It was typhoid.
The ship now became a hospital, with a special bed sent down from London and two nurses. The saloon was emptied of everything save what the nurses wanted, and the long struggle began.
It was like all other serious illnesses in any other home—the children sent away, the pitiful lies that affection devises, the assumed bravery, the broken nights, the anxious talks with the nurses or doctor, and (the background of it all) the fever chart. I wonder whether any skipper of a ship ever watched his positions on a chart with such feelings as I had then.
The crisis came and passed, but ‘When will she be out of danger?’ was asked secretly for many days before a confident answer came. How far these good nurses perjured themselves I do not know. Often they made me go to London, but the journey home was torture. Once, returning in the dark, I saw from the train that there was no light in the saloon. The Mate, as it turned out, was only sleeping. But afterwards a light was always placed on deck to show me that all was well.
At last the children were allowed to come and look fearfully through the windows, and later to speak a few words through them. And then step by step the Mate grew stronger until at last she walked on deck, and we dressed the ship in her honour, and she went away on a long convalescence.
When she came back well and strong I had a surprise for her. She had always been rather afraid of the great fifty-foot sprit which used to sway in a heavy threatening way over our heads when the barge rolled in a cross sea. I had therefore sold the mainsail, sprit, topsail, and mizzen, bought a large yacht’s mainsail second-hand, and had it made into a new mainsail and topsail. I had also bought an eight tonner’s mainsail, which I rigged as a larger mizzen. The whole transaction from first to last cost about eight pounds.
What we really needed most was a motor-launch to give the barge steerage way in calms, to help her up creeks, or for going on shore. With a slow large craft it generally happens that one has to anchor a long way off the landing-place, because the smaller craft are always near the hard; and in bad weather this means heavy work. We bought a book on internal combustion engines, but it did not prevent us from buying an engine that did not generally achieve internal combustion.
When the next August holidays came we were delayed in starting for our usual cruise because the motor-boat had not been delivered. We stood over her till she was ready, and then went for a trial trip, during which she emitted the most distressing noises we had ever heard. However, we could wait no longer, and took her in tow behind the Ark Royal.
The first night of the cruise we lay off Southend. The weather, which had been bad, became worse; the wind backed with vicious determination at low water; and by ten o’clock it was blowing a gale. Southend is an exposed anchorage, and we foresaw that we should have some anxious hours as the tide rose. We were close to the pier, where there were five other barges, whose anchors lay round about us sticking up out of the hard sand, and promising us destruction if we should sit on one of them.
We laid out another anchor, forcing it well into the sand, and by eleven o’clock the Ark Royal was afloat. It was a wild night indeed; the barge wallowed, and the motor-boat jerked about on the rollers, snatched and snubbed at her painter, while the spray was cut off from the tops of the waves as though by a knife and flung into her.