THE OLD HARBOUR, PLYMOUTH
XX
THE SAILING
FOG, AND THE TURN OF THE TIDE
RAINY weather overnight has turned to fog, and the lighthouse on the Point greets breaking dawn with raucous half-minute bellows. Less regular and insistent, comes a jangle of anchor-bells, breaking in from time to time, ship after ship repeating, then subsiding a while until the syren of a moving tugboat—as if giving time and chorus to the din—sounds a blast, and sets the look-outs on the anchored ships to their clangour again. From the open sea distant reedy notes tell that the minesweeping flotilla is out and at work, clearing the course for draught of the out-bound convoy, and searching the misty sea-channels for all the enemy may have moored there. The 'gateships' of the boom defences rasp out jarring discords to warn mariners of their bobbling floats and nets. Inshore the one sustained and solemn toll of bell at the pier-head measures out time to the sum of a dismal dayspring.
By all the sound of it, it is ill weather for the sailing of a convoy. In time of peace there would not be a keel moving within harbour limits through such a pall. "Call me when the weather clears," would be the easy order, and we would turn the more cosily to blanket-bay, while the anchor-watch would pace athwart overhead, in good content, to await the raising of the curtain. Still and all, it is yet early to assess the rigour of the fog. Sound-signals, started late in the coming of it, became routine and mechanical, and persist—through clearing—till their need is more than over. The half-light of breaking day has still to brighten and diffuse; who knows; perhaps, after all, this may be only that dear and fond premise of hopeful sailormen—the pride o' the morning!
The elder fishermen (the lads are out after the mines) have no such optimism. Roused by the habits of half a century, they turn out for a pipe and, from window and doorway, assure one another that their idle 'stand-by' decreed by harbour-master for outgoing of the convoy, is little hardship on a morning like this. "'Ark t' them bells," they say, thumb over shoulder. "All 'ung up. Thick as an 'edge out there, an' no room t' back an' fill. There won't be no move i' th' Bay till 'arf-ebb, my oath!"
But they are wrong in that, if right in their estimation of the weather and congestion in the roads, for we are at war, and the port convoy officer, hurrying to his launch, is already sniffing for the bearings of the leader of the line. Prudently he has mapped their berths as they came in to anchor, and has, at least, a serviceable, if rough, chart to guide him on his rounds.