I went over and saw her one Saturday afternoon and fell in love with her on the spot. Her hold, too small for freights, was amply big enough for me, and besides it left more cabin room at each end of her. She was a beauty, to my thinking; a good, beamy boat, not too deep in draught, and built like a house. The builder, normally an honest man, in building for his sister’s husband had put real good stuff into the boat. The day I was there two other fellows had come down from Brixham to see her and were jeering at her, to cheapen her, I suppose. The builder was raving her praises, and I got into his good graces at once by speaking the truth, saying that she was a well-built craft, honest material and honest work in her.
That was the way to tackle the man, for he’d put his heart into her timbers. The other two sheered off and I bought her, hull and masts only, as she stood, for a hundred and ten pounds, and she was dirt cheap at the price. For another hundred he rigged her, fisherman fashion, rough hard gear throughout to stand any weather, divided her hold with cheap matchboard bulkheads into a saloon with two cabins, and decked over her hatch with four skylights. And I got to sea with her, well-pleased, before the middle of June.
Brett had named her the Luck and Charity, of all outlandish names, but I didn’t bother to change it. Sure enough she brought me luck in the end—the best of luck—and at first she was a charity to the fraternity of wasters, and no mistake.
With her hold turned into cabins she was a very roomy packet. Though she was only forty-five feet or so between the perpendiculars, she was fifteen in the beam, every inch. There was a little skipper’s cabin aft, about twelve feet by nine, with just head-room enough to stand upright, two bunks and a flap table; the big square hatch we decked over was about eight feet by thirteen, and there was a roomy forepeak—almost fit to be called a forecastle—with two bunks on each side. Altogether we could shake down ten men without crowding, though I’ve often slept fifteen aboard, the extra members of the family sleeping on the cabin seats or on the floor.
It was an idle time, those two years, but past question I enjoyed it. The wasters were delighted, of course, and I was the dearest old chappie in the west of England whilst funds lasted. It worked out about level, though; they had cheap quarters and I had a cheap crew, so everybody was pleased. We put to sea or stayed on moorings just as the weather served or the whim took us, so mostly we had fair-weather cruising. Ashore, there was plenty of company. There’s a freemasonry of sorts amongst remittance men: they snarl behind each other’s backs pretty much, but can unite upon occasion. I happened to be the occasion this time, and there was plenty of visiting, and card-playing, and fuddling, and remarkably mixed company whenever we went ashore to revel.
The first winter I tied her up in Teignmouth harbour and lived ashore, and when the spring came started off again. Not being built for a yacht the Luck and Charity wanted a lot of ballast, but she wasn’t too deep for getting in and out of those little west of England harbours, and by the end of the second summer I knew the coast from Swanage to Land’s End like the back of my hand. And very useful knowledge it has proved to be since then.
It didn’t seem so useful, though, when I came to tie up for the second winter. I chose Exmouth Bight for anchorage this time. You can’t play the fool without spending money and I was cleaned out down to the last fiver. Exmouth is a free harbour—no dues unless you go into dock—and so Exmouth looked the place for me. The winter before I’d had plenty of invitations ashore, but this time the wasters had got wind of my circumstances and invitations were off. On the whole it seemed a cheerful prospect.
I kept my one paid hand hard at it, lowering topmasts and stripping gear, and, when the lot was snugged down for the winter, paid him off and told him to clear out and go home. He was a stolid shockhead from Topsham, called Hezekiah Pym. The wasters used to laugh at him, and certainly he was the quaintest sample of a yachtsman I ever met. But he might have been born on the water, so handy was he afloat, and he had served my turn so well that I felt sorry to part with him. I had to pawn my watch to make up the money I owed him, and even then it was a near thing. It was a real good watch that my father had given me when I was twenty-one; but the pawnbroker wouldn’t advance me more than the value of the gold case because, he said, the crest and motto engraved on it spoilt its sale value. The result was that when I’d made up ’Kiah’s money I hadn’t half-a-sovereign to my name.
When I paid him he looked first at the money and then inquiringly at me.
‘That’s a fortnight’s brass extra because you haven’t had notice,’ I told him.
‘Aw,’ said he, and put the money in his pocket. Then, as an afterthought: ‘What be yu gweyn t’ du fer th’ weenter, sir?’ he asked.
‘Stop aboard and catch flukes.’
‘Aw,’ said he again meditatively, and went ashore, leaving me to moralise on rats and sinking ships. But I did him an injustice for once.
Next morning he was aboard again before I was out, and brought me my breakfast in bed.
‘What brings you back?’ I asked.
‘Come back t’ catch flukes ’long o’ you,’ he said.
‘Look here,’ I said, ‘I’m broke, ’Kiah, and I can’t afford to keep you. So you just slip off to Topsham again, and get another job.’
‘What for?’ said the fool.
‘Because I’m broke.’
‘I thought you would be, mighty soon,’ he said slowly. ‘Yu been kippin’ all they lot tu long.’
Not once had I ever caught him in the slightest act of incivility all the time I’d had the boat, yet that was how he regarded my guests—‘Yas, sir’; ‘No, sir’; ‘Surely, sir.’ Never a word out of place; but that blinking, stolid lump had all the wasters sized up, all the time. Like their own bogs, South Devon men are. They smile and look tranquil, but you never know what’s under the surface. There’s good rocky ground in them to stand on, though, sometimes, if you’ve the knack of finding it.
After I’d had my breakfast I went forward and told him again I hadn’t a job or pay for him and he must go. He only said ‘Aw’ protestingly; and he didn’t go, and hasn’t gone to this day. He never alluded to the matter again except one day in mid-winter when we’d had a good haul of flukes and could spare some to send ashore to sell. Then he looked up from the loaded dinghy alongside, blowing on his half-frozen fingers.
‘Nort doin’ up to Topsham now,’ said he. ‘I’m better off yere’n what I should be ’ome.’
The winter came in wet and cold, and I nearly went melancholy mad with the sheer monotony of it. With each rising tide we swung our nose towards the harbour mouth and watched the water cover the mud-flats. At flood, we laid up or down or cross-channel before the wind and cursed the swinging round because it tangled our fishing lines. At ebb, our bows pointed up river and the mud-flats became uncovered again. We could only fish at dead water, flood or ebb, and between times we went to sleep or watched the scenery—dirty water or dirty mud, according to the state of the tide.
On the whole I can’t say I was pleased with that winter, and indeed it would take a man with queer tastes to admire wet mud-banks with the thermometer at freezing point, and wind and rain enough to keep you in the cabin for days on end.
Man cannot live on flukes alone, and to get bread and matches and paraffin—to say nothing of an occasional orgy on butcher’s meat—I began to sell the boat’s fittings. First the side-lights went, the spare anchor, the compass—things I thought I could replace cheaply or do without; but by early spring we were pretty well stripped—the fittings and bedding, from the cabins, the saloon table, crockery, spare rigging, any blessed thing that was detachable and had a market value. The saloon and cabins had relapsed to their original condition as hold, the matchboard partitions having been chopped up and burnt in the after-cabin stove, to save buying coal. The hold was a picture with its broken bulkheads jutting from the sides and the floor littered with driftwood and rubbish—anything we could pick up ashore that we thought