Indeed, the cruising of a boat here and there is very much what happens
to the soul of a man in a larger way. We set out for places which we
do not reach, or reach too late; and, on the way, there befall us all
manner of things which we could never have awaited. We are granted
great visions, we suffer intolerable tediums, we come to no end of the
business, we are lonely out of sight of England, we make astonishing
landfalls—and the whole rigmarole leads us along nowhither, and yet is
alive with discovery, emotion, adventure, peril, and repose.

On this account I have always thought that a man does well to take
every chance day he can at sea in the narrow seas. I mean, a landsman
like me should do so. For he will find at sea the full model of human
life: that is, if he sails on his own and in a little craft suitable
to the little stature of one man. If he goes to sea in a large boat,
run by other men and full of comforts, he can only do so being rich,
and his cruise will be the dull round of a rich man. But if he goes to
sea in a small boat, dependent upon his own energy and skill, never
achieving anything with that energy and skill save the perpetual
repetition of calm and storm, danger undesired and somehow overcome,
then he will be a poor man, and his voyage will be the parallel of
the life of a poor man—discomfort, dread, strong strain, a life all
moving. What parallel I shall find in the action of boats for a man
of the middle sort, neither rich nor poor, I cannot tell. Perhaps
the nearest would be the travel at a fixed price upon a steamer from
one port not of the passenger’s choosing to another not of his
choosing, but carried along, ignorant of the sea and of the handling
of the vessel, and having all the while no more from the sea than a
perpetual, but not very acute, discomfort, and with it a sort of slight
uncertainty, which are precisely the accompaniments throughout life of
your middle sort of man.

So I have given this book a name: ‘The Cruise of the Nona.’ Had I
called it ‘The Cargo,’ I might be nearer my intention. At any rate, I
am now off to sail the English seas again, and to pursue from thought
to thought and from memory to memory such things as have occupied one
human soul, and of these some will be of profit to one man and some to
another, and most, I suppose, to none at all.

THE CRUISE OF THE NONA

The Cruise of the Nona

It was late in May, near midnight, the air being very warm and still,
and the sky not covered but somewhat dim, with no moon, when I took
the Nona out from Holyhead Harbour, having on board one companion to
help me work the boat, and a local man who could speak Welsh for me in
whatever places I might make along the coast.

The very slight breeze, which had barely moved us through the water
after we had got up the anchor, died away long before we reached the
end of the breakwater, and it was necessary to pull her out with the
dinghy in order to fetch round the end of the stonework and get to sea.
There was at that time of the tide a little current running towards the
Stack, which would slightly help us on our way once we were outside,
and with this we drifted a full hour and more, aided now and then by
faint breaths of air, which rose and died again like memories. So came
we, with the turn of the night, under the glare of the lighthouse at
last, and then put the nose of the little ship round for the point of
Carnarvonshire and the strait between the mainland and Bardsey Island,
which is called Bardsey Sound.

It was a course of about thirty-three miles, with no chance,
apparently, of covering it in all that night, nor perhaps in all the
coming day as well; for we had struck, as it seemed, that hot, steady
summer weather in which one may play at a drifting match for days on
end.

While it was still dark the distant mountains could barely be seen
as something a little blacker than the sky. They looked astonishingly
low, as mountains always do on a moonless night, when there is nothing
to distinguish their details, and nothing against which to compare
them, or by which to tell their distance. Already—it being now nearer
two than one o’clock—a little wind had arisen, settling down, as it
seemed, into somewhat east of north, and blowing over the Anglesey
flats. It gave us perhaps no more than a couple of knots an hour, but
it was heartening after the long calm, and as we had all sail set she
pulled to it steadily enough. I was at the helm, my companion was still
awake, sitting in the cockpit and talking to me, and the hand who was
to be with us till we next landed smoked beside us on deck.

The wind had freshened somewhat, we were making perhaps four or five
knots, when the dawn began to show beyond Snowdon, and those great
hills at once looked higher against the glimmer of grey light. Soon
the whole coast was apparent, and the Yreifles with their triple peaks
(clearer than I had expected; indeed, too clear for fine weather) lay
right ahead and Bardsey Island beyond them and the narrow sound in
between. The wind seemed steady, as though it would hold. I reckoned
that the tide would turn against us anywhere between six and seven in
the morning, that it would turn back through the Sound about noon or
one o’clock, and I calculated that we should be running into Cardigan
Bay, past Bardsey, on the middle of the ebb, an hour or two later than
that time.

But what happened was something wholly unexpected; it is always so at
sea, and that is why it is said that the sea brings all adventures.
Indeed, I think that as we go on piling measurements upon measurements,
and making one instrument after another more and more perfect to extend
our knowledge of material things, the sea will always continue to
escape us. For there is a Living Spirit who rules the sea and many
attendant spirits about him.