At night, alone in the cockpit, one began to think. Would the drinking water hold out? What if the chronometer broke down? Supposing—— It is as well not to think too deeply on occasion, and the crossing of the Atlantic in a small boat is one.
Someone has said that it is the routine of life that keeps us sane, and I am inclined to agree. On shore, one is apt to inveigh against "the little things that must be done"—the countless, almost mechanical actions of a day's civilized existence—but at sea life is composed of such details, and one is thankful for them. Making a long-splice or an "eye," filling and trimming the lamps, washing down deck, or even washing up dishes, all serve to keep the mind from unhealthy conjecture.
Sleep was again our worst enemy at the tiller. Staring into the lighted binnacle with its swaying compass card, or down at the phosphorescent water swirling and hissing past the ship's stern, the helmsman became as one hypnotized. It seemed that he was not of this world, but an atom hurtling through space. The temptation was to surrender himself to the sensuous joy of it, a temptation resisted only by an almost painful effort, and the knowledge that the lives of all aboard depend on his keeping his leaden eyelids from closing down.
A four-hour watch as helmsman is too long. They do not allow it in the mercantile marine; but what were we to do? Steve confessed to recalling all the poetry that he knew, consisting of most of Kipling, the whole of Omar Khayyam, and sundry doubtful limericks; then attempting to say them backward. Peter hummed over her repertoire of songs, or thought out new dishes for her week's cookment. As for me, I kept a marlinspike handy, and when oblivion threatened used it.
It will be seen that a dream ship is not all dream. If it were, such is the perversity of human nature, the dreamer would probably be tired of it within a month.
"I can promise you the northeast 'trades' the whole way across," said our friend of the five-masted schooner at Las Palmas, turning the pages of his log. Also, the wind chart sported a reassuring number of long-shafted arrows pointing from that quarter for the month of October. These things may account for the fact that not one day's northeast wind did we encounter on the Atlantic passage. It seems that the elements have a rooted objection to being anticipated. We could have crossed in an open boat for all of the weather, and three becalmed days in mid-ocean we occupied in swimming round the ship, or diving to scrape the barnacles off her copper.
But stark calms are a wearisome business. Every function of a ship has ceased. It is as though she lay dead in a stagnant pool, and any movement of spars or canvas were the rattling of her bones. Also, it is an aggravation to the restless insect called man, adrift in a breathless waste of waters, to know that leagues lie ahead of which he is incapable of covering a yard.
An auxiliary engine is useless under such circumstances. To use it is like hurrying on to catch a tram that is bound to overtake one in the long run. What is a steaming radius of four hundred miles in a stretch of three thousand? No, all one can do after satisfying himself that his vessel is "as idle as a painted ship upon a painted sea," is to pass the time as pleasantly as may be. We of the dream ship turned in and slept, or broke the uncanny silence with fearsome noises on clarionet and piano. Also, we fished, though with a lack of success that leads me to believe that fish do not bite in mid-ocean. At night flying fish struck the mainsail, and fell to the deck with a resounding thwack and a flutter of "wings," but for the most part on occasions when we had failed to hang a lantern in the rigging to attract them, which, as far as I am concerned, explodes another fallacy.
As day succeeded day, and there was no sign of a change in our inert condition, our thoughts turned again in the direction of the drinking water. True, we had two hundred gallons aboard, but what was to prevent us from being becalmed for a month, or being carried hundreds of miles out of our course by a gale, according to the mood of the capricious elements? We cut our daily allowance from a gallon to half a gallon per head for all purposes and, as though in response to our frugality, a breath came out of the southeast.
At the moment of its arrival Steve and I happened to be testing our sense of direction by diving overboard, and trying to come up through a lifebelt floating about ten yards distant. Steve had just conceived the brilliant idea of moving the belt after the diver had taken the plunge, and I had emerged from a lung-racking effort to locate it, when we realized that the dream ship had moved, in fact was still moving, with a noticeable wake in the direction of the horizon. The tiller was pegged amidships, and there was nothing to stop her continuing the motion indefinitely—except Peter, who was below. We prayed in that hour that she was not asleep.