The cruise of the Nona The story of a cruise from Holyhead to the Wash, with reflections and judgments on life and letters, men and manners
As for Plymouth, I fear there is some evil of perversion about that
mood which makes so many men (and I am one of them) disgruntled with
exaggerated fame. Modern legend has got a way of selecting a few
abiding places of its own, and there trampling down the grass and
all around with such a multitude of repetition and exaggeration and
ready-made phrase as corresponds, in the things of the mind, to the
most intolerable mud in the things of the soil. Is it print which has
done this, and steam—newspapers and the railway? No! So much evil
could not have come from material things: its real source was in the
degraded modern mind. What with Drake and the Armada, and the Bowls,
and the Rock upon the other side of the sea which failed to land upon
the Puritans, and the perpetual reiteration of all these things, I
would rather see Plymouth breakwater from the Sound, and so sail past,
than look on the Sound from the Hoe. But I admit that this mood is
evil, and that it is something of a perversion to feel such irritation
against mere wearisome repetitions. One has only to leave them alone.
It is a heavenly piece of coast, all this southern bulge of Devon,
with its little secret rivers and untainted towns. The people are good
and the land. So, with reservations, is its sea even beyond the Sound.
Though once, indeed, I did suffer off Bolt Head one of the two most
abominable spills of wind I ever suffered—and the first was off Beachy
Head by Birdling Gap on Whit-Tuesday, 1902, a day ever to be remembered.
For the air fell off Birdling Gap just like water out of a bucket, and
nearly blew the Nona flat upon her beam. I let go the sheet with a
run, but as it was she dipped, perhaps, a third of her mainsail, and
nearly broke her lover’s heart with fear. It is so sometimes with
these high lands. The wind does not run true. It blows over them, and
curls through a depression upon their edges, and curves, splashing down
solid, in a bolt, on to the deep below. For, on that day by Beachy, all
those years ago, the true wind was but just enough northerly to let me
keep a course for Newhaven, hauled very close and saving every inch.
But that gust came suddenly right on the weather beam, from far east of
north, and nearly settled my then young craft and him that cherished
and still cherishes her.
As for the spill off Bolt Head, it fell after a clear midnight, since
the War, and it was more than a spill; for it blew steadily for the
best part of an hour and then ceased. But, like its younger brother off
Beachy, it was peculiar to the high land; for it came due northerly,
whereas the main wind had east in it. I was watching the morning star
burning like a sacred furnace on the edges of the black hills when
Satan sent that wind and tried to drown three men. But we reefed in
time—there were three of us, one for the helm and two to the reef; and
when dawn broke, and the blessed colours of the east renewed the day,
strange!—one end of the boom had three reefs down, and the other only
two!
A coast of good memories: may it stand for ever in spite of petrol and
every other evil thing. There might be no London at all, so kindly and
so well guarded are all the men and women of its little harbour towns,
and so uncrowded its hills. The Erne and the Avon I have never entered,
but the Yealm I know: a difficult river in which to anchor, on account
of innumerable moorings, a winding water in a wooded gorge, difficult
also for wind. And Salcombe I have sailed in and out of—I suppose the
happiest harbour in the world. It has many little beaches of its own,
the homes of men standing separate upon them, far inland creeks, not
too strong a tide, a bar somewhat shoal but always deep enough for the
Nona, and a clear fairway to be fetched from within and from without, I
take it, upon any wind; for the harbour opens well inside the narrows,
and the seaward shores open well outside them.
Upon this piece of coast, setting out once from Plymouth, there came to
me an experience of no particular moment as history, but of powerful
effect upon my mind. It marked, in a sort of mysterious omen way, or,
perhaps, I should say in a sort of visionary way, the unleashing of the
Great War.
It so happened that in that summer of 1914 I had had occasion to go
from Hampshire to one of the western ports, where I was to pick up my
boat, and take her ultimately into Plymouth Sound, and thence, when I
should have the leisure, I proposed to take her out again, and stand
eastward up the coast.
I was staying in Hampshire with a friend who had a house in the New
Forest. It was on a Sunday I set out thence. He sent me in his motor to
Salisbury, where I wished to get Mass before going on by train. During
the Mass, the priest, after his announcements, asked the congregation
to pray for the soul of the Archduke heir-apparent of Austria, who
had been murdered at a place called Sarajevo. I had never heard the
name, and I had but a vague idea of who this archduke was, of his
relationship to the Emperor, and of his heirship to the throne of
Hapsburg-Lorraine. I came to the Nona, where she lay, and sailed out
with her into the sea for some days. I had no conception that anything
could be brewing.
When I came to land again, and went up to London, I found the air to be
filled with all the possibilities of that time. The Austrian Government
had sent to the Servian Government a note, the like of which had not
been heard in the history of Christendom. It made demands which no
government claiming to sovereignty could accept. For my part, when I
read the terms of the note, I was in no doubt that it was of Prussian
dictation. I am in no doubt to this day that it was of Prussian
dictation.
There are two ways of ascertaining the origin of such a thing. One is
the material way, the consultation of the only available documents, and
the only certified direct human evidence. The other is the moral way,
when one says: ‘This can only have been written by So-and-So, or, at
the very least, can only have been inspired by So-and-So.’ Thus, if I
find upon the table of a doubtful, weak kind of a man—and a courteous
one at that—a letter framed in the very terms and manner of a bully,
constantly his associate, then, though the letter be in the handwriting
of the former, and on his own paper, even if there were convincing
proof that when the actual writing was done the man was alone, I should
yet say that the real author was the bully, and not the gentleman. He
may have learnt it by heart at dictation. He may have copied it from
the other’s draft. At any rate, it is morally certain that the one man,
and not the other, is the true author of the thing launched—is the one
responsible.
Now, in the case of this note to Servia, the whole thing is Prussian
from beginning to end: the extreme arrogance, the deliberate
provocation, the exactitude, the aridity, and, above all, the
unintelligence. And as for proof upon the other side, we have none,
except what the various culprits chose themselves to give us.
As I went about London getting all men’s views, as is my custom when
grave things threaten, I heard many judgments passed upon the probable
consequences of the note. The man whose judgment in European affairs
I trusted most, one who had been largely employed in the foreign
business of this country, and who also had a deep and solid knowledge
of history, told me that there would not be war, even between Austria
and Servia, let alone an extension of the peril.
The reason he gave for this was curious. He said that a document of
that extreme violence would not have been issued if war were the
object. The object was to make bargaining acutely necessary, and to get
a further hold over Balkan land as a result of a long haggling. For
very violent actions—of which this was the most extreme case yet known
to Europe—the excess of offensive and inhuman brutality could only, he
said, be used as a blind.
Though I then knew very much less of the European situation, I
hesitated to agree with him as to the motive; but, on the other hand,
I certainly did not think there would be war. I thought Servia would
yield in all save the very worst and most humiliating points, and that
these would at last be waived.
Many other opinions of various colours did I gather in that interval,
but only one foreseeing a war; and to that one I paid no attention,
because it was very foolishly expressed, and for the wrong reason. It
was given me by a man who had travelled widely, and who was an expert
in many languages, as well as a man of great knowledge in certain forms
of mechanical construction. He had also a high scientific training. He
had no public post. This man said to me there would be war, because
Austria was known to be in a rotten condition, because upon the
outbreak of war the various sections of her tessellated dominion would
break apart, and the Servians, knowing this, and having the Russians
behind them, would take up the challenge. The Prussian power, or
‘Reich,’ would be so alarmed at the prospect that it would attempt to
stave off hostilities, or, failing that, to leave the Austrian Crown
to its fate. Such was the folly and ill-judgment of the only man who
thought that war was coming, among all those whom I consulted. It was
a good example of hitting a mark by firing wide: like the duellist in
the dark room who in mercy shot up the chimney, yet brought down his
opponent.
For note you that though a great many men up and down Europe had said
that Prussia was making for war, and that a conflict must come about
in some near future, and though I myself had written it over my own
signature (if I remember rightly), when, in 1911, Prussia raised her
special war tax, and the French were compelled to reintroduce the three
years’ service; yet _this_ did not seem to be the occasion—for it was
too abrupt. There seemed to be no plot or plan; and the season was
already late.
I did not know what we know now, that Prussia firmly calculated on
two things: first, the neutrality of England, and, secondly, a very
complete and very rapid victory over the French, a decisive victory,
destroying the whole of the French army within a month of the frontier
crossing; a battle beginning as did Charleroi, but ending very
differently from the Marne.
When I next had occasion to leave London, in order to find again my
boat at Plymouth, and to take her out, nothing was decided. One might
almost say that the suspense, such as it was, seemed less burdensome,
and the sense of peril less acute. I came down by night; I saw no
morning papers; I got aboard with my companion, and spent the whole
forenoon before the slight tide would serve in putting things to right
for the cruise.
We dropped out under a soft air, which soon died away. We spent the
whole mortal day drifting down to the Mewstone, and then, in that
exasperating calm, the turn of the tide took us up again towards
the breakwater. It was not till the fall of day that a breeze arose;
I cannot remember from what quarter, but I think it was off the
land—that is, from the northeast—but, at any rate, it served us; we
could go eastward without having to beat, and we made out down the
Sound. It was still light when we passed the Mewstone again. Through
the last of evening and through all the darkness we ran along the coast
to Devon for the Start.
I knew that the times were perilous, but I knew no more than any other
man, in that odd week’s lull before the storm, exactly how perilous
they were. It was nearly a month, I think, since I had heard the priest
read out, from those altar steps of Salisbury, prayers for the Archduke
who had been murdered at Sarajevo.
When I had set out from Plymouth there was nothing but rumour, nothing