CHAPTER XV
‘Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, la vie est là,
Simple et tranquille;
Cette paisible rumeur-là
Vient de la ville.’
We engaged two men to help us up the creek, which is narrow and was full of small boats difficult for a large craft to avoid. Unluckily, there was no wind, and we had to punt. This made our difficulties greater, as the Ark Royal, unlike her trading sisters, could not cannon her way cheerfully up the creek lest her stanchions should be carried away or her cabin tops be damaged.
The two men used the poles forward while I steered. A proud helmsman I was, knowing myself the owner and skipper of the largest yacht on the station, as we passed a quay thronged with longshoremen looking on. At that moment I had to put the wheel hard over, and as the barge’s stern swung towards the land her rudder touched the hawser of a smack moored at the shipyard. The pull of a ninety-ton vessel moving however slowly is enormous. The hawser tautened like a bar of iron; the Ark Royal’s rudder was banged amidships, wrenching the wheel from my hands; one of the spokes caught my belt, hoisted me off my feet, swung me right over the top of the wheel, and dropped me on the other side of the deck. The Mate and the children did not seem to understand that this accident to the Skipper reflected some ridicule on the whole ship’s company. They cackled with delight, and wanted me to do it again.
