Compass lighted, ship-lantern fixed, a reef in each sail, and, with a moment’s thought of the very similar events that had passed only a few nights ago, we steered right south, away, away to the open sea.
It was black enough all around; but yet the strong wind expected after thunder had not come, and we edged away eastward, doubly watchful, however, of the dark, for the crowd of vessels here was the real danger, and not the sea.
Look at the ghost of Rob Roy flitting on the white sail as the lamp shines brightly. Down comes the rain, and with it flash after flash, peal upon peal of roaring thunder, and the grandeur of the scene is unspeakable. The wind changed every few minutes, and vessels and boats and steamers whirled past like visions, often much too near to be welcome.
A white dazzling gleam of forked lightning cleaves the darkness, and behold! a huge vessel close at hand, but hitherto unseen, lofty and full-sailed, and for a moment black against the instant of light, and then utterly lost again. The plashing of rain hissed in the sea, and a voice would come out of the unseen—“Port, you lubber!” The ship, or whatever it is, has no lights at all, though on board it they can see mine. Ah, it’s no use peering forward to discover on which side is the new danger; for when your eye has gazed for a time at the lighted compass it is powerless for half a minute to see in the dark space forward; or, again, if you stare into the blackness to scan the faintest glimmer of a sail ahead, then for some time after you cannot see the compass when looking at it dazzled. This difficulty in sailing alone is the only one we felt to be quite insuperable.
Again a steam whistle shrieked amid the thunder, and two eyes glared out of the formless vapour and rain—the red and the green lights, the signals that showed where she was steaming to. There was shouting from her deck as she kept rounding and backing, no doubt for a man overboard. As we slewed to starboard to avoid her, another black form loomed close on the right; and what with wind, rain, thunder, and ships, there was everything to confuse just when there was every need of cool decision.
It would be difficult for me to exaggerate the impressive spectacle that passed along on the dark background of this night. To shew what others thought, we may quote the following paragraph from the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ of next day, the 20th of August: [260]—
“The storm which raged in London through the whole of last night was beyond question by far the most severe and protracted which has occurred for many years. It began at half-past eight o’clock, after a day of intense heat, which increased as the evening advanced, though it never reached the sultriness which was remarked before the storm of last week. The first peal of thunder was heard about nine, and from that time till after five this morning it never ceased for more than a few minutes, while the lightning may be said to have been absolutely continuous. Its vivid character was something quite unusual in the storms of recent summers, and the thunder by which it was often instantaneously followed can only be described as terrific. The storm reached its greatest violence between two and three o’clock, when a smart gale of wind sprang up, and for about ten minutes the tempest was really awful.”
We had noticed some rockets sent up from Eastbourne earlier in the evening; probably these were fireworks at a fête there, but the rain must have soon drowned the gala. Certainly it closed up my view of all other lights but the lightning, though sometimes a shining line appeared for a moment in the distance, perhaps from Hastings; and at one time the moon came out red and full, and exactly at the top of a vessel’s lofty sails. One steamer had puzzled me much by its keeping nearly still. This drifted close up at last, and they called out, “Ahoy, there!—are you a fishing boat?” They wanted to know their bearings, as the current and shifting wind made the position of Beachy Head quite uncertain in the dark. [261] I replied to their hail—“No, I’m the yacht Rob Roy, crew of one man; don’t you see my white sails?” and they answered—“See? why, who can see to-night?”
Sometimes a sudden and dead lull came with an ominous meaning, and then the loud hissing of rain could be heard advancing to us in the dark till it poured on the yawl in sheets of water, and the mere dripping from the peak of my sou’wester was enough to obscure vision.