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Updated: May 22, 2025
It had been what Magda called a "blue day" the sky overhead a deep unbroken azure, the dimpling, dancing waters of the Solent flinging back a blue almost as vivid and she and Quarrington had put out from Netherway harbour in the morning and crossed to Cowes.
Although Jack was not a racing man the Lalage being of altogether too ancient a type to pose as a racer he was by no means unknown in the yachting world, and he found a host of acquaintances ready and willing to welcome his appearance in Cowes Roads, especially coming as he did in such a fine, handsome little ship as the Thetis; and for the first fortnight of the racing the new steamer, with her burgee and blue ensign, was a quite conspicuous object as, with large parties of friends, both male and female, on board, she followed the racers up and down the sparkling waters of the Solent.
"By heavens," exclaimed her antagonist, "I will stand this no longer. I will call upon Neptune to raise such a storm in the Solent as shall convince you that there is quite enough sea surrounding that pearl of islands, that paradise, that world's wonder we are going to visit."
Lady Wathin heard of her cousin's having been removed to Cowes in May, for light Solent and Channel voyages on board Lord Esquart's yacht.
It was half-past eight, and all were under way under mainsail and jib. The Solent was alive with yachts. They were pouring out from Southampton water, they were coming up from Cowes, and some were making their way across from Portsmouth. The day was a fine one for sailing. "Have you got the same extra hands as last time?" Frank asked the skipper. "All the same, sir.
Sheltered by the bold headland is Alum Bay, with its tinted sands, gray, buff, and red, and from Headon Hill, its eastern boundary, the coast stretches away to Yarmouth, a little town on the Solent, where are the remains of one of the defensive blockhouses built by Henry VIII. The shores of the strait trend to the north-east, with pleasant views across on the coast of Hampshire, until the northernmost point of the Isle of Wight is reached, where its chief stream, the Medina, flows into the strait through an estuary about five hundred yards wide.
We had run up Channel, as I have told you, with a fair wind from the start; but, on our reaching the westernmost end of the Isle of Wight, this turned against us, so that after passing through the Needles we had to beat up the Solent in the teeth of a stiff sou'-easter.
The Captain's gig had been sent ashore immediately after breakfast; and about ten o'clock she returned, bringing off Captain Vavassour; the boatswains piped "All hands up anchor!" and half-an-hour later we were bowling away down the Solent before a fine easterly breeze.
A spacious, easy chamber, too; lined with the laziest of divans, seen just now through a fog of smoke, and tenanted by nearly a score of men in every imaginable loose velvet costume, and with faces as well known in the Park at six o'clock in May, and on the Heath in October; in Paris in January, and on the Solent in August; in Pratt's of a summer's night, and on the Moors in an autumn morning, as though they were features that came round as regularly as the "July" or the Waterloo Cup.
Jim Newman, an old man-of-war's man now retired from the navy, and who eked out his pension by letting boats for hire to summer visitors was leaning against an old coal barge that formed his "office," drawn up high and dry on the beach, midway between Southsea Castle and Portsmouth Harbour, and gazing out steadily across the channel of the Solent, to the Isle of Wight beyond.
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