I did not know what we know now, that Prussia firmly calculated on two things: first, the neutrality of England, and, secondly, a very complete and very rapid victory over the French, a decisive victory, destroying the whole of the French army within a month of the frontier crossing; a battle beginning as did Charleroi, but ending very differently from the Marne.
When I next had occasion to leave London, in order to find again my boat at Plymouth, and to take her out, nothing was decided. One might almost say that the suspense, such as it was, seemed less burdensome, and the sense of peril less acute. I came down by night; I saw no morning papers; I got aboard with my companion, and spent the whole forenoon before the slight tide would serve in putting things to right for the cruise.
We dropped out under a soft air, which soon died away. We spent the whole mortal day drifting down to the Mewstone, and then, in that exasperating calm, the turn of the tide took us up again towards the breakwater. It was not till the fall of day that a breeze arose; I cannot remember from what quarter, but I think it was off the land—that is, from the northeast—but, at any rate, it served us; we could go eastward without having to beat, and we made out down the Sound. It was still light when we passed the Mewstone again. Through the last of evening and through all the darkness we ran along the coast to Devon for the Start.
I knew that the times were perilous, but I knew no more than any other man, in that odd week’s lull before the storm, exactly how perilous they were. It was nearly a month, I think, since I had heard the priest read out, from those altar steps of Salisbury, prayers for the Archduke who had been murdered at Sarajevo.
When I had set out from Plymouth there was nothing but rumour, nothing certain. The Fleet had dispersed already some days past from the great review at Spithead, and was, as we were told, in the Atlantic at manoeuvres. A night, a day, and now another night had passed; I had heard no news.
Nothing was further from my mind than war and armament as the sun rose on that glorious July morning, right out of a clean horizon, towards which the wind blew fresh and cool. It was a light but steady wind of morning that filled my sails as I sat at the tiller with a blanket about me, and laying her head to the north.
We had just rounded the Start at dawn. My companion went below to sleep. I watched, over the quarter, the Start Light flashing pale and white in the broadening day, and at last extinguished. Then the sun rose, as I have said. Immediately after its rising a sort of light haze filled the air to eastward. It was denser than it seemed to be, for it did not obscure the low disc of the sun, nor redden it, but, as you will read in a moment, it performed a mystery. The little ship slipped on, up past the Skerries Bank, and I could see far off the headland which bounds Dart Bay. There was no sail in sight. I was alone upon the sea; and the breeze, neither freshening nor lowering, but giving a hearty line of course (along which we slipped, perhaps, five knots or six), made the water speak merrily upon the bows and along the run of our low sides. In this loneliness and content, as I sailed northward, I chanced to look, after an hour’s steering or so, eastward again towards the open sea—and then it was that there passed me the vision I shall remember forever, or for so long as the longest life may last.
Like ghosts, like things themselves made of mist, there passed between me and the newly risen sun a procession of great forms, all in line, hastening eastward. It was the Fleet recalled.
The slight haze along that distant water had thickened, perhaps, imperceptibly; or perhaps the great speed of the men-of-war buried them too quickly in the distance. But, from whatever cause, this marvel was of short duration. It was seen for a moment, and in a moment it was gone.
Then I knew that war would come, and my mind was changed.
The bright air was the same around me and the heartening morning wind, the happy course of the Nona, making for a known port with all in her favour and something of youth in her and all round. What that war would bring, its magnitude, its character, was veiled from us all; but the advent of it, the mass of it coming, put a new face on everything I saw and felt and heard; on the steady breeze, on the little lapping of the salt seawater, on the strong headlands of England. So went I northward alone as the day grew, until by midmorning, the breeze having dropped somewhat and the boat running more sluggishly, we lay abeam of the rock called the Druid’s Mare, and began to run up the coast for Torbay. My companion wakened and came on deck. I told him what I had seen.
These strong emotions, though they colour all the mind, soon lose their edge, and we fell to talking of the coast we passed, and of the chance of holding the wind, which declined a little and was not so steady as we rounded the last headland. My mind turned nothing over of the possibilities of what was to come. It
