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CHAPTER TWO
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in which Captain Wrungel tells about his first mate Lom and about certain particular cases of practical navigation |
Well, there I had been sitting in my den, and I got heartily sick and tired of it. So I decided to take a skip over high seas. And such a skip I took that the world sat back in wonder! Excuse me, you are not in a hurry just now, are you? Excellent. Then I'll tell the story in the right order.
I was much younger then, to be sure, but no greenhorn either. I had lived some, and amassed some experience too. An old bird, so to speak, well thought of and well established-according to my merits, too, though I say it myself.
In other words, I could well claim a good-sized ship to command. That, too, would've been quite interesting. But the biggest ship was out on a cruise just then, and I have no patience to wait once I've set my mind on something. To hell with it, I decided, I'll make the cruise in a yacht. It's no joke, let me tell you, to undertake a circumnavigation in a sailing boat.
Well, I started looking around for a suitable yacht, and, as luck would have it, found one right away. It seemed to have been built specially for me.
To be sure, it needed some repairs, but these were made under my personal supervision and in the best style. They fitted it out with a new mast and sails, changed the planking, shortened the keel and built up the bulwarks. There was a lot of work needed done, but the result was a pretty toy of a yacht. Forty feet load water-line. As they say, "an eggshell at the mercy of the elements".
I am not one to make a noise about my plans. So I moored the yacht by the shore, covered it with tarpaulin and set about making preparations for the cruise.
As you know, the success of a venture of this kind largely depends on the crew. So I took special pains selecting my mate and companion, who was to share the hardships of the voyage with me. And I was lucky in my choice.
Lom, my first mate, proved to be a man of inestimable worth. Judge for yourself: seven feet six in height, a voice like a ship's siren, extraordinary strength and stamina, coupled with a thorough competence and an amazing modesty-just the stuff high-class seamen are made of. But Lom had one shortcoming-he knew no foreign languages whatever. An important omission on a foreign cruise, to be sure, but I was not daunted. I weighed up his other merits against it, pondered a while and issued an order-that he should leam English within the next month. And what do you think? Learn it he did - within three weeks.
I devised a new, original method of instruction. I hired two teachers for Lom. One taught him the English alphabet from the beginning, and the other, from the end. All went well for a while, though Lom had difficulty in mastering the tricky English letters. One of them, particularly the letter "i", caused him serious unpleasantness. As he sat at his table hammering it into his head and droning on "ai", "ai", "ai" in an ever louder voice, the woman next door began to wonder what the matter was. She peeked into his room and, seeing a brawny chap crying out "ai-ai-ai", decided that he had gone off his rocker and called an ambulance. They trooped in, put him into a straight-jacket and hauled him off. The next day I had quite a job rescuing Lom from a loony bin. It all ended well, however: three weeks later my first mate reported that the two teachers had had a rendezvous in the middle of the alphabet and the task was achieved. At once I named the sailing date. We had wasted enough time.
At last the long-awaited moment arrived. Today our departure might have passed unnoticed. But at that time a global yacht cruise was no lesser a sensation than the Kon-Tiki trip. A huge crowd thronged the shore. Flags were streaming, music was playing-it was a grand send-off. I took my stand at the helm and commanded:
"Up the mainsail! Let go forward! Helm astarboard!" The sails unfolded like white wings, the wind filled them, but the yacht ... remained where it was. We let go aft-nothing happened. I saw that something pretty drastic had to be done. Just then a tug was chugging past. I snatched the speaking trumpet and yelled to them.
"Ahoy on the tug! Catch the line and give us a pull, willya!" They made the line fast and tugged and pulled, all but rearing with the effort, but the yacht did not move an inch. What the hell! Suddenly there was a crash, the yacht jumped forward, I went tumbling, hit my head on a spar and lost consciousness for a second. When I came to, the shape of the shoreline had unaccountably changed. The crowd was no longer on dry land but thrashing in shallow waters, an ice-cream booth was afloat and astride it sat a young man filming the proceedings.
Moreover, the yacht seemed to have grown a green island overboard. I looked closer-and all became clear. The carpenters had used fresh planking. Over the summer the planks had taken root and even sprouted green shoots. As a matter of fact, I had wondered about the nice green bushes growing between the yacht and the shore. The yacht was knocked together fast, the tug was hardy, the rope was strong, so, since something had to give, the shoreline had given, bushes and all. It's a warning to all ship-builders against using fresh planking. A nasty accident, to be sure, but at least there was no loss of life involved.
I had not counted on another delay, but what could you do? We had to drop anchor and spend the day cleaning the yacht's skin. You can't go sailing with a vegetable patch of your own. If the fishermen do not guy you to death, the fishes will split their sides laughing.
Lom and I got thoroughly wet and dead tired before we were through. When night fell, I allowed Lom to go down to get some sleep and kept watch myself. I was alone on deck, lost in thought, painting to myself the joys of the cruise and trying to envisage its hardships. I got so carried away that I never noticed how the night passed.
And the morning brought me another shock. It transpired that I had not been merely robbed of a day's sailing-I had also been robbed of my yacht's name.
Perhaps you think, what's in a name? You are very wrong then, young man. A ship's name is as important as a man's. Take me, for instance. Now I have a fine name -Wrungel. And just imagine I was called something like Stumbler - would that add to my authority? Once I had a pupil by the name of Kitten. Can you imagine a captain of a sea-going vessel named Kitten?
It is the same with ships. Call it Valiant or Dauntless, and the ice itself will part to let it through. And if you call it Tub, it will be true to its name and is sure to overturn in calm weather.
So I sifted through dozens of names before I selected one for my handsome yacht. I called it Courage. A fine name for a fine ship! I had brass letters made, polished them and fixed them up myself on the stem. You could see the word Courage a mile off, the letters shone so.
Well, in the morning after that ill-starred day I stood on deck, myself, barely keeping my eyes open after a sleepless night. There was no wind, the port had not awakened yet. Suddenly a motor launch, a diligent port toiler, approached my yacht and they tossed a bunch of newspapers on the deck. Vanity is of course a vice, but we are all human, and naturally I was curious to see what they were writing about us. Well, I opened a newspaper and read:
"Yesterday's mishap at the start of a global cruise might have been sent to justify the curious name Captain Wrungel has given his boat..."
I was mystified. I snatched another newspaper, then a third... And then I caught sight of a picture that featured Lom and me on our comely yacht.
The inscription read: "Captain Wrungel and the yacht Rage on which he is undertaking..."
I was thunderstruck. I dashed aft and bent over the gunwale. That's right: the first three letters of the name, "C", "0" and "U", were missing!
What a thing to happen! And the worst of it was that I could not do a thing about it. Once the newspapers had carried the story, Captain Wrungel was indelibly imprinted in the minds of the readers as the commander of Rage. The noble Courage was dead and buried!
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I was sorry for the yacht's ambitious name, but nothing could be done about it. She was Rage now. Soon we were in the open sea. I felt the weight lifting from my heart. It's so wonderful to be at sea. Ancient Greeks were right to say that the sea washes your heart clean of grief.
Well, we were running along nicely, the waves swishing past sides, the mast creaking faintly, and the shore dissolving in the distance. Gradually the wind began to freshen up, stormy petrels came screaming, and white crests appeared on the waves. The wind was now properly at work, whistling in the rigging, strong and salty as befits a sea wind. The last lighthouse had been left behind and sea was all around us.
I laid the course, turned the watch over to Lom and went down to snatch forty winks. As we sailors say, "Catch up on sleep while you can."
So down I went, poured myself a glass of rum, lay in my bunk and slept like a log. A couple of hours later I went up on deck, fresh as a daisy. I cast a look round... and all went dark before me.
At first sight nothing much had changed: the same sea all around, and the same seagulls overhead. Lom was at the helm, awake and alert, but a barely noticeable gray line of shore was looming on the horizon ahead.
And do you know what it is to sight the shore dead ahead when it ought to be thirty miles on the port side? It is a disgrace! It's the most shameful thing that can happen. I was shaken and indignant. In fact, I was on the point of reversing the course and returning to port in dishonour before I got into real soup with a first mate like this.
I opened my mouth to bark out a command to this effect, and took a large mouthful of air to make it really loud and shattering, when suddenly an explanation suggested itself. Actually it was suggested by Lom's nose. I noticed that the nose of my first mate kept turning to port, with his nostrils flaring out, and himself straining after the nose. Then I recalled that I had an uncorked bottle of rum in my cabin by the port side. Lom had a keen nose for spirits, and so his whole being was trained on the bottle.
Well, this could easily be mended. A particular case, you might say, in navigation practice, unforeseen by science. I went down to my cabin and moved the bottle to starboard. Lom's nose, like a compass needle following a magnet, turned right, and the yacht veered right too. Two hours later the Rage was back on course.
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"Shall we put on some more canvas, Captain?" It wasn't a bad idea either, and I agreed. The Rage had been making good time as it was, and now it fair flew along.
We were off to sail the oceans blue.