had just stopped fighting there. But whatever was the cause of it, this
lump made it difficult to manage the boat I was in, for the air was
still light and somewhat unsteady; sometimes within a point of north,
and then again dropping and rising free within a point of east: on the
whole, north-east. To windward the sea was very clear, but down towards
the land there was a haze, and when I got to the black buoy which is
three miles from Calais, and marks the place where you should turn to go
into the harbour, I could barely see the high land glooming through the
weather, and Calais belfry and lighthouse tower I could not see at all.
I looked at my watch and saw it was seven, and immediately afterwards
the wind became steady and true, and somewhat stronger, and work began.

She would point very nearly north, and so I laid her for that course,
though that would have taken me right outside the Goodwins, for I knew
that the tide was making westerly down the Channel, ebbing away faster
and faster, and that, like a man crossing a rapid river in a ferry-boat,
I had to point up far above where I wanted to land, which was at Dover,
the nearest harbour. I sailed her, therefore, I say, as close as she
would lie, and the wind rose.

The wind rose, and for half an hour I kept her to it. She had no more
sail than she needed; she heeled beautifully and strongly to the wind;
she took the seas, as they ran more regular, with a motion of mastery.
It was like the gesture of a horse when he bends his head back to his
chest, arching his neck with pride as he springs upon our Downs at
morning. So set had the surging of the sea become that she rose and fell
to it with rhythm, and the helm could be kept quite steady, and the
regular splash of the rising bows and the little wisps of foam came in
ceaseless exactitude like the marching of men, and in all this one mixed
with the life of the sea.

But before it was eight o'clock (and I had eaten nothing) the wind got
stronger still, and I was anxious and gazed continuously into it, up to
windward, seeing the white caps beginning on the tops of the seas,
although the wind and tide were together. She heeled also much more, and
my anxiety hardened with the wind, for the wind had strengthened by
about half-past eight, so that it was very strong indeed, and she was
plainly over-canvased, her lee rail under all the time and all the
cordage humming; there it stood, and by the grace and mercy of God the
w