style="font-size:15px;"> The first day that Digby went out in the John Dory, as Toby called his boat, he discovered his ignorance of nautical affairs. He had day after day been on the ponds at Bloxholme, but then John Pratt had rowed him about, and he had never thought of learning to row himself.
The river was wide at the mouth, and, as there were deep sheltered bays, it was a good place for rowing. When sailing, however, it was necessary to be careful, for gusts often came down suddenly between the cliffs, and had frequently upset boats the people in which had not been ready to let go the sheets in an instant. There was no wind this day.
“Now, young gen’man,” said Toby, looking at Digby, “you’ll just take an oar and pull with the rest?”
“Oh yes,” answered Digby, who was always ready to undertake any manual exercise, “I’ll row.”
Marshall and the other boys got out the oars. Toby eyed Digby, and guessed, by the way he handled his oar the state of the case. However, Digby persevered in silence.
The boat slowly receded from the shore, Toby steering. Digby, who sat about midships, looked at Marshall, and Easton, and Power, who sat further astern, and tried to imitate their movements. He did so very fairly. He thought that he was performing his part wonderfully well.
Toby’s nose curled more than usual as he looked at him.
“Give way, my lads, give way,” he sung out.
The other boys instantly bent to their oars, and made much more rapid strokes than before. Digby had not the slightest notion what “giving way” meant. He only knew, to his cost, that he gave way, for his oar caught in the water, and over he toppled on his back to the bottom of the boat.
“Caught a crab, caught a crab,” sung out the other boys, laughing.
Digby jumped up immediately, full of eagerness, not minding his bruises a bit.
“Have I? Where is he? where is he? Let me see him,” he exclaimed.
This made the rest laugh still more.
“It’s only the sort of crab most young ge’men catches when first they begins to learn to row,” said Toby; “jump up and take your oar, and you’ll soon catch another, I warrant.”
So Digby found, but he was not a boy to be beat by such an occurrence. Each time he jumped up as quickly as he could, and grasping his oar, went on pulling as before.
“What do you mean by ‘Give way?’” he asked, when he discovered that these words invariably produced the unpleasant results.
“I means much the same as the soldier officers does when they says ‘Double quick march.’”
“Oh, I see, we are to make the boat go as fast as we can,” observed Digby.
After that he caught fewer crabs, Toby having also advised him not to dip the blade of his oar so deeply in the water. In a few days he learned how to feather his oar, that is, when lifting the blade out of the water, to turn it, so as to keep it almost horizontal with the surface. This is done that it may not hold wind, and in a rough sea, that it may be less likely to be struck by a wave, or if it is, that it may cut through the top. He also learned to keep time with the rest, a very essential requisite in rowing.
“You’ve done capitally,” said Marshall, after they landed the first day, “many fellows have been here for some time before they have done as well.”
This praise encouraged Digby, and he determined to learn to be a good boatman. He expressed his intentions to Toby. The old man laughed.
“You’ll be good enough in time, I’ve no doubt, master, but it will take you some years before you are fit to be trusted. There’s nothing but experience will make a sailor. You must be out in gales of wind, and have all your sails blown away, and your masts carried over the side, and find yourself on a lee shore on a dark night, with rocks close aboard, and no room to wear, and the wind blowing great guns and small arms, and a strong current running here and there, and setting you on to the coast; and then, if you find means to save the ship, I’ll allow that you’re something of a sailor.”
Digby did not know what all this meant, but he thought the description very dreadful, and certainly he had no notion how he should act. As, however, he had no wish to become a real sailor, that did not trouble him. Easton, however, took in every word that was said. He had set his heart on going to sea, and none of the descriptions of shipwrecks and disasters in which the old man indulged had any terrors for him. They only the more excited his ardour, and he longed to encounter and overcome them.
When Toby Tubb saw that Digby could row fairly, he began to teach him to sail a boat.
“First you have to learn how to steer, Master Digby,” he observed; “look over the stern, you see how the rudder is, now put your hand in the same line above it. Now I press against your hand, the water is pressing just in the same way against the rudder. If you keep your arm stiff, I should make you turn round. Now, the rudder is stiff as long as you don’t let the tiller move, and so the water turns the boat round. Now put the tiller over on the opposite side, then you see the boat also turns the opposite way. You understand, to steer you must be going on, or, what’s the same thing, a current must be running past you. If there is no movement in the water, you may wriggle the tiller about as much as you please, and you can’t turn the boat’s head. Just understand, too, that the water is a thing that presses. It will give way, certainly. It is not like a rock, but still it presses all around you. That’s the reason why a vessel sails stem first, that is to say, she cuts the water with the sharpest part, if the sails are trimmed properly to make her do so. You may trim the sails to make her sail stern first, or if there’s a gale of wind right abeam, she goes partly ahead, but also drives before it with her side, that’s what we call making lee way. Now as to the sails, you see, we have to balance them, or to trim them, as we call it. Once, I’m told, ships were only made to sail right before the wind. Funny voyages they must have been, I’m thinking. What a time they must have been about them, waiting for a fair wind; no wonder they didn’t get round the world in those days. Now, you see, we can sail not only with the wind abeam as close, as four and a half points to the wind in fore and after craft. Still if we want to get where the wind blows from, we could never do it if we couldn’t tack ship, and sail away four and a half points on the other side of the wind. That’s what we call working a traverse. Away a ship sails, zig-zagging along if there isn’t too much wind to blow her back, every tack making good some ground till she reaches the port to which she’s bound. That’s what I calls the philusfy of navigation. But I haven’t yet told you how the sails act on the vessel. You see the wind presses on them, just as the water does on the hull. The better you can get the wind to blow on them at what they calls a right angle, the greater force it has. So in a square-rigged ship, if you can bring the wind a little on the quarter, so that every sail, studden-sails, alow and aloft, can be made to draw, you’ll have the greatest pressure on the sails, and send the ship on the fastest. But we come to balancing, when a ship is on a wind. If all the sail was set forward, it would turn her head round, or if all was set aft it would turn her stern round. So we set some forward, and some aft, and some amidships, and then we trim them together properly, and away she goes in the direction we put her head. Then, you see, if we want to turn her head round we shake the wind out of her after sails, or trice them up, and if we want her stem to go round, we do the same with her head sails, and that, Master Heathcote, is what I calls the theory of sailing. There’s a good deal more for you to learn before you will be fit to be trusted in a boat by yourself, but if you keeps close to those principles, you can’t be far wrong in the long run.”
Such was Digby’s first lesson in seamanship. He did not take in all
