I had not realized how holidays flow over from one week to another,
nor that this one was the big event of the Fayal year. We got away on
the third, and then only by sailing out of the harbour and standing off
and on in the roads while my agent chased around for papers. Still,
seventeen days for 1,300 miles should be ample allowance, and as
we ran before a steady breeze up Fayal Channel we were speculating
as to where we should spend that week which we thought we should
have to pass in hiding till the day of the reception.
It is true that the wind soon dropped to the lightest of northerly airs,
but that I discount near islands, and we were cheered by dropping a
big schooner far astern. But on the fifth a good South wind blew up,
and though another, a medium-sized schooner, passed us, I did not
mind, for we were doing 7 knots if he was doing 10; anyway, it was a
pleasant change to get into waters just moderately crowded with
shipping. But the pleasantest thought was that all the indications of
wind and barometer were those of a cyclonic system travelling
towards Ireland at exactly our speed, which should bring us straight
to the Tuskar without touching the wheel or any rope.
With three cable companies and an observatory at my hand, and a
particularly smart navigator in my agent's office, it was pure folly not
to have made some inquiries about the state of the weather ahead of
me. If I had any indication of the anticyclone into which I ran after
three days of that good wind - and anticyclones alter so slowly that it
would have been probable - I should, or perhaps I ought to, for I
sometimes sin against the light, have kept well to the westward of it
and come in by the North Channel, in which, I believe, there was plenty
of wind at the time. Even when I did strike it, right in the middle, this
would have been the better course; but one cannot refer any chance
calm or easterly wind to an anticyclone on only one day's observation.
So being only some 350 miles from the Fastnet, and well in the way of
traffic, we kept on, hoping before long to signal some homeward-bound
vessel, or the light- house, and report our progress to the organizers of
the reception. And this day, the ninth of June, was calm with fog.
And the tenth was calm with fog, but whatever wind there was came
from the E.N.E.
And the eleventh was calm with fog... and so on.
But on the morning of the fifteenth there came a little air from the
westward, and if the fog did not vanish quite immediately it became
less wet; and the sails dried and were filled by that little air, and the
ship began to move as I supposed (for I got no sights) in the right
direction. And in the evening, as the breeze freshened, it became quite
clear, though cloudy; and if I did not know exactly where I was I knew
I was not going to hit anything. So I lost the last chance of using my
deep-sea sounding machine, which I had carried carefully stowed away
in its case all this voyage, for a little before midnight, as I expected, I
saw the flash of the Fastnet Light in the sky.
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