Racundra's First Cruise

by Arthur Ransome

  The lighthouse-keeper told us that people were beginning to take an interest in Runö; that this year the steamer had brought them Mr. Piip, the Esthonian Foreign Minister, and a very great Englishman (our own Minister from Riga), but that these events did not much affect the islanders, who had never considered themselves Russians, nor indeed anything else than men of Runö, and were content to remain so, and to be counted Esthonian, seeing that their business, when they had any, was with Arensburg; that they caught their seals on the Esthonian rocks, and that, after all, the lighthouse-keeper had always been sent from Reval. He took us with him to see his lighthouse, where he posed for his photograph very nobly with the lighthouse behind him. It had been higher, he said, but the Germans had blown off the top of it, besides making a horrible mess of his house. Civilization had visited Runö after all. At the lighthouse we had a drink of fresh water, and then, as the wind shifted definitely to the south, had to give up all thoughts of staying longer on the island, and hurried away over the thick moss under the gigantic trees, picking mushrooms as we went, and so to the broken-down pier.

  We were none too soon. Racundra was bobbing up and down in a manner undignified for her, and the Ancient had lowered the peak. Where the water had been smooth it was already broken. We pulled out in the dinghy, getting well splashed on the way, hauled it on board, got our anchor, hoisted the staysail, filled on the starboard tack, and were off for Paternoster and the entrance to the Moon Sound.

  RUNÖ TO PATERNOSTER

  IT was half-past one when we got away, and, as we were anxious to take no chances with the rocks on Runö’s northern corner, we sailed due east for a mile before putting Racundra on her course. I must point out here that until we reached Helsingfors, though our courses were duly set by compass, there was very considerable discrepancy between theory and practice. After the Runö landfall I allowed a full point for easterly deviation in the neighbourhood of north, and this proved to be about right when, in Finland, we had magnets put in and swung the ship. But on other points the error was even greater. Our logs also were of small use for navigation. Of the two, the German log did not work at all, and the American, which we used, was a most pessimistic affair. Unless we were going at our top speed in half a gale, it registered a little less than two thirds of the distance we actually covered, and, if we were not visibly and sensibly churning along, the log seemed to lose heart altogether and registered nothing at all. I think it had begun life on a motorboat and had no patience with our old-fashioned but superior ways. Its remarks were of use only in giving us the roughest ideas as to what we had been doing.

  The wind was now S.S.W. but continued to back to the south, and at 3.40 we brought the booms over. It was a fine day and pleasant sailing, and, whatever the log might say, it was clear enough from our own wake that we were steadily moving towards the Esthonian coast. The only question in our minds was where we were going to hit it and when. We did a lot of straightening up on board, drank coffee by the pint, and ate huge quantities of food. We were all greatly cheered by our speed after the dismal experience of yesterday’s calms, and the Ancient began to think we should be in Reval tomorrow and to talk of record passages.

  “One time,” said he – “one time I crossed the North Sea in twenty-four hours under sail.”

  “Where was that?” I asked. “Harwich to the Hook?”

  “No,” said he, with a sail-needle between his teeth, finishing the end of one of the halyards. “It was from that place up at the North of Scotland ... like the Moon Sund, where we’re going.”

  “Pentland Firth?”

  “Ay. Pentland. Twenty-four hours from there to the Norwegian coast.”

  “Pretty good sailing.”

  “And I had my captain sick all the way. Yellow fever. That was how it was. We were in Mexico when he began ill, and I wanted him to go ashore. But he was Norwegian, and he would have it that back to Norway would put him right. And I thought myself, ‘Maybe the fresh airs at sea will put the fever under.’ But it was not like that. Every day he grew worse. I wanted to put up into one of the American ports to put him ashore, but he wouldn’t have it, and was all for carrying on and getting home to Norway. And we did carry on, too. I can’t tell you how long we were on the passage, but we had a west wind with us all the way, till we were near the Irish coast. I wanted them to put through the Channel, and let him see a doctor at Southampton, or one of them places. But he wouldn’t have it, and, sick as he was, set a course round by the north of Scotland. ‘Tis the best way for Norway,’ he says. And we came through the Pentland Firth, and he was so bad that I was for hauling our wind and coming to Aberdeen. But he would have nothing of it. And the west wind held and plenty of it, and the captain in his fever shouting, whenever I spoke to him, not to take a foot of canvas off her. And we made the Norwegian coast in twenty-four hours. And then we went into Christiansund, where he was from, and as soon as the anchor was down he went ashore, and as he went I told him I’d come ashore and see him in the morning. But it was not like that. I never saw him again, for he died during the night.”

  I had set a course that, if the error of the compass was about what it seemed to be, should bring Racundra within sight of the well-lit coast to the west of the Paternoster Lighthouse, so that we might learn our exact position in plenty of time, and was consequently delighted when at 10.15 we picked up a blinking light on the starboard bow. The Ancient took the tiller while I ran down below for a stop-watch. I timed it. One flash every three seconds. I looked at the chart which I had spread out on the writing-table in the cabin. No such light was to be found upon it. I looked again all along the coast of Oesel. No. There was a four-flash light on Laiduninna and nothing else between that and Paternoster. I ran my finger across the chart, which I was lighting with a little electric pocket-lamp. Away to west, far out of our supposed course, near the approach of Arensburg, a blinking light was marked, but the period of its flashes was not named. If it were that, then how humbled must be the pride of the navigator. I could feel the Ancient waiting in the dark to hear me, having timed the light by a method (the stop-watch) in which he did not believe, admit that I did not know what light it was or where we might be. It was a most unpleasant moment. So I said nothing at all.

  “What course?” asked the Ancient.

  “E.N.E.,” said I, to give myself time. I had just remembered that there was yet hope for my navigation. We were working by the big German chart of 1915, the only comparatively large-scale chart I had been able to get. But in the chart case was an English small-scale chart covering the Riga Gulf as well as much else, and this had been corrected up to the spring of this year. I pulled it out and spread it on the folding-table under the lamp in the cabin. And, as I looked from yellow splash to yellow splash (lights are marked in this way) going from west to east along the Oesel coast, behold, the very last light on that coast before the light of Paternoster at the entrance to the Sound was marked “1 flash ev. 3 sec.”, with the date “1920”. My expanding joy almost lifted off the cabin roof. I went on deck again a different man from that cringing, worried navigator who was glad that the dark hid the doubt in his face. For some few minutes I said nothing. Then, with all the ease I could assume, I said lightly, as if it were nothing: “Keep a look out for a flashing light on the starboard bow.” By changing our course we had brought my first treasure trove to port, “And then,” I added, “we should find another light to port, with a white flash every second; and when that turns to red, we shall have our course clear for the entrance.”

  The Ancient answered not a word, but there was a new warmth in the night air, a new solidity in the floor of the steering-well, and various other minor indications of rewarded confidence. I went below and smoked a most satisfactory pipe.

  We were not moving fast, and it was three hours later before we had the other two lights. But I was secretly glad we were moving slowly because, confidence or no confidence, I did not want to try too much and attempt the Moon Sound in the dark. In spite of
the evidence of the English chart, I was glad enough to have our course confirmed by meeting at 3 a.m. a steamer going S.W., which I knew must have come out of the Sound. I took the hint and altered our course a little accordingly. A little later, the white light of Paternoster turned red and then our last doubts were gone, and, as the dawn rose, and with it the wind strengthened from the S.E., we found ourselves exactly in the entrance to the Sound, Paternoster Lighthouse on its island on our port, Werder on our starboard bow, islands and rocky coast stretching away behind us to the south and west, and before us the Sound itself.

  THROUGH THE MOON SOUND

  THE actual entrance to the Sound is a couple of miles wide, with the little island of Virelaid on the western side and the larger mass of Werder on the eastern, each with its lighthouse. Then, though in some parts of it the shores recede and in places are over twenty miles apart, the actual channel narrows, twists and turns with such sharpness that big ships have more than once gone aground through attempting a corner too fast or at a time when the current was too strong against them. I suppose there are few sections of sea chart on which so many wrecks are marked. There is, of course, no tide, but the water rises and falls according to the prevailing winds, which also determine the direction of the strong current in the narrows. The Russian battleship Slava is still to be seen high out of water on the Kumora Shoal. The British merchantman Toledo, after three years of waiting, was only last autumn hauled off the shoal by the Erik Stone. Few British skippers care to attempt the passage by night, and one of the most careful, who did so venture, lost several plates from his ship’s bottom as his reward.

  We, of course, were attempting it by day, and, as dawn broke and at 5.30 we had Paternoster Lighthouse abeam, the wind strengthened mightily from the south, and, from the slant of the spar-buoys, we could see that we had not only the wind but also a strong current with us. We had the most favourable possible conditions. At the same time, I was not going to take any risks on Racundra’s maiden trip. With our shallow draught we could, no doubt, have cut off many corners. We draw, even with the centreboard down, no more than seven and a half feet. Our good friend Baltabor, on her way to Reval from Riga, avoids the Sound and goes round outside the islands if she draws over fourteen feet. I decided to attribute fourteen feet to the modest, the admirable Racundra, and pilot her through exactly as if she were a big ship. In this way we should have ample margin for the correction of any errors due to eccentricities of current or the like.

  CHART OF MOON SOUND.

  Passing Paternoster, we opened Kuivast on the island of Moon, a little anchorage where there is a landing-stage, a coastguard station, an inn and a telegraph. I had meant to stop there an hour or two, but the conditions for passing the Sound were so good that I visited Kuivast only through the binoculars. Two or three schooners were at anchor there, waiting for a favourable wind to take them south. The inn looked tempting enough, but, there it was: that glum log of ours was spinning merrily as a top, the sun was bright, the wind fair and strong, the wooded island of Shildau showed ahead, through the glasses I could already see one of the pair of beacons that, kept in line over our stern, would guide us through the next bit of the channel; after all, there were plenty of stopping-places ahead, and we could visit Kuivast homeward bound. So I put the island of Moon resolutely aside and looked over the bows at Shildau, and searched the pale blue, windswept water before us for a bell-and-light buoy, which I presently found. Racundra foamed past it, and I brought it in line over her stern with the lighthouse on Sareots Point, the western end of Werder. The sun shone, the wind blew, and there was the second beacon on Shildau, at first hard to see, close down on the shore under a background of dark-green pines. And then Shildau was abeam, then on our quarter, and behold, that dimly discerned second beacon grew clearer, separated itself from the trees, stood out, moved slowly nearer and nearer, close to, and at last was in line with the first. Up to starboard with the helm, over with the booms, and off goes Racundra, with those two beacons in line over her stern, through the narrowest stretch of channel, a lane between the shoals close by the N.E. corner of the island of Moon. And there, sure enough, on the low green ridge of that island, seeming at first to be in impossible positions, but straightening themselves out as we sped along, were two tall beacons of open ironwork, fantastic, unmistakable things, each with a dark iron corkscrew or snake twisting from the top to bottom in a narrow iron cage. Woods, windmills, green pastureland, houses, and those beacons, looking like Mr. Wells’s monsters from another planet striding over the earth, all changed places in a vast quadrille as Racundra hurried on her way. Suddenly the two monsters began noticeably to draw nearer to each other. They were within shouting distance of each other. They were in close converse. They were one. The corkscrew of one monster linked with the corkscrew of the other, the two cages merged into a single cage, and then, to port with the helm and sharply, and Racundra, shaking the waters from her beloved nose, was off again almost at right-angles from her former course, while the Shildau beacons slid rapidly apart, and this new pair remained in magic unity. I took a bearing on the Moon beacons and compared it with the chart, and got additional confirmation of the error I had assumed from our Runö landfall. That was at ten minutes past eight in the morning, and the log was reading 38.4. Half an hour later it was reading 41.6, so that even its pessimism was compelled to admit that Racundra was doing her six knots.

  We were now in apparently open water, but the chart was of a different opinion, and, mindful of our temporary fourteen feet, we kept those beacons in line for seven miles, when we passed the light-buoy in the middle of the Sound. Away to the west was the wide shallow inland sea between the islands of Dagö and Oesel. To the east we could see small scraps of islets and knew that beyond them was the narrow bay of Matsalu, from which, more than seven hundred years ago, the Esthonians sailed out and away to Sweden, and burnt Sigtuna, the Swedish capital, and carried away its silver gates. After passing the light-buoy, we held on our course for another seven miles or so, when we sighted the murderous Erik Stone, a square rock sticking up alone out of the waters; a rock no bigger than a king’s throne, as it is said by some to have been; a rock painted red all over by my ingenious friend Captain Konga, with whom, as you shall hear in another place, I spent two nights on the wreck of the Toledo, aground upon the shoal of which this stone is the uppermost point. Then, the water had been lower, and there was a little island to be seen, and seabirds upon it, but now there was nothing but the stone itself. Far away to the west was the coast of Dagö, and, with strong glasses, we could see the white house and a red roof by the little harbour of Heltermaa. Far away to the east a fantastic iron beacon rose out of the sea, showing where was the narrow passage to Hapsal between the shoals of Odroraga and Rukeraga. We meant to return that way, but we were moving too fast to have time to spare for dreaming about passages to come. There was the Erik Stone; there on the starboard bow the dark woods of the island of Worms; there, as if floating in the sea, the handful of low buildings on the tiny island of Harry; and somewhere ahead another bell-buoy to be found and passed to make the channel along the eastern side of Harry and avoid the rocks off Worms.

  The sun shone; the wind blew stronger and stronger; short, stout little waves raced us, caught us, passed foaming and gurgling under our keel and rushed ahead of us to the open Baltic. We were off Worms almost before we had left the Erik Stone, so it seemed. And there sheltering under the wooded island of Worms were the vessels bound south, schooners and cutters at anchor, watching us with envy as we flew past, waiting for the wind to change that was no good to them and suited us so well. Worms, like Runö, is one of the Swedish islands belonging to Esthonia. In all the harbours along the coasts of this part of the Baltic you meet stout little ships with Swedish names and the words “fran Wormsö” painted on their broad sterns. You can tell a Worms ship at first sight. You have no need to seek the painted letters. No others have the same combination of beam and lofty freeboard fore and aft. A beaut
iful sheer these little ships have, with a high afterdeck, the sides of which tumble home with an effect no less practical than lovely – a downward curve to the broad midships and then a proud upward sweep to the bows; in every line the sense of solidity, breadth, ability to keep the seas, and an unbroken tradition of simple-minded builders. The ships are mostly iron-fastened nowadays, but the older art is preserved, and I have seen fine schooners, not more than five years old, in which the fastenings, like timbers and planking, were of wood. For a moment we thought to turn aside, to slip in here under the lee of the island, to make this a stage of our journey and to talk with some of the little anchored fleet. But what would a Worms skipper think of us if we wasted a fair wind? It was not yet noon and the wind showed signs of rising still more. The barometer had fallen and was still falling. The wind would hold, and, going at this speed, we should be in Reval before midnight. So Worms slipped astern and we held on out into the Baltic, still among shoals, but with nothing visible on either hand except the glaucous white-splashed water.

  WORMS TO PAKERORT

  FOR some time we steered north by west through a waste of water increasingly disturbed, looking south over Racundra’s stern and keeping a dark pinewood promontory on the south end of Worms just open of the slim, gleaming white tower of Saxbiness light on the N.W. corner of the island. The wind, now really blowing pretty hard, kept shifting, and more than once we had to jibe. We passed one spar-buoy, then another, then found the long expected light-buoy, and north of that a group of four spar-buoys and a solitary pair.