She “blew over”, but the episode caused a little naïve vexation in Davies. I relate it as a good instance of one of his minor peculiarities. He was utterly without that didactic pedantry which yachting has a fatal tendency to engender in men who profess it. He had tossed me the chart without a thought that I was an ignoramus, to whom it would be Greek, and who would provide him with an admirable subject to drill and lecture, just as his neglect of me throughout the morning had been merely habitual and unconscious independence. In the second place, master of his métier, as I knew him afterwards to be, resourceful, skilful, and alert, he was liable to lapse into a certain amateurish vagueness, half irritating and half amusing. I think truly that both these peculiarities came from the same source, a hatred of any sort of affectation. To the same source I traced the fact that he and his yacht observed none of the superficial etiquette of yachts and yachtsmen, that she never, for instance, flew a national ensign, and he never wore a “yachting suit”.
We rounded a low green point which I had scarcely noticed before.
“We must jibe,” said Davies: “just take the helm, will you?” and, without waiting for my co-operation, he began hauling in the mainsheet with great vigour. I had rude notions of steering, but jibing is a delicate operation. No yachtsman will be surprised to hear that the boom saw its opportunity and swung over with a mighty crash, with the mainsheet entangled round me and the tiller.
“Jibed all standing,” was his sorrowful comment. “You’re not used to her yet. She’s very quick on the helm.”
“Where am I to steer for?” I asked, wildly.
“Oh, don’t trouble, I’ll take her now,” he replied.
I felt it was time to make my position clear. “I’m an utter duffer at sailing,” I began. “You’ll have a lot to teach me, or one of these days I shall be wrecking you. You see, there’s always been a crew——”
“Crew!”—with sovereign contempt—“why, the whole fun of the thing is to do everything oneself.”
“Well, I’ve felt in the way the whole morning.”
“I’m awfully sorry!” His dismay and repentance were comical. “Why, it’s just the other way; you may be all the use in the world.” He became absent.