We had a tripping line on it, so we
tripped the sea-anchor and hauled it in.
We attached a big timber
as a float, and dropped the sea-anchor over again. This time it
floated. The line to the bow grew taut. The trysail on the mizzen
tended to swing the bow into the wind, but, in spite of this
tendency, the Snark calmly took that sea-anchor in her teeth, and
went on ahead, dragging it after her, still in the trough of the
sea. And there you are. We even took in the trysail, hoisted the
full mizzen in its place, and hauled the full mizzen down flat, and
the Snark wallowed in the trough and dragged the sea-anchor behind
her. Don't believe me. I don't believe it myself. I am merely
telling you what I saw.
Now I leave it to you. Who ever heard of a sailing-boat that
wouldn't heave to? - that wouldn't heave to with a sea-anchor to help
it? Out of my brief experience with boats I know I never did. And
I stood on deck and looked on the naked face of the inconceivable
and monstrous - the Snark that wouldn't heave to. A stormy night
with broken moonlight had come on. There was a splash of wet in the
air, and up to windward there was a promise of rain-squalls; and
then there was the trough of the sea, cold and cruel in the
moonlight, in which the Snark complacently rolled. And then we took
in the sea-anchor and the mizzen, hoisted the reefed staysail, ran
the Snark off before it, and went below - not to the hot meal that
should have awaited us, but to skate across the slush and slime on
the cabin floor, where cook and cabin-boy lay like dead men in their
bunks, and to lie down in our own bunks, with our clothes on ready
for a call, and to listen to the bilge-water spouting knee-high on
the galley floor.
In the Bohemian Club of San Francisco there are some crack sailors.
I know, because I heard them pass judgment on the Snark during the
process of her building. They found only one vital thing the matter
with her, and on this they were all agreed, namely, that she could
not run. She was all right in every particular, they said, except
that I'd never be able to run her before it in a stiff wind and sea.
"Her lines," they explained enigmatically, "it is the fault of her
lines. She simply cannot be made to run, that is all." Well, I
wish I'd only had those crack sailors of the Bohemian Club on board
the Snark the other night for them to see for themselves their one,
vital, unanimous judgment absolutely reversed. Run? It is the one
thing the Snark does to perfection. Run? She ran with a sea-anchor
fast for'ard and a full mizzen flattened down aft.
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