Bevis: The Story of a Boy

by Richard Jefferies

was badly built, with straight, stiff lines, a crank, awkwardcraft. She ought to have been a foot or so broader, and more swelling,when she would have swung round like a top.

  Bevis might then have crossed to the very shore, though the windlessened, without fear of leeway. But she came round badly even at thebest. They thought she came round first-rate, but they were mistaken.Had she done so, she would have resumed the return course without amoment's delay, instead of staggering, rolling, heaving, and graduallycoming to her work again. Bevis had to watch the breeze and coax her.

  His eye was constantly on the sail, he felt the tiller, handling it witha delicate touch like a painter's brush. He had to calculate and decidequickly whether there was space and time enough for the puff to comeagain before they reached the shore, or whether he had better sacrificethat end of the tack and come round at once. Sometimes he was wrong,sometimes right. In so narrow a space, and with such a boat, everythingdepended upon coming round well.

  His workmanship grew better as they advanced. He seemed to feel allthrough the boat from rudder to mast, from the sheet in his hand to thebowsprit. The touch, the feeling of his hand, seemed to penetratebeyond the contact of the tiller, to feel through wood and rope as ifthey were a part of himself like his arm. He responded to the wind asquickly as the sail. If it fell, he let her off easier, to keep thepace up; if it blew, he kept her closer, to gain every inch with theincreased impetus. He watched the mainsail hauled taut like a board,lest it should shiver. He watched the foresail, lest he should keep tooclose, and it should cease to draw. He stroked, and soothed, andcaressed, and coaxed her, to put her best foot foremost.

  Our captains have to coax the huge ironclads. With all the machinery,and the science, and the elaboration, and the gauges, and themathematically correct everything, the iron monsters would never comesafe to an anchorage without the most exquisite coaxing. You must coaxeverything if you want to succeed; ironclads, fortune, Frances.

  Bevis coaxed his boat, and suited her in all her little ways; now heyielded to her; now he waited for her; now he gave her her head and lether feel freedom; now, he hinted, was the best moment; suddenly his handgrew firm, and round she came.

  Do you suppose he could have learnt wind and wave and to sail like thatif he had had a perfect yacht as trim as the saucy Arethusa herself?Never. The crooked ways of the awkward craft brought out his ingenuity.

  As they advanced the New Sea became narrower, till just before they cameopposite the battlefield the channel was but a hundred yards or so wide.In these straits the waves came with greater force and quicker; theywore no higher, but followed more quickly, and the wind blew harder, asif also confined. It was tack, tack, tack. No sooner were the sheetshauled, and they had begun to forge ahead, than they had to come about.Flap, flutter, pitch, heave, on again. Smack! smack! The spray flewover. Mark buttoned his jacket to his throat, and jammed his hat downhard on his head.

  The rope, or sheet, twisted once round Bevis's hand, cut into his skin,and made a red weal. He could not give it a turn round the cleatbecause there was no time. The mainsail pulled with almost all itsforce against his hand. Just as they had got the speed up, and a showerof spray was flying over Mark, round she had to come. Pitch, pitch,roll, heave forward, smack! splash! bubble, smack!

  On the battlefield side Bevis could not go close to the shore because itwas lined with a band of weeds; and on the other there were willowbushes in the water, so that the actual channel was less than thedistance from bank to bank. Each tack only gained a few yards, so thatthey crossed and recrossed nearly twenty times before they began to getthrough the strait. The sails were wet now, and drew the better; theyworked in silence, but without a word, each had the same thought.

  "It will do now," said Mark.

  "Once more," said Bevis.

  "Now," said Mark, as they had come round.

  "Yes!"

  From the westward shore Bevis kept her close to the wind, and as thewater opened out, he steered for Fir-Tree Gulf. He calculated that heshould just clear the stony promontory. Against the rocky wall thewaves dashed and rose up high above it, the spray was carried over thebank and into the quarry. The sandbank or islet in front was concealed,the water running over it, but its site was marked by boiling surge.

  The waves broke over it, and then met other waves thrown back from thewall; charging each other, they sprang up in pointed tips, which partedand fell. Over the grassy bank above rolled brown froth, which was thenlifted and blown away. This was one of those places where the windalways seems to blow with greater force. In a gale from the southwestit was difficult to walk along the bank, and even now with only a lightbreeze the waves ran at the stony point as if they were mad. Bevissteered between Scylla and Charybdis, keeping a little nearer the sunkenislet this time, the waves roared and broke on each side of them, frothcaught against the sails, the boat shook as the reflux swept back andmet the oncoming current; the rocky wall seemed to fly by, and in aninstant they were past and in the gulf.

  Hauling into the wind, the boat shot out from the receding shore, and asthey approached the firs they were already half across to the Nile.Returning, they had now a broad and splendid sea to sail in, and thistack took them up so far that next time they were outside the gulf. Itwas really sailing now, long tacks, or "legs," edging aslant up into thewind, and leaving the quarry far behind.

  "It's splendid," said Mark. "Let me steer now."

  Bevis agreed, and Mark crept aft on hands and knees, anxious not todisturb the trim of the boat; Bevis went forward and took his place inthe same manner, buttoning his jacket and turning up his collar.

  Mark steered quite as well. Bevis had learned how to work the boat, tocoax her, from the boat and the sails themselves. Mark had learned fromBevis, and much quicker. It requires time, continued observation, andkeenest perception to learn from nature. When one has thus acquired theart, others can learn from him in a short while and easily. Marksteered and handled the sheet, and brought her round as handily as if hehad been at it all the time.

  These lengthened zigzags soon carried them far up the broad water, andthe farther they went the smaller the waves became, having so much theless distance to come, till presently they were but big ripples, and theboat ceased to dance. As the waves did not now oppose her progress somuch, there was but little spray, and she slipped through faster. Themotive power, the wind, was the same; the opposing force, the waves,less. The speed increased, and they soon approached Bevis's island,having worked the whole distance up against the wind. They agreed toland, and Mark brought her to the very spot where they had got outbefore. Bevis doused the mainsail, leaped out, and tugged her wellaground. After Mark had stepped ashore they careened the boat and baledout the water.

  There was no tree or root sufficiently near to fasten the painter to, sothey took out the anchor, carried it some way inland, and forced one ofthe flukes into the ground. The boat was quite safe and far enoughaground not to drift off, but it was not proper to leave a ship withoutmooring her. Mark wanted to go and look at the place he thought so welladapted for a cave, so they walked through between the bushes, when hesuddenly remembered that the vessel in which they had just accomplishedso successful a voyage had not got a name.

  "The ship ought to have a name," he said. "Blue boat sounds stupid."

  "So she ought," said Bevis. "Why didn't we think of it before? There'sArethusa, Agamemnon, Sandusky, Orient--"

  "Swallow, Viking, Saint George--but that won't do," said Mark. "Thoseare ships that sail now and some have steam; what were old ships--"

  "Argo," said Bevis. "I wonder what was the name of Ulysses' ship--"

  "I know," said Mark, "Pinta--that's it. One of Columbus's ships, youknow. He was the first to go over there, and we're the first on the NewSea."

  "So we are; it shall be Pinta, I'll paint it, and the island ought tohave a name too."

  "Of course. Let's see: Tahiti?" said Mark. "Loo-choo?"

 
"Celebes?"

  "Carribbees?"

  "Cyclades? But those are a lot of islands, aren't they?"

  "Formosa is a good name," said Bevis. "It sounds right. But I don'tknow where it is--it's somewhere."

  "Don't matter--call it New Formosa."

  "Capital," said Bevis. "The very thing; there's New Zealand and NewGuinea. Right. It's New Formosa."

  "Or the Land of Magic."

  "New Formosa or the Magic Land," said Bevis. "I'll write it down on themap we made when we get home."

  "Here's the place," said Mark. "This is where the cave ought to be,"pointing at a spot where the sandy cliff rose nearly perpendicular; "andthen we ought to have a hut