Once Is Enough

by Miles Smeeton

  UNDER THE JURY

  Where we had found a fresh southerly wind and fine weather on the first trip under jury, we now had dull overcast skies, frequent rain squalls, and the wind obstinately in the north-west or west, so that we found ourselves steadily closing the coast of Chiloe, and on the 8th, making a guess at the error in Beryl’s wristwatch, I thought that we must be only eighty-six miles offshore. It was an anxious time.

  The Island of Chiloe is about 100 miles long, stretching between latitudes 41° 50´ and 42° 30´ S., where the coast of Chile first begins to break up under the continuous assault of the sea, driven by the westerly winds of the forties. There is no anchorage along all its western coast. North of Chiloe is the Golfo Coronados which leads into the Golfo Ancud, and to Puerto Montt, the first port north of Magallanes. If we could get into Puerto Montt, it was possible that some time or other we could get Tzu Hang shipped out. At any rate we could get temporary repairs done there, good enough to sail out, but without an engine it was impossible to get up the Chacao Narrows between the north coast of Chiloe Island and the mainland, a long narrow passage with swirling dangerous tides.

  In the Golfo Coronados and on the north shore of Chiloe Island is the port of Ancud, but the same tide runs fast past the entrance, and we would be extremely lucky if ever we could manoeuvre Tzu Hang into shelter. It looked as if we would have to rely on the faint hope of finding a fishboat outside to take us in tow. South of Chiloe the Channels would be entered by a passage past Guafo Island, but the coast there was only sparsely populated and there was little hope of assistance. The tides run strongly, and we had no dinghy. Though we could almost certainly save ourselves if we got in, we didn’t think that we would be able to save Tzu Hang, and even if we did, we didn’t know how on earth we would recover her. We didn’t want anything to do with any of this coast here. We wanted a south wind to take us offshore and into the sun and smoother seas, so that we could approach or hold off the land as we wished, but if the south wind wasn’t coming, we had to make up our minds and go boldly through with it, because waiting about in our present position could only bring disaster. We decided to try for Ancud.

  That night the wind blew hard from the north-west, and there was every sign that the glass was falling, although we had no glass to see. We got a fix on the 9th: it was obvious that we couldn’t possibly make Ancud, even if the wind went as far as the west, and we couldn’t tell how deep this depression was. If we held on much longer, even if we hove to for long, we would be soon on a lee shore, something to be respected in the forties, even in summer, by an able yacht—something to be dreaded by a cripple. In spite of this we took down our sail for a few hours, and let a warp go over the side to check our drift a little. In the evening the wind was lighter, but still north of west, and with heavy hearts we turned about, set our sail again, and made for the south, hoping to squeeze a little further offshore, and if the worst came to the worst to get into the Channels by Guafo Island.

  Except for the night of the second smash it was the worst night that I have ever spent, because of the miserable feeling that after all the effort we were going the wrong way again. Beryl turned in and slept peacefully. I felt quite angry that she could do so, and after one of my numerous trips to the hatch to listen anxiously for breakers, I heard her snore. The worst of it was not knowing exactly where we were, and not having a chart of the coast. All I had was a page from the American chart catalogue, but after Beryl’s snore I thought that if she could sleep, damn it, I could too. I turned in, worried and indignant, and did in fact go to sleep.

  I woke up soon afterwards, feeling that something wonderful had happened. Not knowing quite what it was, I lay for a moment, joy and relief spreading over me, as if I had dreamed a great happiness. A cold wind was blowing down through the hatch. It was something new. I scrambled to my feet and looked out—looked out to strange stars in a topsy-turvy sky, to small sails aback, and a cold wind from the south. I slipped back into the cabin and bent over Beryl where she was still sleeping, and shook her gently: ‘There’s a wind from the south,’ I said.

  In the next thirty-two hours we sailed ninety miles to the north-west, and from then on the south wind stayed with us. It had been late in coming, and had come just in time. But now it stayed with us, and we knew that in all probability it would bring us safely home.

  From then on the whole feel of the voyage altered. We were in high spirits, with Cape Horn and the Straits of Magellan well out of our systems, perhaps for good. One of the reasons for this holiday feeling was that this time we were insured. We had had to pay a high premium, but we had done it because all the rocks in all the anchorages of the Channels are not yet charted, and as a sort of mumbo-jumbo to insure that there would be no need to be insured. We didn’t think that a second accident like the first could possibly happen, and if it did we didn’t think it likely that we would be lucky enough to survive a second time, so we had arranged that no claim would be made if we were lost. It is possible that the underwriters had the same ideas.

  Now, when we looked over the damage, and saw that we needed almost the same repairs, we knew what it would cost. On the first occasion we had had many facilities allowed by the Navy free, facilities such as the use of power tools and sheds, and a lot of friendly assistance for nothing; all the work and materials at the coal-mine had been at cost price and we had done most of the work on the yacht ourselves. Now that we were ‘an insurance job’ it was going to be a very different tale, and at a conservative estimate it was going to cost twice as much as before. We knew that the cheapest way to repair Tzu Hang was to ship her to England. We wanted to reach a port from where she could be shipped, and where there was a Lloyds surveyor who knew what he was talking about when it came to comparing relative costs. We thought that we would only find that in Valparaiso, 240 miles north of Talcahuano. We also thought the many people who had shown us so much kindness in Talcahuano and Concepcion might well regard such an early return with horror. So, full of confidence now, off we set for the north. But we would have been very glad to know the right time.

  Tzu Hang sailed steadily up to the north. On January 18 we figured that we were 100 miles west of Arauco Bay, and on the 22nd that we were 200 miles on our way and only thirty miles offshore. This put us on the shipping lane from Valparaiso to the south and we kept night watches again. One evening Beryl thought that she saw land, and although we could make out a high dark outline through the lower haze, which didn’t change, it was impossible to say whether it was the high Andes or dark distant cloud, or the lower foothills and that we were reasonably close inshore.

  Next morning was dull and overcast, and there was no sign of land at all as we waddled slowly northwards. Beryl and I were fit and rested; we read and practised Spanish together, and the cat seemed content for the voyage to go on indefinitely as long as she had plenty of attention and food. About ten o’clock when we were both on deck hoping for a glimpse of the sun through the clouds, I saw smoke ahead, and at the same time the ripple faded from the sea, and our sails hung limp and flapped as we rolled.

  The smoke grew until a mast and funnel showed over the horizon, and then a high bow, and a white wave curling, which splashed up as the little ship pitched into the gentle southerly swell. She was steaming fast on a course that would take her past us a mile away. As she drew near she swung towards us, black smoke pouring from her funnel, and rolling worse than Tzu Hang. My memory flicked back to a similar ship and a similar sea, which had also turned towards us like this, but that was off the west coast of Vancouver Island, and I saw that this one too was a whaler, and we could make out the look-out on the mast and the harpoon-gun in the bow.

  As the whaler came up to us, its engines slowed, the bow wave died, and it steered past us about 100 yards away. The captain came out from the wheelhouse, the cook from the galley. All the crew lined the rail, and a wild gang of pirates they looked. They stared at us and we at them, waiting for the engines to go astern and the ship to stop. The
captain stepped into the chart room and came out again with a large megaphone. We thought that we would be able to get our position all right now, but we were wrong. ‘Buen viaje,’ he shouted, ‘Buen viaje,’ and the water boiled under the whaler’s stem, and she leaped ahead, with all the crew waving, leaving us dumbfounded.

  ‘What on earth?’ said Beryl. ‘Why didn’t you shout to him?’

  ‘But I thought he was going to stop. What in hell does he think we are, the Tahiti Nui?’

  We made very little progress, but we did get a position line in the afternoon. As far as we could make out we were only a few miles offshore, but it was hazy weather, and we doubted if we could see the shore even if our position was correct. We kept watch again that night but saw no light and no ship. Next day we were becalmed again, and just as we were taking our midday sight, we saw smoke approaching.

  ‘This time I’m going to yell blue murder,’ I said. While the ship was approaching, I worked out our position, and found it a few miles west of San Antonio. Again the ship, another whaler, altered course and steamed up to us, and as it closed we shouted and beckoned to it. This time it stopped and swung round like a polo pony, and lay broadside on close to us. A magnificent figure, a prince of buccaneers in a black coat, who looked as if he had personally pulled his ship to a halt and twisted it round, stared down at us from the bridge.

  ‘¡Buenos días!’ we shouted across to each other.

  ‘¿Qué distancia desde San Antonio?’ I asked. The captain dived into the wheelhouse and reappeared almost immediately with his megaphone: ‘Setenta y cinco millas,’ he said, and I expected to see the sound waves rumple the oily swell between us.

  ‘Seventy-five miles,’ Beryl and I looked at each other in surprise.

  ‘Nuestro cronometer es quebrado,’ I explained.

  ‘Conforme.’

  ‘E el motor también.’

  ‘Conforme. ¿Qué otras cosas?’

  ‘Nada. Muchas gracias.’

  ‘Conforme. Hasta la vista.’

  The whaler shuddered, and the throb of her propeller rang through our own hull as she began to shoulder her way through the swell with the captain standing on the bridge, his arm extended in a dramatic gesture of farewell. Even at that range his personality seemed to dwarf the ship and his crew, and we felt sorry for any whales he sighted. When I told him about the engine being out of action, I had half hoped that he might send an engineer on board, loaded with batteries, to put it right, but we had never asked for help at sea, and we weren’t going to now. But the whaler swung round, making a smooth slick as she turned, and came up alongside again. It looked as if the captain had just understood some of my Spanish, and had come back to hear some more.

  ‘Do you think he’s going to do something about the engine?’ Beryl asked. We waited expectantly as the captain leant over with his megaphone.

  ‘¿Son ustedes alemanes ó ingleses?’ he asked.

  ‘Somos ingleses,’ Beryl shouted.

  ‘Ha. Bueno. ¡Hasta luego Señora! ¡Buen viaje!’ and he swept off his cap and bowed, as his ship swirled away again. There was no doubt about it. We were back, or almost back, in Chile, with its gallantry and its improbabilities.

  ‘Seventy-five miles,’ Beryl said. ‘We needn’t have kept watch for the last two nights after all.’ I thought that perhaps we hadn’t been quite so close to the coast of Chiloe as I had supposed at the time, and I need not have got into such a sweat about it. We lay becalmed for the rest of the day. After midnight a small breeze came from the south, and we sailed due east in order to make our landfall well to the south of Valparaiso and with a wide margin for the northward set of the current.

  Next morning, January 25, we had a fresh southerly wind, which freshened all day until it was blowing strongly, and Tzu Hang, in spite of her jury-rig, seemed to be racing in for the shore. In the afternoon we could see a headland, which we thought must be Punta San Domingo, but we held on in a wind force 6 to 7, until we could see some houses and a low beach. Then we took down our sails and waited for the lights to show. As darkness fell the whole seafront lit up with innumerable lights, and wherever we looked, over the rough sea, lights seemed to be either flashing or occulting.

  ‘Flashing one in three, isn’t it?’ Beryl asked.

  ‘Yes, but look, there’s the light. It’s occulting every five. Good Lord, isn’t that one of the Valparaiso lights?’

  ‘It can’t be. Let’s count again,’ Beryl said.

  ‘Right. There … two, three, four, five, six, seven … what the hell?’

  ‘Try again.’

  ‘There … two, three … it’s moving. It must be a fishboat.’

  ‘No, there’s the light. I saw it flashing. There, farther round.’ Beryl pointed. And it was. San Antonio, and for the first time since we were disabled a month before we knew exactly where we were.

  As soon as we knew where we were we made sail, sailing north a mile or two offshore. At first we continued to make good time, but gradually the wind fell and the sea calmed. We had no doubt now of our ability to make port, but there was an anticipatory thrill about the idea of doing so, and we enjoyed every moment of our night watches, seeing sometimes the headlights of a car on the roads ashore, sometimes the lights of a fishboat, and once a big cargo ship going south, and always the faint glow in the sky from the lights of Valparaiso ahead.

  In the morning we were closing the jagged rocks of Curaumilla Point, and the craggy little island of Los Lobos, and we thought of the Seal Rocks that we had set off from over a year before. Another ten miles, idling slowly down the coast, and Valparaiso Bay, with its ships at anchor in the roads, began to open out before us. The wind carried us in in the early afternoon until we were nearing the breakwater, but there we were in the lee of the high ground, and the south wind failed. We had finished up with the best run of all, under jury-rig.

  Only a short distance ahead we could see the land breeze ruffling the water, blowing right into the inner harbour. We got out the dinghy oars and started to paddle Tzu Hang towards it, but a man in a small harbour launch came up and offered his assistance.

  ‘We haven’t got any money,’ we said, as we had no pesos left on board.

  ‘But of course not; no matter. Where do you want to go?’

  We had already noticed Esmeralda’s tall masts above the breakwater. ‘Take us to Esmeralda,’ we said. As soon as we arrived alongside, some seamen ran to take our lines, and to make us fast alongside, and the harbour launch went off with a delighted owner clasping an unexpected bottle of Pisco. Then there were baths and supper on the Esmeralda, and the kindest of welcomes, and no one to say, ‘I told you so,’ but only, ‘Well done!’

  A few days later I had a letter from a friend in Santiago; ‘I don’t know what would have happened to the British reputation in Chile,’ he said, ‘if it hadn’t been for you two…’

  ‘By George,’ I said to Beryl, ‘that’s jolly good of him. Listen to this,’ and I read it out to her. But when I turned over the page, the letter went on, ‘reputation for eccentricity, I mean.’

  Two months later Tzu Hang came up into London River on the deck of a freighter, and was off-loaded at the West India Dock. From there she sailed under her own power, for the big ship’s engineers had been busy on her engine, to Burnham on Crouch in one day. During the passage we rigged the little jurymast and sail, which had helped us back to Valparaiso, so that it brought her home in the end; but before we left London, in fact as soon as we arrived, Beryl and I hurried off to Lewes to see Clio.

  A green bus drew up at the corner where we were waiting and, as a tall girl stepped out, I felt Beryl start forward and heard her say, ‘Good heavens, she hasn’t changed at all!’ and later, during one of those meals which astound parents all over the world, Clio said,

  ‘Are you going to have another shot?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I think that once is enough,’ and I looked across at Beryl.

  ‘And twice is really too much,’ she went on,
and suddenly I felt that all that had mattered so much to us, during the last few months, had slipped into its proper place in the past, into the perspective of a life.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  GIVE a man—or a girl for that matter—a horse he can ride, and sooner or later he, or she, will want to ride further and faster and to jump higher. Let a man climb one mountain and he must find another until he seeks the snows. It is the same with a ship. ‘Though never of great worship myself,’ said Sir Dinadan, ‘ever have I loved men of great worship.’ It is this love of men of great worship that sends us off, humbly and often ineffectually, in their footsteps or in the vanished furrows of their keels.

  Capes and seas, like mountains, ‘are there’ to round and to cross; and adventure, even when not in search of knowledge and without scientific aim, is good for its own sake. Only when it involves other people unwittingly or involuntarily in one’s own distress is it bad. But even in this respect there may be another point of view, as Jim Byrne pointed out to us in Chile. ‘I think you ought to let people rescue you,’ he said. ‘It gives them a tremendous lift. The rescuer is always the hell of a chap, and the rescued gets slapped down. It’s jolly decent of a chap to let himself be rescued.’

  Beryl and I don’t agree with Jim. When a small yacht sets out on a long journey, it must be entirely self-reliant. There will be no help near when trouble strikes. If the ship is out only for adventure and sport it has no right to expect help, and it is just as well if it has no means of asking for it.