But, Lord, how slow was that ship! The last light declined as we put Trafalgar on the beam; it was nearly calm, and I, with a vague memory of Trafalgar and Cadiz being quite close together on the map, thought myself already in harbour. But not at all! It was hour after hour, after hour. At last, long past midnight, and when I had hoped that first one light and then another might be the light of Cadiz (and had indeed long watched the light of Cadiz itself, which is white and flashing) and was still trying to make out far off to the West the glint of Spartel, I saw a sight which overjoyed me—a buoy with changing coloured lights, such a thing as marks the entrance to a fairway; and along that fairway we went, going the way that the ships of Tyre had gone before us into the great landlocked harbour; the ships of Tyre at which the Hebrew prophet railed so ineffectually. For he said that Tyre would come to nothing. So it did. But it took much longer than he thought.
We steered carefully between ships moored and took up a berth of which they knew, and dropped anchor, and the journey was done.
But I could not land till morning, and all the remaining hours of the night after so strange a passage I watched the Bear going about his monotonous round, and failing to take part in the baths of ocean, until at last it grew bright quickly over the Eastern hills and Cadiz turned white and the sea took on its colour. Then did I land in Christendom and I was greeted by the rising of the sun.
ON SAILING THE SEAS
I never sail the sea but I wonder what makes a people take to it and then leave it again. Nor have I ever seen an explanation of this; therefore it is that the speculation is of value, for it is one of those which go round and round upon themselves and never come to an end, and so give entertainment to the mind.
When you read in books that such-and-such a nation took to the sea you are usually given a very pretty little explanation of a material kind, as is the modern fashion. They took to the sea because they were situated at such-and-such a point, because the sea they lived on was sheltered, or because they had very good harbours.
It is all nonsense. Those who write like that cannot themselves have sailed the sea. To sail the sea is an occupation at once repulsive and attractive. It is repulsive because it is dangerous, horribly uncomfortable, cramped and unnatural: for man is a land animal. It is attractive because it brings adventure and novelty at every moment, and because, looking back upon it, a man feels a certain pride both in danger overcome and in experience. But it is also attractive in another and much more powerful fashion. It is attractive by a sort of appetite. A man having sailed the sea and the habit having bitten into him, he will always return to it: why, he cannot tell you. It is what modern people call a "lure" or a "call." He has got it in him and it will not let him rest.
That, I think, is the best answer in the long run to the question I put myself whenever I come back from sailing the sea.