“ ’Tain’t such a very wild scheme neither,” replied Bob. “Answer me this. How many people was saved from the London when she foundered in the Bay of Biscay?”
“Nineteen, if I remember rightly,” replied I.
“Very well; now if a small boat of about twenty-five feet long or thereabouts, open, mind you, from stem to starn, could live twenty hours with nineteen people in her, as the London’s pinnace did, in weather that the old ship herself couldn’t stand up agin, how long will a full-decked boat of, say, thirty to thirty-five feet long, carefully constructed, and in good trim, live with only two men in her? And warn’t I,” continued he, “nineteen days alone in an open boat in the South Atlantic; and didn’t I make a v’y’ge of a thousand miles in her afore I struck soundings at Saint Helena?”
This last question referred to an adventure which had befallen Bob in his younger days, on an occasion when he had been cruelly deserted in a sinking ship by the rest of the crew, and had made his escape, as described by himself, after enduring unheard-of suffering.
“Then,” questioned I, “you seriously entertain the belief that the scheme you have suggested is practicable?”
“With ease and comfort,” replied Bob. “Now look here, Harry. You can afford to build a craft such as I have described, and fit her out for the v’y’ge, and still leave money enough at home to keep sauce-box here” (indicating Ada, who was to him as the apple of his eye) “comfortable and happy like till we come back. You’ve a rare eye for a sea-boat, and mine ain’t bad, for that matter; let’s draught her out ourselves, since it’s our own lives as we are going to trust in her; and if we don’t turn out, between us, as pretty a sea-boat as ever floated, why, turn to and lay me up in ordinary for the rest of my days for a useless old hulk, that’s all. A boat thirty feet long, decked all over, and carefully designed, can’t sink, boy, because we can easily arrange matters so as to keep her dry inside; she’ll ride as light as a gull and as dry as a bone when big ships is making bad weather of it, and as for the matter of capsizing, bein’ run down, or cast away, why they’re dangers as we are liable to in any ship, and must be guarded against in every craft, large or small; and our little barkie would carry comfortable all we should want for the v’y’ge, for we could touch here and there out and home to make good deficiencies, and we two are men enough to handle her in all weathers. Rig her as a cutter, boy. I was once’t aboard a cutter yacht in a trip up the Mediterranean, and you’ve no idea what a handy rig it is, once you’re used to it. And the way them cutters ’ll hug the wind—why ’twould make a difference of nigh on a couple of thousand miles, out and home, in the length of the passage.”
I began to be infected with Bob’s enthusiasm. The scheme, which had at first appeared to me as the very acme of fool-hardiness, now, under the influence of Bob’s eloquence, gradually assumed an appearance of reasonableness, and a promising prospect of success, which was very fascinating. Nevertheless, I could not but remember that the proposed voyage would take us into latitudes subject to the most frightful and sudden tempests, and I could not help thinking (as I pointed out to Bob) that our cockle-shell would stand but a poor chance in a cyclone or a black squall.
“Look here, Harry, my boy,” remarked Bob gravely, “as I propose to ship on this here v’y’ge as chief mate, I ain’t likely to forget that there’s such dangers as them you’ve just mentioned. But suppose you was to cork up a bottle, or clap the lid on an empty biscuit-tin, and heave ’em overboard, do you think they’d live through one or t’other? In course they would, because salt water can’t get inside of ’em, and as long as they keep dry holds they’ll float, let the weather be what it will, and so ’ll our craft, for the same reason. And when the weather’s too bad to sail the barkie, we can heave her to, and when it’s too bad for that we can anchor her, my boy, go below, slide on the top of the companion, and turn in until the weather clears up.”
“But,” said I, “we cannot anchor in the middle of the Atlantic. Suppose we should be caught in a cyclone there, for instance?”
“We can anchor there, lad, with a floating anchor, which will keep her head to wind; and with everything snug aloft and on deck, and a floating-anchor ahead with about sixty fathoms of cable veered out, she would ride out in safety any gale that ever blew out of the heavens.”
This last remark closed the case, and secured a verdict for the defendant. I knew that every word Bob spoke was literally true, and the audacity of the enterprise so fascinated me that I resolved on the spot to undertake it, if it should be found, on going into details, that a craft, capable of being handled by our two selves, could stow away, without being overloaded, such provisions, etc., as we should need for the voyage.
The following morning, immediately after breakfast, I got out my drawing-board, strained a sheet of paper upon it, and, with Bob at my side to give me the benefit of his opinion upon every line I traced upon the paper, set to in earnest to design the little craft in which we proposed to embark on our adventurous voyage.
Before putting a line upon paper, however, we settled the plan of her internal arrangements. It was our intention to make her lines as fine as her respective dimensions would permit; she was to be, in fact, a small yacht. We knew that every vessel with sharp lines must necessarily be wet, unless the weights she would have to carry were all concentrated about her midship section, or broadest part, so we decided that as far as was practicable such should be the arrangement with us; and we knew that, if we could succeed in this, our barkie might be as sharp as we could make her, and still be dry and comfortable. We accordingly prepared a list of our requirements, as far as we could think of them, calculated the space they and the ballast: would occupy, and then roughly sketched out the proposed lines. These were altered, rearranged, and improved upon time after time, until at length we felt we had got them as near perfection as the dimensions of the boat and our own knowledge would carry us. And I may as well say at once that throughout the entire voyage we never had the slightest reason to think our little vessel could be in any way improved upon by alteration.
It is not probable that so long a voyage as ours will be often undertaken again in such a very small craft as we accomplished it in; but there are many men, I have no doubt, who would gladly receive a hint as to the most advantageous form for a small boat in which they might safely adventure, alone, or with a friend, a cruise, say round the British Isles, or across the Channel and along the French coast; and therefore, as this story is written for the amusement only of such people as love boats, I think I may venture to trespass so far on my readers’ patience as to give such a hint in the shape of a brief description of the Water Lily, as Ada christened her.
She was, then, thirty-six feet long, and twelve feet beam on the water-line; but, in designing her midship section, we caused her sides to swell out boldly above water, so that her greatest beam was fourteen feet, at a point one foot six inches above the water-line. At this point her side tumbled home two inches as it was carried upwards to her deck, and from the same point the side curved quickly inwards and downwards until it met the water-line, when it swept under water with an almost imperceptible curve for some distance, and then took a moderately quick bend downwards to meet her keel. This gave us a vessel in shape very much like the centre-board model of boat, but with a deep keel, and consequently great lateral resistance, and space low down in the hull for the stowage of ballast. We thus secured a very small displacement, a light buoyant hull, extraordinary stability, and a fair amount of power.
The hull was divided into three compartments by bulkheads with wide doors which, if necessary, we could close water-tight. In the fore compartment we decided to place nothing except the smallest and lightest cooking-stove we could find. In the midship compartment it was intended to stow our ballast, water-tank, provisions, the chain-cables, and in fact everything which we could possibly place there, leaving only a narrow passage amidships to pass to and fro. The after compartment we intended to make our cabin, and there we arranged also to sling our hammocks. It will easily be understood that there was not