sea, but which mere rowing in a straight race does not require and cannot therefore exhibit.

Instantly after this exciting contest, a Frenchman challenged the winner to another chase over the same course. But as the challenger had not thought fit to enter the lists and test his powers in the chase, which was open to him like the rest, it would, of course, have been quite unfair to allow him, quite fresh, to have a special race with the hard-worked winner, though the Englishman was at once ready to accept the gage.

Among the visitors to the regatta was M. Forcat, whose peculiar system of propelling boats I have mentioned in the account of a former voyage; and he brought up for exhibition, and for the practical trial by the winner of the canoe chase, a very narrow and crank boat, rowed by oars jointed to a short mast in front of the sitter, and thus obtaining one of the advantages possessed by canoeists, that their faces are turned to the bow, and so they see where they are going.

It is no doubt an enormous disadvantage that in ordinary rowing your back is turned upon the course, with all its dangers and beauties; and this inconvenience is only put up with because you can go faster as you row with your back foremost, and the scenery is of no account if a river serves only to float the skiff but not to please the eye. As for travelling on new and lovely waters in this style, with face to the stern, it is just as if you were to walk backwards along a road, and to think you could appreciate the picturesque either by a stare at the retreating beauties you are leaving, or by a glance now and then over your shoulder at what is coming. But though M. Forcat's boat had the rower's face to the bow, the form and size of the nondescript novelty were not to be understood in a moment, and we tried to dissuade our young canoeist from entering hastily a new sort of boat, very easily capsized.

He had his own will, however, and his own way, because he was a Scot, and only "English" in the sense we use that word for "British,"-too frequently thereby giving dire offence to the blue lion of the North, whose armorial tail is so punctiliously correct as to the precise curl and make up of its "back hair."

"He's upset," they cried in a minute or so. But we might well let so good a swimmer take his chance; he merely pushed the boat ash.o.r.e, and then took a pleasant swim, until he was finally captured and put into the Rob Roy's cabin, to change his wet clothes as well as a modest man might do behind a plaid screen and before the curious world.

Therefore in boats, as well as in business and politics, we may learn lessons from one another, both on the water and on the land: from Canada, as to the steering and the stroke; from France, as to the fast, quick turning canoe in still water; and from England, as to the _man_.

It was to see this regatta and to help in it that the Rob Roy had pushed her way to Paris; and for this six hundred miles of river navigation in a sea-going boat were justifiable, yet often did I feel much the sea-trim lifeboat yawl was out of place upon a calm inland water like the Seine.

Before the arrival of my little yacht, a challenge had been sent to her to sail on the Seine against a French yacht there. To this I replied that it would be scarcely a fair match for the Rob Roy, a sea craft, to race on a river known only to one of the compet.i.tors; but that the yawl would gladly sail a match with any French yacht having only one man on board,-the course to be at sea either one hundred miles for speed, or one week for distance, and communication not allowed with any other boat or sh.o.r.e. No answer came.

CHAPTER X.

Dawn music-Cleared for action-Statistics-Blue Peter-Pa.s.sing bridges-A gale-A shave-Provisions-Toilette-An upset-Last bridge-A peep below-Cooking inside-Preserved provisions-Soups.

The Rob Roy was very pleasant lodgings when moved down to the lovely bend at St. Cloud. Sometimes she was made fast to a tree, and the birds sung in my rigging, and gossamers spun webs on the masts, and leaves fell on the deck. At other times we struck the anchor into soft green gra.s.s, and left the boat for the day, until at night, returning from where the merry rowers dined so well in training, and after a pleasant and cool walk "home" by the river side, there was the little yawl all safe on a gla.s.sy pool, and her deck s.h.i.+ning spangled with dewdrops under the moon, and the cabin snug within,-airy but no draughts, cool without chill, and brightly lighted up in a moment, yet all so undisturbed, without dust or din, and without any bill to pay.

Awake with the earliest sun, there was always the same sound alongside as we lay at anchor. The sweet murmurings of the water running by, cleft by my sharp bow, and gliding in wavelets along the smooth sides only a few inches from my ear, and sounding with articulate distinctness through the tight mahogany skin; and then there was the muttering chatter of the amateur fisherman, who was sure to be at his post, however early.

This respectable personage, not young but still hearty, is in his own boat,-a boat perfectly respectable too, and well found in all particulars, flat, brown, broad, utterly useless for anything but this its duty every morning.

Quietly his anchor is dropped, and he then fixes a pole into the bottom of the river, and lashes the boat to that, and to that it will be fixed until nine o'clock; at present it is five. He puts on a grey coat, and brown hat, and blue spectacles, all the colours of man and boat being philosophically arranged, and as part of a complicated and secret plot upon the liberties of that unseen, mysterious, and much-considered _goujon_ which is poetically imagined to be below. It has baffled all designs for this last week, for it is a wily monster, but _this_ morning it is most certainly to be snared.

Rod, line, float, hook, bait, are all prepared for the conflict, and the fisherman now seats himself steadily in a sort of arm-chair, and with stealth and gravity drops the deceitful line into hidden deeps. At that float he will stare till he cannot see. He looks contented; at any rate, no muscle moves in his face, though envy may be corroding his soul.

After an hour he _may_ just yield so much as to mutter some few sounds, or a suppressed moaning over his hard lot, 'and that is what I hear in my cabin.' Then at last he rises with a determined briskness in his mien, and the resentment against fate from an ill-used man, and he casts exactly three handfuls of corn or bread-crumbs into the water, these to beguile the reluctant obstinate gudgeon, who, perhaps, poor thing, is not so much to blame for inattention after all, being at the time just one hundred and fifty yards away, beside those bulrushes.

Indeed that very idea seems to have struck the fisherman too, and he marks the likely spot, and will go there to-morrow, not to-day-no, he will always stick one day at one place. How he moves to or from it I do not know, for the man and boat had always come before I saw them, and I never stopped long enough to see them depart. Four men fished four mornings thus, and only two fish were caught by them in my presence.

The regatta is over, and Nadar's balloon is in the sky, but seeming no bigger than other balloons, so soon does the mind fail to appreciate positive size when the object you look at is seen alone. It is the old story of the moon, which "looks as large as a soup-plate," and yet Nadar's _Geant_ was the largest balloon ever seen, and it carries a house below it instead of a car-a veritable house, with two storeys, and doors and windows. The freedom of its motion sailing away reminds me that the Rob Roy ought to be moving too,-that she was not built to dabble about on rivers, but to charge the crested wave; and, indeed, there was always a sensation of being pent up when she was merely floating near the inland cornfields, and so far from the salt green sea; and this, too, even though pleasant parties of ladies were on board, and boys got jaunts and cruises from me, which I am certain pleased them much; still the reef-points on her sails rattled impatiently for real breezes and the curl of the surf, while the storm mizen was growing musty, so long stowed away unused.

Next day, therefore, the Blue Peter was flying at the fore, and the Rob Roy's cellar had its sea stock laid in from "Spiers and Pond," of ale, and brandy, and wine. Before a fine fresh wind, with rain pelting cheerfully on my back, we scudded down the Seine. To sail thus along a rapid stream with many barges to meet, and trees overhanging, and shoals at various depths below, is a very capital exercise, especially if you feel your honour at stake about getting aground, however harmless that would be. But the Seine has greater difficulties here, because the numerous bridges each will present an obstacle which must be dealt with at once, and yet each particular bridge will have its special features and difficulties, not perhaps recognized when first you meet them so suddenly. {142} The bridges on the Seine were often not high enough to allow the yawl to pa.s.s under, except in the centre, or within a few feet on one side or other of the keystone, and as the wind is deflected by the bridge, just at the critical moment when you reach such places, and the current of water below rushes about in eddies from the piers, there is quite enough of excitement to keep a captain pretty well awake in beating to windward through these bridges; for the wind _must_ be dead ahead a great part of the time, because the river bends about and about with more and sharper turns than almost any other of the kind.

Though sun and wind had varnished my face to the proper regulation hue, in perfect keeping with a mahogany boat, yet the fortnight of fresh water had softened that hardiness of system acquired in real sea. My hands had gradually discarded, one after another, the islands of sticking-plaister, and a whole geography of b.u.mps and bruises, which once had looked as if no gloves ever could get on again-or rather as if the hands must always be encased in gloves to be anywhere admissible in a white-skinned country.

But now once again outward bound, though still so many miles from the iodine scent of the open sea, and the gracious odour of real s.h.i.+p's tar, one's nerves are strung tight in a moment. The change was hailed with joy, though sudden enough, from the gla.s.sy pond-like water at St. Cloud, lulled only by gentle catspaws, half asleep and dreaming, to the rattling of spars and blocks, and hissing of the water, in the merry whistling gale by which we now were rapt away.

At Argenteuil there are numerous French pleasure-boats, and the Rob Roy ran into a good berth. Next day there was a downright gale, so I actually had to reef before starting, because in a narrow river the work of beating against the wind is very severe on legs and arms, and especially on one's hands, unless they are hardened, and kept hard, too, by constant handling of the strong ropes.

At length we put into a quiet bay, where the river Oise joined the Seine, and we moored snugly under the lee of a green meadow, while trees were above waving and rustling in the breeze. It was far from houses, for I wished to have a good rest, as the tossing of the former night had almost banished sleep.

But soon the inquisitive natives found the yawl in her hiding-place, and they sat on the gra.s.s gazing by the hour. The surroundings were so much like a canoe voyage, that I felt more strongly than ever the confinement to a river, while the sea would have been so open and grand under such a breeze. Therefore I gave up all idea of sailing down the Seine any more, and decided to get towed to Havre, and to launch out fairly on our proper element once more.

Yet it was fine fun to row about in the dingey, and to discover a quaint old inn, and to haul ash.o.r.e my tiny c.o.c.klesh.e.l.l and dine. Here they were certainly an uncouth set, they did not even put a cloth on the table, nor any subst.i.tute for it,-a state of things seen very seldom indeed in the very outermost corners of my various trips.

Faithful promise was made by a man that he would rouse me from slumber in my cabin under the haybank at the pa.s.sing of the next steamer, be it light or dark at the time. The shriek of the whistle came in the first hours of morning, and the man ran to tell it, with one side of his face shaven, and the other frothed over with lather.

Being towed down is so like being towed up the river, that we need merely allude to a few features in the voyage westward.

At one pretty town we stopped to unload cargo for some hours, and I climbed the hills, scaled the old castle walls, and dived into curious tumbledown streets. The keeper of the newspaper-shop confessed to me his own peculiar grievance, namely, that he often sent money to England in reply to quack advertis.e.m.e.nts, but never had any reply. He seemed to be too "_poli_" to credit my a.s.sertion that there are "many rogues in perfidious Albion," and on the whole he was scarcely shaken in the determination to persevere in filling their pockets, though he might empty his own.

An old man at a lock was delighted by a New Testament given to him. "I know what this is; it is Protestant prayers. Oh, they are good." Then he brought his wife and his grandchildren, and every one of them shook hands.

It was not very easy to get one's sea-stores replenished in the continuous run down the Seine. Sometimes I saw a milkman trundling his wheelbarrow over a bridge, and, jumping on sh.o.r.e, I waylaid him for the precious luxury, or sent off a boy for bread, and b.u.t.ter, and eggs; but, of course, the times of eating had nothing to do with any hours, or recurring seasons for a meal: you must cook when you can, and s.n.a.t.c.h a morsel here or there, in a lock or a long reach of the stream. At night the full moon sailed on high, and the crew lay down with their faces over the steamer's side, chattering with their English comrade till it was far past bed-time, for we shall be off at three to-morrow morning.

The steam in the boiler first warns of the coming bustle as its great bubbles burst inside, and rattle the iron plates. Then, being more frequent and tighter bound, they give out a low moaning, hidden rumble; and if the boat touches the side of the steamer, there is a strong vibration through all her sonorous planks, until some tap is turned in the engine, and the rush of steam leaps into the cylinder as if indignant at its long restraint. You had better get up now (there is no dressing, for the simple reason that there has been no undressing), and in two minutes you are fresh and hearty, though it is only a few hours since you dropped to rest.

Rouen looks as if it would be all that is pleasant for a sailing-boat to rest in. Never was a greater deception. It is difficult to find an anchorage, and impossible to get a quiet berth by the quay. The bustle all day, and the noise all night, keep you ever on the tenterhooks; though, as these discomforts are caused by the active commerce of the port, one ought to bear them patiently.

In one of the numerous _melees_ of barges, boats, and steamers whirling round and round, amid entangled hawsers, and a swift stream, we had at last to invoke aid from sh.o.r.e, and a number of willing loungers gladly hauled on my rope. Some of these men, when I thanked them, said they had more to thank me for,-the books I had given them in my voyage up. Still, with all this aid, the Rob Roy was inextricably entangled with other heavier craft, and, in shoving her off I tumbled overboard, and had to put up with a thorough wetting; so, after a warm bath ash.o.r.e, more _a la mode_, I returned to my little cabin for a profound sleep.

Rain, almost ceaseless for a whole day and night, had searched the smallest c.h.i.n.k, and trickled ungraciously into my very bed-room. But I suspended an iron tea-cup in the dark just over my body, so _that_ one little stream was intercepted. This was the first really hard pressure of wet on the Rob Roy, and all the defects it brought to light were entirely remedied afterwards at Cowes.