Читать книгу Into the Frozen South онлайн

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Watching the shifting panorama of the coast was not the only occupation, however. The ship, in preparation for her visit to civilization and the far from remote possibility of her again becoming a show-ship, must needs undergo her spring-cleaning; and so sougee-mougee became the order of the day. Everything washable was washed, until we shone from stem to stern; and the deck-hamper was shifted so as to present some appearance of tidiness. But at noon we got a wireless from Lisbon to say that the ordered tug found it impossible to face the short, steep seas that were then running, and consequently we crawled into Cascaes roadstead, at the mouth of the Tagus, and anchored there on the advice of the pilot who boarded us. Portuguese pilots like their comforts, I think, and cordially dislike night navigation; but this one found little to his liking on board the Quest. If the ship was uncomfortable in open water in any sort of a sea, she was doubly so at anchor, for instead of being permitted her free, even rolling, every time she started one the anchor-cable fetched her up with a short, agonizing jerk that seemed to lift a man’s spine up through his skull and threatened to throw him clean out of his bunk. So little did our gallant Portuguese pilot like this motion that he found a means to secure a tug, and at eleven o’clock we were piloted into quieter water in the river’s mouth; after which we got what was really the first decent rest since leaving the mouth of the Channel.