The
signalman from the bluff station reported the _Spray_ fifteen miles
off. The wind was freshening, and when she was within eight miles he
said: "The _Spray_ is shortening sail; the mainsail was reefed and set
in ten minutes. One man is doing all the work."
This item of news was printed three minutes later in a Durban morning
journal, which was handed to me when I arrived in port. I could not
verify the time it had taken to reef the sail, for, as I have already
said, the minute-hand of my timepiece was gone. I only knew that I
reefed as quickly as I could.
The same paper, commenting on the voyage, said: "Judging from the
stormy weather which has prevailed off this coast during the past few
weeks, the _Spray_ must have had a very stormy voyage from Mauritius
to Natal." Doubtless the weather would have been called stormy by
sailors in any ship, but it caused the _Spray_ no more inconvenience
than the delay natural to head winds generally.
The question of how I sailed the sloop alone, often asked, is best
answered, perhaps, by a Durban newspaper. I would shrink from
repeating the editor's words but for the reason that undue estimates
have been made of the amount of skill and energy required to sail a
sloop of even the _Spray's_ small tonnage. I heard a man who called
himself a sailor say that "it would require three men to do what it
was claimed" that I did alone, and what I found perfectly easy to do
over and over again; and I have heard that others made similar
nonsensical remarks, adding that I would work myself to death.
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