All day we ran westward upon that sea of low-rolling waves, a sea so smooth that no water came over our boarded sides, and farther and farther we were carried from land or means of succour in any greater peril, but I lost none of my heedless ardour nor did either of my companions fail me. Especially was I delighted with the usually silent and thoughtful Aradnus, who, strangely enough, seemed to enter most fully and delightedly into the spirit of the trying of the sail.
“It is well,” he shouted to me, as the thing bellied as far as it might before the wind, and the foam arose a little beneath our low prow. “We are getting much wisdom, and more is coming to us! Mark what it does!”
And well indeed marked I that sail. I did naught but study it and note its tremendous promise, and its failings and its menace. As I studied, there came to me slowly a new perception. Why were we so helplessly at the mercy of this spread of linen when the wind blew? Why had we stretched it thus immovably across our raft-ship? As I looked upon it there came such comprehension as made me laugh at myself in sheer derision. Man, not the sail, should be the master, and there must be a way to make it so!
This I had noticed, that when the wind changed but a little, and so smote the sail somewhat aslant, the raft still held by the steering oar, kept straightly on its course, but when the shift was greater, so that the pressure came more nearly abeam, there ensued a sudden stoppage and we washed about unsteerable until there came another change. This, then, I had learned, that it was not necessary that the wind should bear squarely on the sail, but that a slanting pressure would do almost as well and still allow us to direct our course. Then, why not have the sail so that we could get such pressure at all times if we willed and so have ever steerage-way? Much I pondered upon this and at last I perceived what I thought might be the remedy.
I have not yet told, save generally, of what we had on board lashed to the many posts, for there had been abundant room and I had made provision for many things. There was one long chest in which I had placed, besides our weapons, a goodly number of tools such as we sailors used, with the thought that, should we be cast ashore, we could build shelters for ourselves, and glad I was now that I had been so provident. More time we would not waste before I had carried out my new design, and so I explained its nature to the others, who comprehended what I had in mind and who at once began the labour with me.
The two masts to which the sail was nailed were set deeply in holes mortised squarely through the timber on either side, but, though tightly, not so that they might not be lifted out by the heaving of good men. Now we took chisels and hammers from the long chest and began the making of similar square holes in a great circle amidships, the diameter of which was the width of the broad sail. It was a task which took us long, but the sea was calm, the chisels sharp and the hammers heavy, and it was done at last. Just as we had the task completed it chanced that the wind shifted so that it came squarely over one of our sides and left us wallowing again. It was not for long. We strainingly lifted the two masts from their sockets and so replaced them in the new receptacles that the wind, though coming over our side, struck them obliquely and thus again propelled us while the helm oar kept us straightly upon our course. It was a revelation. The sail was being, for the first time, tamed! But there was more to come, and that at once.
I sat upon one of the chests after our first moment of jubilation and watched with pride the issue of the conquest we had made, when there came to me a new idea beside which the first, so carried out, seemed only a beginning! We were ploughing merrily westward now, but westward it was not my wish to go. If, now, the wind, coming from one side of us and pushing upon our sail obliquely could so carry us, as it were, athwart its course, why could it not, in the same way, take us to the eastward, were the sail turned so that the pressure of the wind would press in the opposite direction? I leaped to my feet shoutingly and told of what I had conceived, and forthwith we acted. The masts, or, rather, one of them, was raised and so shifted that when it was planted the sail took the wind upon the other side, and at once we lost headway quiveringly, and soon were sailing eastward! Truly it was a great day in the history of sailing, and one of vast moment to all traders and sea-rovers!
Of where we were, save that we were far from land, I had slight knowledge. Full half the way across the sea we must have come, for the north wind had been a strong one while it prevailed and had hurried us for many a league despite the heaviness of our sailing. The westward course, as well, had been with a southward trend and it seemed to me that it were much easier to find a port on the African shore than otherwise. But what manner of port might await us in that strange region? Most barbarous tribes, so the Egyptians had told, inhabited the long reaches of sandy or rocky coast, and luckless were those who landed there. I had no plan we were undetermined of mind as the gulls which swept about us, but land of some sort all men who eat and drink must some time find or perish, and we were not equipped for very long. I counselled with Malchus and Aradnus and, in the end, we acted not unwisely, as the event proved, though there was much to come between. Somewhat we knew of the Egyptians, for between their land and that by the Euphrates there had been a little trade, vast as was the distance to be traversed, including the passage of the strait between the seas, and we knew them as advanced in ways of learning and as generally peaceful. They were unlikely to set upon such weak adventurers as we and of a race which they knew. So it was decided that we should bear to the southeastward straightly as we might and seek one of the mouths of the great river which we call the Nile.
The wind held as it was, and slowly, though steadily, we moved toward the east all through the afternoon of this day when I had devised the shifting of the sail, and toward nightfall at a swifter rate, for the sky was now becoming overcast and the wind was rising. Soon there were mounting waves, and the raft-ship, as I have called it for want of a better name, began to rise and fall in its now more hurried progress and to occasionally dip its prow into the sea and take aboard much water, which did not harm us, since it at once washed out again. We would have been content with this mood of the wind and sea had it but remained the same, but that was not to be. The storm-god was abroad that night, and drunken!
There be certain men among us Phœnicians who have great gift of words such as I have not, and who can write most eloquently—for we have letters and learning which other peoples lack—some one of whom might, it may be, have described fittingly the storm of that dread night had he but been aboard our raft and had not died of fright, but much I doubt it. There is not stylus to trace the tale of such storm as that in letters! Whereas at the beginning I longed for our staunch bireme beneath our feet, yet long before the morning I thanked the gods that we were lashed firmly to the posts upon our strange new vessel. What a sea-mew proved our riding craft that night!