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Updated: May 2, 2025
The dawn astern was a narrow band of dead white, an effort at daybreak suddenly frustrated by night, but not altogether expunged. The separating black waters bulked above the dawn in regular upheavals, shutting out its pallor, and as incontinently collapsed again to release it to make the Windhover plainer in her solitude. The skipper waddled briskly aft, and stood beside me.
Three small steamers, the size of tugs, but with upstanding bows and a sheer suggesting speed and buoyancy, were lying off the fish market, and mine, the Windhover, had the outside berth. I climbed over to her. Blubber littered her iron deck, and slime drained along her gutters. Black grits showered from her stack.
The moon was looking now over the top of the wall of fog, yet the Windhover, which, with engines reversed, seemed to be going ahead with frightful velocity, drove into an opacity in which there was nothing but the warning sounds of a great fear of us.
It had nearly gone when we sighted another trawler. She was the Susie. She was smaller than the Windhover. We went close enough to hail the men standing knee-deep in the wash on her deck. It would not be easy to forget the Susie. I shall always see her, at the moment when our skipper began to shout through his hands at her.
For the Windhover had drifted into a time and place as innocent of man's highest achievements as is joy of death. The wind and sea were chanting. The riding of the ship kept time to that measure. The vault was turquoise, and the moving floor was cobalt. The white islands of the Olympians were in the sky.
On our port beam the shadow which was East Anglia became suddenly that bright shore which is sometimes conjectured, but is never reached. The Windhover drove athwart the morning, and her bows would ride over the horizon to divide it, and then the skyline joined again as she sank below it. We were beginning to live. I did not know what the skipper would think of it, so I did not cheer.
I don't know how long it was before the Windhover lost way, but we anchored at last, and our own bell began to ring. When our unseen neighbours heard the humming of our exhaust, their frantic appeal subsided, and only now and then they gave their bells a shaking, perhaps to find whether we answered from the same place.
It was then eleven o'clock. Hopefully the Windhover put about. We held on for three hours at full speed, but saw nothing but the same waves. The skipper then rather violently addressed the Dogger, and said he was going below. The mate asked what course he should steer. "Take the damned ship where you like," said the skipper. "I'm going to sleep." He was away ten minutes.
The kestrel is the bird known in England as the windhover, on account of its habit of hovering in mid-air on rapidly-vibrating wings before pouncing on the lizard or other small fry, for which it is ever on the watch. This species is about the same size as the shikra. The head, neck, and tail are grey; the back and wings are dull red. The lower parts are cream-coloured, spotted with brown.
We could not have that argument then, for I had so little time to go ashore and purchase what necessaries could be remembered while narrowly watching the clock. I was astride the bulwarks again when the Windhover was free of her moorings. There was a lack of deliberation and dignity in this departure which gave it the appearance of improvisation, of not being the real thing.
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