The Ark Royal
She was feeling the ebb now, and she sheered first one way and then the other, gently tugging at her anchor as we hoisted the foresail and made the bowline fast to port. Once more the clank, clank, of the windlass; the short scope of the bower anchor came home sweetly, and the Ark Royal was free. I left Sam to get the anchor right up and flew aft to the wheel as she slowly gathered way.
We were off! Good-bye to the land and houses and rates and by-laws! We believed that we were entering on a better way of life. We have since made sure of it.
I think of that first sail still. The newness to us of the Ark Royal’s great size; her height above the water; the grand sweep she took as she came about; the march from the wheel to the leeside to peer forward in bargee’s style to see whether there was anything in our way to leeward; the size of the wheel itself, and the many turns wanted to put the helm down or up, filled us with importance and pride as we tacked down the river. If you would know what my feelings were then you must think of your first boundary to square leg, your first salmon, your first gun, your first stone wall with hounds running fast.
That night we anchored at the mouth of the river, and when the sails were stowed and the riding light had been hoisted, we ate our first dinner on board and tucked our elder boy into his bunk for the first time. Then beneath the stars, rocking gently on a scarcely perceptible easterly swell, we walked our decks in the flood-tide of happiness.
‘None of our relations know where we are or where we are going to,’ said the Mate. ‘Here we are now, and to-morrow, perhaps, we shall get to Mersea Island and pick up Margaret and Inky, and then we shall be complete. Is it real? Is it true?’
We sat on deck very late, too much occupied with the pleasure of existing to yield to sleep. The sky was continually changing as snowy clouds drifted across it. In the distance the Swin Middle light flared up like a bonfire every fifteen seconds. Here and there the lights of barges drooped tremulous threads of gold on the water.
Sam Prawle was invited aft; and regarding us now as freemen of the barge profession, he enlarged upon the advantages of barging (comparing it with the sport of yachting, which he seemed to think we had abandoned) with a confidential note in his voice that we had not precisely detected before. But his opinions on these weighty matters deserve a chapter to themselves.