In response to our eternal lurchings, ominous sounds began to filter up from below. A metallic click-clock, click-clock, a methodical thudding, a resounding crash. The first of these proved to be a kerosene tank that had come adrift from its rack fastenings, and threatened to fall on the engine. A galvanized iron receptacle containing seventy gallons of liquid is not the easiest of things to handle in a seaway, let alone with a crushed finger. My heart went out to Steve, but it was characteristic of the man that never a whimper escaped him. All that we could do was to wedge the tank into place with stout battens clean across the ship, which we did, and turned our attention to the next calamity. The piano had followed the example of the tank, and the wash-hand stand had emulated the piano; and rather than appear peculiar, a two-hundred-pound drum of treasured Scotch oatmeal was rolling on the floor, mingling its contents with the brine that oozed from a crate of salt pork wedged under the cabin table.
The crash was merely the dethronement of a lighted stove in the fo'c's'le, on which Peter had been persisting for the last hour, and in spite of her own condition, in an attempt to produce something that the Skipper would eat.
On the whole, a healthy lesson in making all secure before sailing.
In the midst of our agonies below, a stentorian voice hailed us from the cockpit:
"All hands on deck! Lower mainsail!" Which was followed almost immediately by a "crack" like a pistol shot.
Our boom had snapped clean off about five feet from the end.
Such is "the Bay" in lightsome mood. Apparently the only article aboard unaffected by it was the chronometer, ticking placidly in its gimbals and bed of plush. There was something enviable about that chronometer.
The dawn brought with it a faint but steady breath, and discovering that there was sufficient boom left to set a double-reefed mainsail, we continued on our way, and a blessedly even keel, until toward evening we raised the coast of Spain.
The welcome and unmistakable smell of land came to us over the water, and presently the mouth of the Vigo River opened out, revealing a maze of leading lights.
The engine behaved itself, and by midnight the dream ship had anchored off the town, to an accompaniment of star shells and crackers.
It pleased us to imagine that these were our welcome, but as a fact the inevitable Spanish fiesta was in progress. We had made our first foreign port.
THE CANARY ISLANDS
Dropping the pilot—and the result
Chapter IV headpiece
CHAPTER IV
Dropping the pilot—and the result
Our first and imperative need was sleep. There comes a time when enforced wakefulness causes the eyes to feel as though they were sinking into the head. We of the dream ship had reached this pitch, and turned in "all standing," to remain log-like until disturbed by port officials at five o'clock the next morning.
In a state of pyjamas and semi-torpor I handed them the ship's papers, which proved to be satisfactory; Steve treated them to a few chosen words in near-Spanish picked up during a doubtful past in Mexico, and we tumbled in again. But not to sleep. Thereafter, an endless procession of boats, manned by picturesque and voluble brigands who offered for sale every conceivable commodity from anchor chain to picture postcards, succeeded in dragging us from our bunks, and propelling us on deck.
A pleasant little town is Vigo. One of a goodly number scattered over the world that I should like to make my home. Each to his taste, and perhaps I am impressionable as to the desirable spots of this earth, but to my way of thinking almost any race knows how to enjoy life better than the Anglo-Saxon of to-day, and fashions its surroundings to that end.
From the river front, with its handsome promenade, hotels, and green, open spaces, Vigo climbs the sunny hillside in cheerful fashion. No one seems overburdened with business cares, but when such things have to be attended to, the palm-fringed Alamada takes the place of an office, and the "deal" is discussed over vino tinto and cigarettes, to the accompaniment of an excellent band.
We of the dream ship went ashore with the Skipper wearing a fancy-worked carpet-slipper on one foot and a boot on the other, but no one appeared to notice the peculiarity, and it is quite certain the Skipper would not have minded if they had. His is a type of hardihood that I envy as much as I admire.
At lunch, too, he found cause for complaint in the food, and small wonder. After a week's enforced abstention, he found that in these benighted parts figgy dough was as unprocurable as elsewhere. Frankly, he was disappointed in Vigo and, after limping over the cobblestones in clothes more adapted to the Arctic than to Spanish sunshine, he returned aboard "to do a few jobs." We knew what this meant. He would systematically and efficiently set right everything that was wrong aboard the dream ship—a long-splice here, a bit of carpentry there—which was precisely what we ought to have been doing instead of gallivanting about Vigo. Most excellent of skippers! He had been a tower of strength to us in time of stress, and a qualm seized me when I secured his passage to Southampton, and realized that in another week he would be gone.
From the quaint cobbled and terraced streets of the old town we went down to the Alamada, and sat for a while watching the children dance to the music of the band. No organized, mechanical spectacle this, but a joyous affair of rhythmic abandon, twinkling legs, and laughter. Most of us like to think that the children of our own particular country are the most desirable, and they would be poor folk who did not; but for unconscious grace of movement and dainty appearance, the Spanish kiddy is hard to beat.
And this happy absence of self-consciousness is not confined to the children. Picture, if you can, and as we of the dream ship saw him a little later, a well-dressed Spanish gentleman standing in the middle of one of Vigo's main thoroughfares and gazing toward the housetops, apparently engaged in practising the deaf-and-dumb alphabet. No one of the stream of pedestrians passing along the sidewalks took the slightest notice of him. Neither did the wheeled traffic, except to swerve obligingly out of his path. It was his affair, and a love affair at that. He was conversing with his enamorata at the third-floor balcony window in the only way possible to a suitor in Spain, where parents firmly believe in "love at a distance" until the actual engagement. And it needed three vulgar sightseers such as the crew of the dream ship to find anything unusual in the proceeding. I am ashamed to say that the lady caught sight of us, and pointed in alarm, whereat the gentleman turned with an excusable frown of annoyance, and we hurried on our way.
There are only two things the Spaniard takes really seriously: his love and his bull-fights. Leave him to them, as you value a whole skin.
Our next introduction was to the local cable office. Personally, I have always regarded such places as drab receptacles for grudging messages, but with the Eastern Telegraph Company it is a different matter. Certainly this admirable concern takes your message, but then proceeds to take you to its heart, and thereafter, wherever its myriad wires extend, you may be sure of a welcome from the kindliest of hosts. It conducts you to its palatial bachelor quarters situated on the hillside behind the town, and proceeds to spoil you with every device known to a pampered age. Tennis, golf, dances, and dinners are yours to repletion, followed by moonlight car rides into the country, and feasts at distant fondas under the trellised vines.
At any rate, that is what it did with us, and we tried to reciprocate. The Eastern Telegraph Company, or as much of it as could get aboard at one time, made the dream ship its headquarters during our stay; dived from her bowsprit or under her keel with equal delight, mealed off strange messes in her seething saloon, and sang songs on deck to Peter's piano accompaniment below.
With such distractions afoot, it is small wonder that nearly a week slipped by before the subject of a sailing date received the attention it deserved. The Skipper grunted his disapproval of our dilatory methods, and pointed out