A good read

A captain risks his ship under full sail to be the first clipper to get back to London Docks

Up the Channel in thick fog

At five in the morning Cruiser turned out to find the ship roaring on up Channel in the breaking darkness, a high great Channel sea running under a wild heaven, and the teeth of the waves gleaming out from the grey.

The mate hesitated for a moment, then said: ‘If you please, sir, we’re doing more than fourteen knots and we haven’t had a sight for four days. We’re well into the Channel: and thick as it is we may be on top of anything before we see it.’

‘No: keep her going,’ Cruiser said. ‘Our luck’s in. We’ll not throw it away.’

‘Very good, Captain Trewsbury.’

The ship was running on, with the same desperate haste, an hour later when Trewsbury returned. It was now in the wildness of an angry morning, with a low, hurrying heaven and leaping sea, that showed green under the grey, and rose and slipped away with a roar.

The ship was careering with an aching straining crying from every inch of her, aloft and below. Her shrouds strained and whined and sang, the wind boomed in her sail, the sheet blocks beat, the

‘ The ship smashed the seas white, singing as she did it’

chain of their pendants whacked the masts. All the mighty weight of the ship and cargo heaved itself aloft, and surged and descended and swayed, smashing the seas white, boring into and up and out of the hills and the hollows of the water, and singing as she did it, and making all hands, as the toiled, to sing.

‘Run, you bright bird,’ Trewsbury said. ‘That’s what you were born to.’

There was no chance of a sight with that low heaven: the man aloft could see nothing: all hands were on deck getting the anchors over. There came a sudden cry from them of ‘Steamer, dead ahead.’

She must have seen them on the instant, and ported on the instant, enough to clear. Cruiser saw her as it were climbing slowly and perilously to port for twenty seconds: then as he leaped for the signal flags to ask, ‘Where are we?’ she was surging past close alongside, a little grey coastal tramp, with a high bridge over her central structure, butting hard into it with a stay forsail dark with wet to steady her, and her muzzle white to the eyes. As she had just fired, a stream of black smoke blew away and down from her, with sudden sparks in it, as Cruiser thought.

Cruiser saw two figures in yellow oilskins staring at them from behind the dodger. He knew well with what admiration and delight those sailors stared. Then the little coaster’s stern hove up in a smother, as her head dipped to it, and she was past and away, with one man behind the dodger waving a hand. The reek of her smoke struck Cruiser’s nostrils; then she was gone from them, her name unknown.

The mate was at Cruiser’s side.

‘That shows you how we’re in the fairway, sir,’ he said. ‘We may be on top of something at any minute. We’ve only a minute to clear anything, in this.’ ‘I know it.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Did you ever know of a China clipper throwing away a fair wind in soundings?’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘Did you ever know of a China clipper being sunk in the Channel when running?’

‘No, Captain, and I don’t want to be the first.’

‘Well I do not want to be the first, Mister, and I, mean to be it, the first to London Docks, if you understand. And to get there, I have to use whatever chance throws in my way. It’s going to break, presently.’