when tess came home to supper that night she was all changed again: her looks gay once more, and her step light, and a sort of flutter about her lips—as if she was wanting to smile and was trying not to—and a soft look in her eyes that i never had seen there, but knew the meaning of and found the worst of all.
i couldn't eat my supper; and got up presently and went out leaving it—my mother looking after me wondering—and walked up and down on the cliff-edge in the darkness with my heart all in a blaze of hate for john. for a good while i had been looking for what i knew was in the way of coming to me; but it was different, and worse, and hurt more than i had counted on, when at last it came. out there in the darkness i staid until the night was well on—not wanting for a while to hear the sound of[210] tess's voice nor to lay eyes on her. not until i was sure, by the lights being out in the house, that she'd gone to bed, did i go in again. my mother was waiting waking for me. she came to me in the dark and put her arms around me and kissed me; by which i knew that tess had been telling her—and knew, too, she always having looked to the wedding of us, that her heart was sore along with mine. but i could not bear even her soft touch on the hurt that i had. i just kissed her back again and broke away from her and went to bed. and in the very early morning, not having slept much, i slipped out of the house before either she or tess was stirring and down to my boat and so away to sea.
what i was after was to get some quiet time to myself that would steady me before i had things out with john. i was not clear in my mind how i meant to settle with him. i did know, though, that i meant to have some sort of a fair fight with him that would end in my killing him or in him killing me—and i knew that to tackle him with my head all in a buzz would be to throw too many chances his way. and so i got away in my boat, at the day-dawn, to the sea's quietness: where i could clear my head of[211] the buzzing that was in it and put some sort of shape to my plans.
had i been in my sober senses that morning i never should have gone away seaward at all. backing up the promise of the yellow sunset of the night before, pink clouds were showing in the eastern sky as i started; and as i sailed on in loneliness—standing straight out from the land on a soft leading wind from the south-west westerly—the pink turned to a pale red and then to a deep red, and at last the sun came up out of the water a great ball of fire. the look of the sea, too, all in an oily bubble, and the set of the ground-swell, told me plain enough—even without the sunrise fairly shouting it in the ears of me—that a change of wind was coming before mid-day, and that pretty soon after the wind shifted it would be blowing a gale.
i will say this, though: if i'd missed seeing the red sunrise—and all the more if i'd been full of happiness and my wits gone a wool-gathering—i might have thought from the look and the feel of the water, and from the set of the high clouds, that the wind would not blow to hurt anything for a good twelve hours. that much i'll say by way of excuse for john. like enough he slept late that morning—through ly[212]ing awake the night before thinking what he'd be likely to think—and so missed seeing the sun's warning. when he did get away in his boat it was well past eight o'clock; and there was no man on the beach when he started, so they told me, to counsel him. and, all being said, even a good sailor—and that john was—starting off as he was to buy a wedding-ring might not look as sharp as he ought to look at the sea and at the sky.
as to my own sailing seaward—i seeing the storm-signals and knowing the meaning of them—i have no more to say than that i was hot for a fight with anything that morning, and didn't care much what i had it with or how it came. anybody who knows how to sail a boat, and to sail one well, knows what joy there is in getting the better of foul winds and rough seas for the mere fun of the thing; but there is still more joy in a tussle of that sort when you are in a towering rage. then you are ready to push the fight farther by taking more and bigger death-chances: since a man in bitter anger—at least in such bitter anger as i was in then—does not care much whether he pulls through safely or gets drowned. and so i went on my course seaward, on that soft wind blowing more and more lazily, until the coast line was lost[213] in the water behind me: knowing well enough, and glad to have it that way, that the wind would lull and lull until it failed me, and that then i would get a blow out of the northeast that would give me all the fight i wanted, and perhaps a bit to spare!
but because i meant my fight to be a good one, and meant to win it, i got myself ready for it. when the wind did fail—the sun was put out by that time, and from high up in the northeast the scud was flying over me—i took in and snugged away everything but my mainsail, and put a double reef in that with the reef-points knotted to hold. then i waited, drifting south a little—the flood having made half an hour before, and the set of the ebb taking me that way.
i did not have to wait long. out of the mist, banked thick to the north-eastward, came the moaning that a strong wind makes when it's rushing down on you; then from under the mist swept out a dark riffle that broke the oily bubble of the water and put life into it; and then the wind got to me with a bang. there was more of it than i had counted on having at the first, showing that the gale behind it was a strong one and coming down fast; but i had the nose of my boat pointed up to meet it, and[214] with no more than a bit of a rattle i got away close-hauled. there was no going back to southwold, of course. what i was heading for was the pakefield gat into the stanford channel, and so to the harbour at lowestoft; and i pretty well knew from the first that no matter how close i bit into the wind—and my boat was a weatherly one—i had my work cut out for me if i meant to keep from going to leeward of the pakefield gat in the gale that was coming on.
go to leeward i did, and badly. when i raised the coast again, and a lift of the mist gave me my bearings, i saw that kessingland tower was my landfall. as to working up from there to the pakefield gat—the edge of the gale by that time being fairly on me—i knew that it was clean impossible. i still had two chances left—one being to cross the barnard by the wreck gat, and the other to round into covehithe channel across the tail of the bank. to the first of these the wind would help me; but i knew that even with the wind's help it would be ticklish work trying to squeeze through that narrow place at the half ebb—when the strong outset of the current would be meeting the inpour of the storm-driven sea. it would be better, so i settled after a minute's thinking, to[215] pass that chance and take the other—which would be a fairly sure one, though a close one too. and so i wore around—with a bad wallow in the trough of the sea that set everything to shaking for a minute—and got on my new course pretty well on the wind.
just as i was making ready for wearing, and so had my hands full, i glimpsed the sail of a boat in the mist up to windward; and when i was come about she was abeam to leeward, showing her high weather side to me, not twenty yards away. then i saw that it was john heath's boat, and that john was standing up alone in her at the helm. why the fool had not staid safe in lowestoft harbour, god only knows. but it's only fair to him, again, to say that he must have got away from lowestoft a good while before the wind shifted; and like enough he would have worked down to southwold, and got his boat safe beached there before trouble came, if the calm had not caught him sooner than it did me—he being all the time close under the land.
