usual, we were discussing the situation, which indeed looked hopeless, for our means were obviously unequal to what we wanted to do, when the idea of a floating home suddenly repossessed me with a fresh significance.
‘Let’s buy an old vessel,’ I said, ‘and fit her up as our house. We have often talked of doing it some day. That may have been a joke, perhaps. But why not do it seriously—now?’
The Mate evaded the startling proposal for the moment.
‘I wish the children wouldn’t grow up,’ she commented sadly.
‘If we don’t have the vessel,’ I persisted, ‘we shall fall between two stools, because with all the expenses—school, rent, and so on, which we’ve never had before—we shall have to give up the Playmate.’
‘That would be worse than anything.’
The mere idea of giving up our boat was more than we could contemplate—our boat in which we two had cruised alone together, summer and winter, on the East Coast, and from whose masthead more than once we had proudly flown the Red Ensign on our return from a cruise ‘foreign.’
‘I would rather live in a workman’s cottage and keep the boat, than live in a better house and have no boat,’ said the Mate emphatically.
‘Well, we’ve got to leave here, and it’s something to have found a decent school. I suppose, if we take a house really big enough to hold us, it will cost us forty pounds to move into it.’
‘Much more than that if you count all the new carpets, curtains, and dozens of other things we shall want.’
I thought an occasion for reiteration had arrived.
‘Just think. If we had a ship, we should do away with the expense of moving for one thing, the rent for another, and the rates and taxes for another. We may be absolutely sure our expenses will increase, and our income almost certainly won’t.’
The Mate was silent, so I continued: ‘Suppose we are reduced to doing our washing at home. Washing hung up to dry in the garden of a villa is one thing, but slung between the masts of a ship it is another. Not many people can scrub their own doorsteps without feeling embarrassed, but one can wash down one’s own decks proudly in front of the Squadron Castle.’
‘There is something in that.’ She was gazing out over the marshes, where the gulls and plover were circling. She sighed, and I knew she was thinking of the ‘move.’
I sat beside her and looked out of the window too, and the familiar sight of a barge’s topsail moving above the sea-wall caught my eye. ‘That’s what we should be doing,’ I said, pointing to the barge—‘sailing along with our children and our household goods on board instead of waiting for pan-technicons to arrive with our furniture, and spending days in misery and discomfort moving it into a house we don’t like, and then paying a large rent every year for the privilege of staying in it. If we had a barge we could anchor clear of the town, and when the holidays came we could up anchor and clear off to a place more after our own hearts. Of course a barge is the very thing—the most easily handled ship for her size in the world. I see the way out quite clearly now.’
A Barge at Sunset in the Lower Thames
‘Yes, that sounds very jolly, but there would be a lot of drawbacks too.’ The Mate began to retreat towards the drawing-room.
‘Oh, but you haven’t heard half the advantages yet,’ I called after her.
The Mate wanted time. So did I. I lit a cigarette and thought for a few minutes over our position; and the more I thought the more sure I became that a barge would solve the problem for us. And when I joined her I felt that I had a pretty strong case.
‘Now listen to me,’ I said. ‘Not only should we save a great deal over the move, and over the rates and taxes, and have no landlord to interfere with us, but we should actually be freer than we are here. We should be sure of our sailing, which is one great advantage; and later, when the boys go to their public school, we can move wherever we like and not be tied to a house for seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years. A move without a move—think of that. I am sure salt-water baths will be good for the children, and hot salt-water baths will be excellent for rheumatism—or anything of that sort. The barge will be warmer in the winter than a house, and cooler in the summer. She will be cheaper to keep up. You will save in servants and also in coals. You know you hate tramps, and hawkers, and barrel-organs. Well, you will be free from all these things. Of course, we don’t have earthquakes in England, but if we did have one we shouldn’t feel it. If we had a flood, it wouldn’t hurt us. You remember we paid about four pounds to have our burst water-pipes mended last winter, but we shouldn’t have that sort of thing in a barge. We shouldn’t be swindled over a gas-meter, and servants wouldn’t leave because of the stairs. It will be a delightful place for the children to bring their friends to, and no one will know whether we’re eccentric millionaires or paupers only just to windward of the workhouse. We’ll have the saloon panelled in oak, and white enamel under the decks, and our books and blue china all round. We’ll. …’
I had just begun to warm to my work when an expression on the Mate’s face showed me that I had said enough and said it reasonably well. I had made an impression on her adventurous heart.
CHAPTER II
‘Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from Lebanon,
Down with me from Lebanon to sail upon the sea.
The ship is wrought of ivory, the decks of gold, and thereupon
Are sailors singing bridal songs, and waiting to cast free.
‘Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from Lebanon,
The rowers there are ready and will welcome thee with shouts.
The sails are silken sails and scarlet, cut and sewn in Babylon,
The scarlet of the painted lips of women thereabouts.’
Two or three days after the conversation related in the last chapter the Mate and I fell into a vein of reminiscence and reconstructed a vision we had once shared of the ship that was some day to be our home. It had the proper condition of a vision that the thing longed for was unattainable; the vessel of our dreams had always been as far down on the horizon as the balance at the bank that would pay for her.
She was, above all things, to be beautiful, even for a ship, which is saying much—for who ever saw a sailing ship otherwise? Of course, she was to be square-rigged, for how else should we be able to splice the mainbrace with rum and milk when the sun crossed the yard-arm? We fancied gorgeous pictures on her sails, so that the winds should be lovesick with them as with the sails of Cleopatra’s barge; an ensign aft, and streaming pennants of bright colours on her masts. Her poop, towering above the water, fretted and carved and blazoned with all the skill of bygone guilds, should have a gallery aft on which the captain and his wife would take their ease On either quarter, lit up at sundown, there would be tall poop lanterns covered with cunning tracery and magic, such as Merlin might have wrought, so that on windy nights the passing craft might see
‘Far, far up above them her great poop lanterns shine,
Unvexed by wind and weather, like the candles round a Shrine.’
Guns she would have on deck, and a fighting-top on the main, and a forecastle where the crew should man the capstan and weigh anchor to a chanty. Beneath her jibboom pointing heavenward she would set a spritsail heralding her on her way. We could see her with sails all bellied out in bold curves before a brave wind, and hear ‘the long-drawn thunder neath her leaping figure-head.’