The Riddle of the Sands
wired to you. You see, I had come to the conclusion that _that chap was
a spy_.”
In the end it came out quite quietly and suddenly, and left me in
profound amazement. “I wired to you—that chap was a spy.” It was the
close association of these two ideas that hit me hardest at the moment.
For a second I was back in the dreary splendour of the London
club-room, spelling out that crabbed scrawl from Davies, and
fastidiously criticising its proposal in the light of a holiday.
Holiday! What was to be its issue? Chilling and opaque as the fog that
filtered through the skylight there flooded my imagination a mist of
doubt and fear.
“A spy!” I repeated blankly. “What do you mean? Why did you wire to me?
A spy of what—of whom?”
“I’ll tell you how I worked it out,” said Davies. “I don’t think ‘spy’
is the right word; but I mean something pretty bad.
“He purposely put me ashore. I don’t think I’m suspicious by nature,
but I know something about boats and the sea. I know he could have kept
close to me if he had chosen, and I saw the whole place at low water
when we left those sands on the second day. Look at the chart again.
Here’s the Hohenhörn bank that I showed you as blocking the road. _[See
Chart A]_ It’s in two pieces—first the west and then the east. You see
the Telte channel dividing into two branches and curving round it. Both
branches are broad and deep, as channels go in those waters. Now, in
sailing in I was nowhere near either of them. When I last saw Dollmann
he must have been steering straight for the bank itself, at a point
somewhere _here_, quite a mile from the northern arm of the channel,
and two from the southern. I followed by compass, as you know, and
found nothing but breakers ahead. How did I get through? That’s where
the luck came in. I spoke of only two channels, that is, _round_ the
bank—one to the north, the other to the south. But look closely and
you’ll see that right through the centre of the West Hohenhörn runs
another, a very narrow and winding one, so small that I hadn’t even
noticed it the night before, when I was going over the chart. That was
the one I stumbled into in that tailor’s fashion, as I was groping
along the edge of the surf in a desperate effort to gain time. I bolted
down it blindly, came out into this strip of open water, crossed that
aimlessly, and brought up on the edge of the _East_ Hohenhörn, _here_.
It was more than I deserved. I can see now that it was a hundred to one
in favour of my striking on a bad place outside, where I should have
gone to pieces in three minutes.”
“And how did Dollmann go?” I asked.
“It’s as clear as possible,” Davies answered. “He doubled back into the
northern channel when he had misled me enough. Do you remember my
saying that when I last saw him I _thought_ he had luffed and showed
his broadside? I had another bit of luck in that. He was luffing
towards the north—so it struck me through the blur—and when I in my
turn came up to the bank, and had to turn one way or the other to avoid
it, I think I should naturally have turned north too, as he had done.
In that case I should have been done for, for I should have had a mile
of the bank to skirt before reaching the north channel, and should have
driven ashore long before I got there. But as a matter of fact I turned
south.”
“Why?”
“Couldn’t help it. I was running on the starboard tack—boom over to
port; to turn north would have meant a jibe, and as things were I
couldn’t risk one. It was blowing like fits; if anything had carried
away I should have been on shore in a jiffy. I scarcely thought about
it at all, but put the helm down and turned her south. Though I knew
nothing about it, that little central channel was now on my port hand,
distant about two cables. The whole thing was luck from beginning to
end.”
Helped by pluck, I thought to myself, as I tried with my landsman’s
fancy to conjure up that perilous scene. As to the truth of the affair,
the chart and Davies’s version were easy enough to follow, but I felt
only half convinced. The “spy”, as Davies strangely called his pilot,
might have honestly mistaken the course himself, outstripped his convoy
inadvertently, and escaped disaster as narrowly as she did. I suggested
this on the spur of the moment, but Davies was impatient.
“Wait till you hear the whole thing,” he said. “I must go back to when
I first met him. I told you that on that first evening he began by
being as rude as a bear and as cold as stone, and then became suddenly
friendly. I can see now that in the talk that followed he was pumping
me hard. It was an easy game to play, for I hadn’t seen a gentleman
since Morrison left me, I was tremendously keen about my voyage, and I
thought the chap was a good sportsman, even if he was a bit dark about
the ducks. I talked quite freely—at least, as freely as I could with my
bad German—about my last fortnight’s sailing; how I had been smelling
out all the channels in and out of the islands, how interested I had
been in the whole business, puzzling out the effect of the winds on the
tides, the set of the currents, and so on. I talked about my
difficulties, too; the changes in the buoys, the prehistoric rottenness
of the English charts. He drew me out as much as he could, and in the
light of what followed I can see the point of scores of his questions.
“The next day and the next I saw a good deal of him, and the same thing
went on. And then there were my plans for the future. My idea was, as I
told you, to go on exploring the German coast just as I had the Dutch.
His idea—Heavens, how plainly I see it now!—was to choke me off, get me
to clear out altogether from that part of the coast. That was why he
said there were no ducks. That was why he cracked up the Baltic as a
cruising-ground and shooting-ground. And that was why he broached and
stuck to that plan of sailing in company direct to the Elbe. It was to
_see_ me clear.
“He improved on that.”
“Yes, but after that, it’s guess-work. I mean that I can’t tell when he
first decided to go one better and drown me. He couldn’t count for
certain on bad weather, though he held my nose to it when it came. But,
granted that he wanted to get rid of me altogether, he got a
magnificent chance on that trip to the Elbe lightship. I expect it
struck him suddenly, and he acted on the impulse. Left to myself I was
all right; but the short cut was a grand idea of his. Everything was in
its favour—wind, sea, sand, tide. He thinks I’m dead.”
“But the crew?” I said; “what about the crew?”
“That’s another thing. When he first hove to, waiting for me, of course
they were on deck (two of them, I think) hauling at sheets. But by the
time I had drawn up level the _Medusa_ had worn round again on her
course, and no one was on deck but Dollmann at the wheel. No one
overheard what he said.”
“Wouldn’t they have _seen_ you again?”
“Very likely not; the weather was very thick, and the _Dulce_ is very
small.”
The incongruity of the whole business was striking me. Why should
anyone want to kill Davies, and why should Davies, the soul of modesty
and simplicity, imagine that anyone wanted to kill him? He must have
cogent reasons, for he was the last man to give way to a morbid fancy.
“Go on,” I said. “What was his motive? A German finds an Englishman
exploring a bit of German coast, determines to stop him, and even to
get rid of him. It looks so far as if you were thought to be the spy.
Davies winced. “_But he’s not a German_,” he said, hotly. “He’s an
Englishman.”
“An Englishman?”
“Yes, I’m sure of it. Not that I’ve much to go on. He professed to know
very little English, and never spoke it, except a word or two now and
then to help me out of a sentence; and as to his German, he seemed to
me to speak it like a native; but, of course, I’m no judge.” Davies
sighed. “That’s where I wanted someone like you. You would have spotted
him at once, if he wasn’t German. I go more by a—what do you call
it?—a——”
“General impression,” I suggested.
“Yes, that’s what I mean. It was something in his looks and manner; you
know how different we are from foreigners. And it wasn’t only himself,
it was the way he talked—I mean about cruising and the sea, especially.
It’s true he let me do most of the talking; but, all the same—how can I
explain it? I felt we understood one another, in a way that two
foreigners wouldn’t.
“He pretended to think me a bit crazy for coming so far in a small
boat, but I could swear he knew as much about the game as I did; for
lots of little questions he asked had the right ring in them. Mind you,
all this is an afterthought. I should never have bothered about it—I’m
not cut out for a Sherlock Holmes—if it hadn’t been for what followed.”
“It’s rather vague,” I said. “Have you no more definite reason for
thinking him English?”
“There were one or two things rather more definite,” said Davies,
slowly. “You know when he hove to and hailed me, proposing the short
cut, I told you roughly what he said. I forget the exact words, but
‘abschneiden’ came in—‘durch Watten’ and ‘abschneiden’ (they call the
banks ‘watts’, you know); they were simple words, and he shouted them
loud, so as to carry through the wind. I understood what he meant, but,
as I told you, I hesitated before consenting. I suppose he thought I
didn’t understand, for just as he was drawing ahead again he pointed to
the suth’ard, and then shouted through his hands as a trumpet
‘Verstehen Sie? short-cut through sands: follow me!’ the last two
sentences in downright English. I can hear those words now, and I’ll
swear they were in his native tongue. Of course I thought nothing of it
at the time. I was quite aware that he knew a few English words, though
he had always mispronounced them; an easy trick when your hearer
suspects nothing. But I needn’t say that just then I was observant of
trifles. I don’t pretend to be able to unravel a plot and steer a small
boat before a heavy sea at the same moment.”
“And if he was piloting you into the next world he could afford to
commit himself before you parted! Was there anything else? By the way,
how did the daughter strike you? Did she look English too?”
Two men cannot discuss a woman freely without a deep foundation of
intimacy, and, until this day, the subject had never arisen between us
in any form. It was the last that was likely to, for I could have
divined that Davies would have met it with an armour of reserve. He was
busy putting on this armour now; yet I could not help feeling a little
brutal as I saw how badly he jointed his clumsy suit of mail. Our ages
were the same, but I laugh now to think how old and _blasé_ I felt as
the flush warmed his brown skin, and he slowly propounded the verdict,
“Yes, I think she did.”
“She _talked_ nothing but German, I suppose?”
“Oh, of course.”
“Did you see much of her?”
“A good deal.”
“Was she——,” (how frame it?) “Did she want you to sail to the Elbe with
them?”
“She seemed to,” admitted Davies, reluctantly, clutching at his ally,
the match-box. “But, hang it, don’t dream that she knew what was
coming,” he added, with sudden fire.
I pondered and wondered, shrinking from further inquisition, easy as it
would have been with so truthful a victim, and banishing all thought of
ill-timed chaff. There was a cross-current in this strange affair,
whose depth and strength I was beginning to gauge with increasing
seriousness. I did not know my man yet, and I did not know myself. A
conviction that events in the near future would force us into complete
mutual confidence withheld me from pressing him too far. I returned to
the main question; who was Dollmann, and what was his motive? Davies
struggled out of his armour.
“I’m convinced,” he said, “that he’s an Englishman in German service.