There was also another reason why I was the readier to go; and as thereby hangs the adventure of this present inditing, I may as well explain at once. This was the last day on which I could write myself owner of my pretty little Mudian boat, the Wave. I had sold her off with my nag and the usual encumbrances, and the next day she was to be the property of a new master. Any one who knows the island within the last few years will remember the Wave, that used to beat every thing in her waters. The only thing that at all came up to her was the launch of the old Bucephalus. This was the fancy boat of the first lieutenant, who after many experiments had hit upon the lug as the becoming rig. With the wind well on the quarter, the old launch would beat me, and close hauled I would beat her; but which after all was the better boat was a question we could never settle. However, it was for no want of trying. As surely as it blew at all fresh, so surely would the little Wave be seen cruising about among the shipping, and passing under the stern of the Bucephalus; and so surely also would the launchers be piped away on board the big craft. Many was the prophecy uttered that the little barkey would be my coffin, and so once she certainly would have been, had we not had water ballast aboard, when she capsized in a heavy squall, to which I would not shorten sail.
I liked mightily the idea of a farewell cruise in my poor little boat, in such pleasant company. Objections touching her unprovisioned state were met at once by Hamilton, who had laid in abundance, and was carrying about him some of the odd trifles forgotten in the first instance. He had fully bargained to go in my boat, and as my companion. Boating was no usual fancy of his; but somehow he had a great idea of my nautical skill, and a high opinion of the craft herself, that made him sometimes willing to enlist as my companion. He was a very good fellow, but, I am bound to say, more useful and agreeable on shore than at sea. He would sit down in the little hatch and smoke his pipe rationally enough when all was smooth. But directly we felt the wind, and began to lie over the least bit in the world, you might see him eyeing the dingy's skulls, or any stray bit of plank as a stand by in case of capsize. Once I saw him pull his jacket off for a swim ashore when well out of soundings. Put all this together, and you will understand my friend to have been of a temperament nervous as touching the water. However, he was a very good fellow; more particularly one to whom I least feared to communicate any little romantic episode that might turn up. A good deal in this way I had already told him; and, far from laughing at me, he had seriously set himself to help me at my need.
We settled then that we should go together to take this last day's sail out of the Wave, and to make the most of the ladies' society, before the act of severing should take place. It would be difficult to say what were the hopes that seemed to peep out at me from the prospect of our arrangement; but plainly enough I did encourage the hope of some good that was to come of it. Perhaps I was brightened up by the change for the better that my lively and somewhat whimsical friend had introduced into my morning society. Certainly he was much wittier, and more amusing than my own thoughts, which had been my only companionship before. At any rate, having once agreed to the convention, I set about the preparation of myself and my traps with a good will. The day was lovely, and by happy accident not too hot. A light breeze was springing up which would carry us nicely out of the harbour. The only difficulty in the way of a start was touching the due manning of my craft, as Pierre and his little son Antoine, who had composed my former crew, had been paid off the day before, and were shipped aboard another craft by this time. Right sorry, too, they had been at the change, for both skipper and craft had been exactly to their taste. I was not up to navigating the boat entirely by myself, and had no great opinion of the value of my friend Hamilton as a watch-mate. However, he volunteered with such hearty good will, and the weather promised to afford so little room for seamanship, that I thought he might do at the pinch. It was the first time we had ever been out alone, for, frequently as we had been together, he had been constant to his character as a passenger.
"Now Hamilton," said I, "you must work your passage. You must stand by to clap on a rope, or run to the tiller."
"Ay, ay," said he, "never fear; I'll not shirk my work. I've had a wet jacket before I saw your craft. Did I never tell you about my cruise on the Cam?"
"Never, Tom."
"Then you do not know half my nautical experiences. Let me ask you how often you have been capsized in one day?"
"Never but once, I am happy to say, and that was when Pierre held on too long at the sheet, against that old launch of the Bucephalus."
"I've been before this twice fairly foundered, and once hard and fast ashore in one day. I was on a visit to Bob S——'s brother at Magdalen, and among the amusements of the season was boating: most unseasonable work it was just then, for the weather was bitter cold. We started, a lot of us, intending to navigate the river as far as Ely. None of us happened to know any thing about nauticals, so we blindly submitted ourselves to the guidance of a fresh-man who wore a remarkably hard-a-weather pilot-coat, and waddled in walking like a man unused to terra firma. He took the command as naturally as possible; never dreaming of so far doubting our judgments as to mistrust his own ability. We had hardly got well away, when a squall laid us right over, and fairly swamped the boat. This we regarded as an accident that might overtake the most skilful; and I verily believe that we even the more highly esteemed our Palinurus on account of the coolness which, we must all do him the justice to say, he exhibited. But when, soon after, he ran us regularly under water, we began to be suspicious, and hints flew about that he had undertaken more than he was up to. On this Mr Tarpaulin, with all imaginable complacency, asked us what the row was about, and whether we thought that any of us would have done better, if this had been the first time in our lives that we had exercised naval command. After this confession, we were no more surprised at accidents. We regarded it as rather an easy let off that the concern was driven hopelessly hard ashore, in a stiff clayey soil, that allowed no idea of getting her off that night. All this may sound very little to a regular old salt, like yourself; but add to this little sketch the idea of a driving sleet, and a seven or eight miles' walk to Ely at midnight, without shoes, which the greedy loam sucked from off our feet, and the ensemble of hardship is enough to satisfy a landsman like myself. Since that time I have been little given to boating, and, as you know, never go out except with you."
"Well I'll try never to play you such a trick as did your tarpaulin friend. But the sea is a ticklish element, and the sky is a treacherous monitor."