Then, blessing of blessings, out came the sun! Sun, whom we hadn’t seen for days and days, soothing us, healing us, blessing us. Sunday Harbour? Yes–but it was named for quiet Christian principles and little white churches; and we were worshipping the old god of the day because he shone on us. Sun, O Sun . . . . We slipped off our clothes and joined the sea-beasts in “the ooze of their pasture grounds.”

“Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep, where the winds are all asleep; where the spent lights quiver and gleam; where the saltweed sways in the stream . . . .” * [. . . .]

Somehow, I mistrusted that word “refuge” from the beginning–it was too suggestive of other things, such as trouble or shipwreck. And then one always forgets that Pilot books, even if they say small vessels, probably mean cruisers as opposed to battleships. All day the place was perfect. We might have been in a land-locked lake, miles and miles from the sea. But as daylight faded, the tide rose. And by and by it rose some more–and gone was our quiet lagoon. We could see the wild ocean over the tops of our island, and the waves drove through gaps that we had not even suspected. The wind, which all day had kept to the tree tops, now swooped and tore at our refuge like a wild frenzied thing . . . . And by and by it rose some more–and the gusts of wind swept our little boat in wide dizzying semi-circles–first one way and then the other. I let out more and more rope, but our anchor started to drag . . . . and it dragged, and the wind blew, and the tide rose; and finally we were blown out of Sunday Harbour, and backwards into Monday Harbour.

Monday Harbour was another misnomer–a battleship might have held its own, but not a little boat with an uneasy name. I hesitated about staying, then put out two anchors–for the moon was glorious, full and bright; and it swung high, swung low, in the swaying branches. But the wind was making a night of it too. Sleep was impossible with a boat on the prowl; and beauty is only relative. So somewhere in those cold lost hours of a new day I damned the gods of Sun and Moon that led poor sailors from the narrow way, started up my engine and went and found a cove of my own. Ignored by charts, unsung by Coast Pilot, it was calm, it was quiet, it was unnamed. I dropped the anchor . . . and went to sleep. 

Blanchet, M. Wylie. The Curve of Time. (1968) 2010 ed. Sidney: Whitecap, 2010. Print. Gray’s Pub. 70-71

*quot. Mathew Arnold