The Return To England

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Title:     The Return To England
Author: Hilaire Belloc [More Titles by Belloc]

In Calais harbour, it being still very early in the morning, about half-past five, I peered out to see how things were looking, for if that coast corresponded at all to ours, the tide should be making westerly by six o'clock that day--the ebb tide--and it was on the first of that tide that I should make the passage to England, for at sea you never can tell. At sea you never can tell, and you must take every inch the gods allow you. You will need that and more very often before evening. Now, as I put my head out I saw that I could not yet start, for there was a thick white mist over everything, so that I could not even see the bowsprit of my own boat. Everything was damp: the decks smelt of fog, and from the shore came sounds whose cause I could not see. Looking over the iron bulwarks of the big English cargo ship, alongside of which I was moored, was a man with his head upon his folded arms. He told me that he thought the fog would lift; and so I waited, seeking no more sleep, but sitting up there in the drifting fog, and taking pleasure in a bugle call which the French call "La Diane," and which they play to wake the soldiers. But in summer it wakes nobody, for all the world is waking long before.

Towards six the mist blew clean away before a little air from the north-east; it had come sharp over those miles and miles of sand dunes and flats which stretched away from Gris-nez on to Denmark. From Gris-nez all the way to the Sound there is no other hill; but coarse grass, wind-swept and flying sand. Finding this wind, I very quickly set sail, and as I did not know the harbour I let down the peak of the mainsail that she might sail slowly, and crept along close to the eastern pier, for fear that when I got to the open work the westerly tide should drive me against the western pier; but there was no need for all this caution, since the tide was not yet making strongly. Yet was I wise to beware, for if you give the strange gods of the sea one little chance they will take a hundred, and drown you for their pleasure. And sailing, if you sail in all weathers, is a perpetual game of skill against them, the heartiest and most hazardous game in the world.

So then, when I had got well outside, I found what is called "a lump." The sea was jumbling up and down irregularly, as though great animals had just stopped fighting there. But whatever was the cause of it, this lump made it difficult to manage the boat I was in, for the air was still light and somewhat unsteady; sometimes within a point of north, and then again dropping and rising free within a point of east: on the whole, north-east. To windward the sea was very clear, but down towards the land there was a haze, and when I got to the black buoy which is three miles from Calais, and marks the place where you should turn to go into the harbour, I could barely see the high land glooming through the weather, and Calais belfry and lighthouse tower I could not see at all. I looked at my watch and saw it was seven, and immediately afterwards the wind became steady and true, and somewhat stronger, and work began.

She would point very nearly north, and so I laid her for that course, though that would have taken me right outside the Goodwins, for I knew that the tide was making westerly down the Channel, ebbing away faster and faster, and that, like a man crossing a rapid river in a ferry-boat, I had to point up far above where I wanted to land, which was at Dover, the nearest harbour. I sailed her, therefore, I say, as close as she would lie, and the wind rose.

The wind rose, and for half an hour I kept her to it. She had no more sail than she needed; she heeled beautifully and strongly to the wind; she took the seas, as they ran more regular, with a motion of mastery. It was like the gesture of a horse when he bends his head back to his chest, arching his neck with pride as he springs upon our Downs at morning. So set had the surging of the sea become that she rose and fell to it with rhythm, and the helm could be kept quite steady, and the regular splash of the rising bows and the little wisps of foam came in ceaseless exactitude like the marching of men, and in all this one mixed with the life of the sea.

But before it was eight o'clock (and I had eaten nothing) the wind got stronger still, and I was anxious and gazed continuously into it, up to windward, seeing the white caps beginning on the tops of the seas, although the wind and tide were together. She heeled also much more, and my anxiety hardened with the wind, for the wind had strengthened by about half-past eight, so that it was very strong indeed, and she was plainly over-canvased, her lee rail under all the time and all the cordage humming; there it stood, and by the grace and mercy of God the wind increased no more, for its caprice might have been very different.

Then began that excellent game which it is so hard to play, but so good to remember, and in which all men, whether they admit it or not, are full of fear, but it is a fear so steeped in exhilaration that one would think the personal spirit of the sea was mingled with the noise of the air.

For a whole great hour she roared and lifted through it still, taking the larger seas grandly, with disdain, as she had taken the smaller, and still over the buried lee rail the stream of the sea went by rejoicing and pouring, and the sheets and the weather runner trembled with the vigour of the charge, and on she went, and on. I was weary of the seas ahead (for each and individually they struck my soul as they came, even more strongly than they struck the bows--steep, curling, unintermittent, rank upon rank upon rank, as innumerable cavalry); still watching them, I say, I groped round with my hand behind the cabin door and pulled out brandy and bread, and drank brandy and ate bread, still watching the seas. And, as men are proud of their companions in danger, so I was proud to see the admirable lift and swing of that good boat, and to note how, if she slowed for a moment under the pounding, she recovered with a stride, rejoicing; and as for my fears, which were now fixed and considerable, I found this argument against them: that, though I could see nothing round me but the sea, yet soon I should be under the lee of the Goodwins, for, though I could not exactly calculate my speed, and though in the haze beyond nothing appeared, it was certain that I was roaring very quickly towards the further shore.

When, later, the sea grew confused and full of swirls and boiling, I said to myself: "This must be the tail of the Goodwins." But it was, not. For, though I did not know it, the ebb of the great spring tide had carried me right away down Channel, and there was not twelve feet of water under the keel, for the seething of the sea that I noticed came from the Varne--the Varne, that curious, long, steep hill, with its twin ridge close by, the Colbert; they stand right up in the Channel between France and England; they very nearly lift their heads above the waves. I passed over the crest of them, unknowing, into the deep beyond, and still the ship raced on. Then, somewhat suddenly, so suddenly that I gave a cry, I saw right up above me, through what was now a thick haze, the cliffs of England, perhaps two miles away, and showing very faintly indeed, a bare outline upon the white weather. A thought ran into my mind with violence, how, one behind the other, beyond known things, beyond history, the men from whom I came had greeted this sight after winds like these and danger and the crossing of the narrow seas. I looked at my watch; it was ten o'clock, so that this crossing had taken three hours, and to see the land again like that was better than any harbour, and I knew that all those hours my mind had been at strain. I looked again at the vague cliffs narrowly, thinking them the South Foreland, but as they cleared I saw to my astonishment that I had blown all down the Straits, and that Folkestone and the last walls of the chalk were before me.'

The wind dropped; the sea went on uneasily, tumbling and rolling, but within a very little while--before eleven, I think--there was no breeze at all; and there I lay, with Folkestone harbour not a mile away, but never any chance of getting there; and I whistled, but no wind came. I sat idle and admired the loneliness of the sea. Till, towards one, a little draught of air blew slantwise from the land, and under it I crept to the smooth water within the stone arm of the breakwater, and here I let the anchor go, and settling everything, I slept.

It is pleasant to remember these things.

[The end]
Hilaire Belloc's essay: The Return To England

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