We bore away inshore to the red buoy, and, sure enough, the true channel was there, right under the south bank. And we came safely to the town of Mistley, which had never in its existence seen even a torpedo-boat and seldom indeed a yacht, certainly never a Velsa. And yet the smoke of the harbor of Harwich was plainly visible from its antique quay. The town of Mistley rose from its secular slumber to enjoy a unique sensation that afternoon.
“Shall we go on to Manningtree, sir?” said the skipper, adding with a grin, “There’s only about half an hour left of the flood, and if we get aground again——”
It was another challenge.
“Yes,” I said.
Manningtree is a town even more recondite than Mistley, and it marks the very end of the navigable waters of the Stour. It lay hidden round the next corner. We thought we could detect the channel, curving out again now into midstream. We followed the lure, opened out Manningtree the desired—and went on the mud with a most perceptible bump. Out, quick, with the dinghy! Cover her stern-sheets with a protecting cloth, and lower an anchor therein and about fifty fathoms of chain, and row away! We manned the windlass, and dragged the Velsa off the mud.
“Shall we go on, sir?”
“No,” I said, not a hero. “We ‘ll give up Manningtree this trip.” Obstinacy in adventure might have meant twelve hours in the mud. The crew breathed relief. We returned, with great care, to civilization. We knew now why the Stour is a desolate stream. Thus to this day I have never reached Manningtree except in an automobile.
And there are still stranger waters than the Stour; for example, Hamford Water, where explosives are manufactured on lonely marshes, where immemorial wharves decay, and wild ducks and owls intermingle, and public-houses with no public linger on from century to century, and where the saltings are greener than anywhere else on the coast, and the east wind more east, and the mud more vivid. And the Velsa has been there, too.