The Riddle of the Sands
in a pointed spit, called the _Scharhorn_. To reach the Elbe from the
west you have to go right outside this, round the lightship, which is
off the Scharhorn, and double back. Of course, that’s what all big
vessels do. But, as you see, these sands are intersected here and there
by channels, very shallow and winding, exactly like those behind the
Frisian Islands. Now look at this one, which cuts right through the big
chunk of sand and comes out near Cuxhaven. The _Telte_ _[See Chart A]_
it’s called. It’s miles wide, you see, at the entrance, but later on it
is split into two by the Hohenhörn bank: then it gets shallow and very
complicated, and ends in a mere tidal driblet with another name. It’s
just the sort of channel I should like to worry into on a fine day or
with an off-shore wind. Alone, in thick weather and a heavy sea, it
would have been folly to attempt it, except as a desperate resource.
But, as I said I knew at once that Dollmann was proposing to run for it
and guide me in.
“I didn’t like the idea, because I like doing things for myself, and,
silly as it sounds, I believe I resented being told the sea was too bad
for me, which it certainly was. Yet the short cut did save several
miles and a devil of a tumble off the Scharhorn, where two tides meet.
I had complete faith in Dollmann, and I suppose I decided that I should
be a fool not to take a good chance. I hesitated. I know; but in the
end I nodded, and held up my arm as she forged ahead again. Soon after,
she shifted her course and I followed. You asked me once if I ever took
a pilot. That was the only time.”
He spoke with bitter gravity, flung himself back, and felt his pocket
for his pipe. It was not meant for a dramatic pause, but it certainly
was one. I had just a glimpse of still another Davies—a Davies five
years older throbbing with deep emotions, scorn, passion, and stubborn
purpose; a being above my plane, of sterner stuff, wider scope. Intense
as my interest had become, I waited almost timidly while he
mechanically rammed tobacco into his pipe and struck ineffectual
matches. I felt that whatever the riddle to be solved, it was no mean
one. He repressed himself with an effort, half rose, and made his
circular glance at the clock, barometer, and skylight, and then
resumed.
“We soon came to what I knew must be the beginning of the Telte
channel. All round you could hear the breakers on the sands, though it
was too thick to see them yet. As the water shoaled, the sea, of
course, got shorter and steeper. There was more wind—a whole gale I
should say.
“I kept dead in the wake of the _Medusa_, but to my disgust I found she
was gaining on me very fast. Of course I had taken for granted, when he
said he would lead me in, that he would slow down and keep close to me.
He could easily have done so by getting his men up to check his sheets
or drop his peak. Instead of that he was busting on for all he was
worth. Once, in a rain-squall, I lost sight of him altogether; got him
faintly again, but had enough to do with my own tiller not to want to
be peering through the scud after a runaway pilot. I was all right so
far, but we were fast approaching the worst part of the whole passage,
where the Hohenhörn bank blocks the road, and the channel divides. I
don’t know what it looks like to you on the chart—perhaps fairly
simple, because you can follow the twists of the channels, as on a
ground-plan; but a stranger coming to a place like that (where there
are no buoys, mind you) can tell nothing certain by the eye—unless
perhaps at dead low water, when the banks are high and dry, and in very
clear weather—he must trust to the lead and the compass, and feel his
way step by step. I knew perfectly well that what I should soon see
would be a wall of surf stretching right across and on both sides. To
_feel_ one’s way in that sort of weather is impossible. You must _know_
your way, or else have a pilot. I had one, but he was playing his own
game.
“With a second hand on board to steer while I conned I should have felt
less of an ass. As it was, I knew I ought to be facing the music in the
offing, and cursed myself for having broken my rule and gone blundering
into this confounded short cut. It was giving myself away, doing just
the very thing that you can’t do in single-handed sailing.
“By the time I realised the danger it was far too late to turn and
hammer out to the open. I was deep in the bottle-neck bight of the
sands, jammed on a lee shore, and a strong flood tide sweeping me on.
That tide, by the way, gave just the ghost of a chance. I had the hours
in my head, and knew it was about two-thirds flood, with two hours more
of rising water. That meant the banks would be all covering when I
reached them, and harder than ever to locate; but it also meant that I
_might_ float right over the worst of them if I hit off a lucky place.”
Davies thumped the table in disgust. “Pah! It makes me sick to think of
having to trust to an accident like that, like a lubberly cockney out
for a boozy Bank Holiday sail. Well, just as I foresaw, the wall of
surf appeared clean across the horizon, and curling back to shut me in,
booming like thunder. When I last saw the _Medusa_ she seemed to be
charging it like a horse at a fence, and I took a rough bearing of her
position by a hurried glance at the compass. At that very moment I
_thought_ she seemed to luff and show some of her broadside; but a
squall blotted her out and gave me hell with the tiller. After that she
was lost in the white mist that hung over the line of breakers. I kept
on my bearing as well as I could, but I was already out of the channel.
I knew that by the look of the water, and as we neared the bank I saw
it was all awash and without the vestige of an opening. I wasn’t going
to chuck her on to it without an effort; so, more by instinct than with
any particular hope, I put the helm down, meaning to work her along the
edge on the chance of spotting a way over. She was buried at once by
the beam sea, and the jib flew to blazes; but the reefed stays’l stood,
she recovered gamely, and I held on, though I knew it could only be for
a few minutes, as the centre-plate was up, and she made frightful
leeway towards the bank.
“I was half-blinded by scud, but suddenly I noticed what looked like a
gap, behind a spit which curled out right ahead. I luffed still more to
clear this spit, but she couldn’t weather it. Before you could say
knife she was driving across it, bumped heavily, bucked forward again,
bumped again, and—ripped on in deeper water! I can’t describe the next
few minutes. I was in some sort of channel, but a very narrow one, and
the sea broke everywhere. I hadn’t proper command either; for the
rudder had crocked up somehow at the last bump. I was like a drunken
man running for his life down a dark alley, barking himself at every
corner. It couldn’t last long, and finally we went crash on to
something and stopped there, grinding and banging. So ended that little
trip under a pilot.
“Well, it was like this—there was really no danger”—I opened my eyes at
the characteristic phrase. “I mean, that lucky stumble into a channel
was my salvation. Since then I had struggled through a mile of sands,
all of which lay behind me like a breakwater against the gale. They
were covered, of course, and seething like soapsuds; but the force of
the sea was deadened. The _Dulce_ was bumping, but not too heavily. It
was nearing high tide, and at half ebb she would be high and dry.
“In the ordinary way I should have run out a kedge with the dinghy, and
at the next high water sailed farther in and anchored where I could lie
afloat. The trouble was now that my hand was hurt and my dinghy stove
in, not to mention the rudder business. It was the first bump on the
outer edge that did the damage. There was a heavy swell there, and when
we struck, the dinghy, which was towing astern, came home on her
painter and down with a crash on the yacht’s weather quarter. I stuck
out one hand to ward it off and got it nipped on the gunwale. She was
badly stove in and useless, so I couldn’t run out the kedge”—this was
Greek to me, but I let him go on—“and for the present my hand was too
painful even to stow the boom and sails, which were whipping and
racketing about anyhow. There was the rudder, too, to be mended; and we
were several miles from the nearest land. Of course, if the wind fell,
it was all easy enough; but if it held or increased it was a poor
look-out. There’s a limit to strain of that sort—and other things might
have happened.
“In fact, it was precious lucky that Bartels turned up. His galliot was
at anchor a mile away, up a branch of the channel. In a clear between
squalls he saw us, and, like a brick, rowed his boat out—he and his
boy, and a devil of a pull they must have had. I was glad enough to see
them—no, that’s not true; I was in such a fury of disgust and shame
that I believe I should have been idiot enough to say I didn’t want
help, if he hadn’t just nipped on board and started work. He’s a terror
to work, that little mouse of a chap. In half an hour he had stowed the
sails, unshackled the big anchor, run out fifty fathoms of warp, and
hauled her off there and then into deep water. Then they towed her up
the channel—it was dead to leeward and an easy job—and berthed her near
their own vessel. It was dark by that time, so I gave them a drink, and
said good-night. It blew a howling gale that night, but the place was
safe enough, with good ground-tackle.
“The whole affair was over; and after supper I thought hard about it
all.”
CHAPTER VIII.
The Theory
Davies leaned back and gave a deep sigh, as though he still felt the
relief from some tension. I did the same, and felt the same relief. The
chart, freed from the pressure of our fingers, rolled up with a flip,
as though to say, “What do you think of that?” I have straightened out
his sentences a little, for in the excitement of his story they had
grown more and more jerky and elliptical.
“What about Dollmann?” I asked.
“Of course,” said Davies, “what about him? I didn’t get at much that
night. It was all so sudden. The only thing I could have sworn to from
the first was that he had purposely left me in the lurch that day. I
pieced out the rest in the next few days, which I’ll just finish with
as shortly as I can. Bartels came aboard next morning, and though it
was blowing hard still we managed to shift the _Dulcibella_ to a place
where she dried safely at the midday low water, and we could get at her
rudder. The lower screw-plate on the stern post had wrenched out, and
we botched it up roughly as a makeshift. There were other little
breakages, but nothing to matter, and the loss of the jib was nothing,
as I had two spare ones. The dinghy was past repair just then, and I
lashed it on deck.
“It turned out that Bartels was carrying apples from Bremen to Kappeln
(in this fiord), and had run into that channel in the sands for shelter
from the weather. To-day he was bound for the Eider River, whence, as I
told you, you can get through (by river and canal) into the Baltic. Of
course the Elbe route, by the new Kaiser Wilhelm ship canal, is the
shortest. The Eider route is the old one, but he hoped to get rid of
some of his apples at Tönning, the town at its mouth. Both routes touch
the Baltic at Kiel. As you know, I had been running for the Elbe, but
yesterday’s muck-up put me off, and I changed my mind—I’ll tell you why
presently—and decided to sail to the Eider along with the _Johannes_
and get through that way. It cleared from the east next day, and I
raced him there, winning hands down, left him at Tönning, and in three
days was in the Baltic. It was just a week after I ran ashore that I