Within a gunshot of the heart of Vancouver lies a snug tidal basin where
yachts swing to their moorings, where a mosquito fleet of motor craft
lies along narrow slips, with the green woods of Stanley Park for a
background. Thompson knew Coal Harbor well. He knew the slips and the
boats and many of the men who owned them. He had gone on many a week-end
cruise out of that basin with young fellows who looked their last on the
sea when they crossed the English Channel. So he had picked up a working
fund of nautical practice, a first-hand knowledge of the sea and the
manner of handling small sail.
From the Granada he went straight to Coal Harbor. While the afternoon
was yet young he had chartered a yawl, a true one-man craft, carrying
plenty of canvas for her inches, but not too much. She had a small, snug
cabin, was well-found as to gear, and was equipped with a sturdy
single-cylinder gas engine to kick her along through calm and tideway.
Before six he had her ready for sea, his dunnage bag aboard, grub in the
lockers, gas in the tanks, clearance from the customhouse. He slept
aboard in a bunk softer than many a sleeping place that had fallen to
his lot in France. And at sunrise the outgoing tide bore him swiftly
through the Narrows and spewed him out on the broad bosom of the Gulf of
Georgia, all ruffled by a stiff breeze that heeled the little yawl and
sent her scudding like a gray gull when Thompson laid her west, a half
north, to clear Roger Curtis Point.
He blew through Welcome Pass at noon on the forefront of a rising gale,
with the sun peeping furtively through cracks in a gathering cloudbank.
As the wind freshened, the manes of the white horses curled higher and
whiter. Thompson tied in his last reef in the lee of a point midway of
the Pass. Once clear of it the marching surges lifted the yawl and bore
her racing forward, and when the crest passed she would drop into a
green hollow like a bird to its nest, to lift and race and sink deep in
the trough again.
But she made merry weather of it. And Thompson rode the tiller, an eye
to his sheets, glorying in his mastery of the sea. It was good to be
there with a clean wind whistling through taut stays, no sound but the
ripple of water streaming under his lee, and the swoosh of breaking seas
that had no power to harm him. Peace rode with him. His body rested, and
the tension left his nerves which for months had been strung like the
gut on a violin.
Between Welcome Pass and Cape Coburn the southeaster loosed its full
fury on him. The seas rose steeper at the turn of the tide, broke with a
wicked curl. He put the Cape on his lee after a wild fifteen minutes
among dangerous tiderips, and then prudence drove him to shelter.