104 THE SALT OF MY LIFE 



hear the pulsing screws of a couple of destroyers, 

 fully twenty miles away, on a trial between Ply- 

 mouth and Polperro. To anyone buried in a 

 London club, it may not sound a very terrible 

 ordeal to be becalmed ten miles from port on a 

 summer sea, but it is astonishing how one resents 

 a contretemps of the kind under compulsion. There 

 is nothing for it but to lend a hand with the long 

 sweepers and whistle for the wind. George, in 

 the laudable desire to cheer our spirits, still further 

 depresses us with an endless dirge relating the 

 Titanic loves of the Cornish giants, who seem to 

 have had a terrible way with the ladies. At last 

 his quick eye catches the thin black line on the 

 water, away to the south, and the little puff catches 

 the ready sails after we have worked like galley- 

 slaves for the best part of an hour. By that time, 

 unaccustomed to such labour with oars that bulk 

 like telegraph poles, we are reduced to pulp, and 

 while George crowds on all the sail he can, we 

 make a frantic raid on such of the bottles as yet 

 contain refreshment. Happily the breeze has 

 come to stay, and we are soon racing in past the 

 Gwingeas and Chapel Point, though the wind has 

 gone round to the S.W. and we make a lot of lee 

 way, fetching nearly to Black-Head. One tack, 

 however, just runs us between the piers and, since 

 it is three parts high water, right to the inner steps. 

 Thus ends our last visit for the year to Tom Ash, 



