The Riddle of the Sands
“We can change our plans. It seems a pity to have missed them.”
“Think twice, captain, there are plenty of pretty girls in Hamburg. But
you English will do anything. Well, viel Glück!”
He moved on, chuckling, to the next boat. Davies soon returned with his
cans and an armful of dark, rye loaves, just in time, for, the liner
being through, the flotilla was already beginning to jostle into the
lock and Bartels was growing impatient.
“They’ll last ten days,” he said, as we followed the throng, still
clinging like a barnacle to the side of the _Johannes_. We spent the
few minutes while the lock was emptied in a farewell talk to Bartels.
Karl had hitched their main halyards on to the windlass and was
grinding at it in an _acharnement_ of industry, his shock head jerking
and his grubby face perspiring. Then the lock-gates opened; and so, in
a Babel of shouting, whining of blocks, and creaking of spars, our
whole company was split out into the dingy bosom of the Elbe. The
_Johannes_ gathered way under wind and tide and headed for midstream. A
last shake of the hand, and Bartels reluctantly slipped the head-rope
and we drifted apart. “Gute Reise! Gute Reise!” It was no time for
regretful gazing, for the flood-tide was sweeping us up and out, and it
was not until we had set the foresail, edged into a shallow bight, and
let go our anchor, that we had leisure to think of him again; but by
that time his and the other craft were shades in the murky east.
We swung close to a _glacis_ of smooth blue mud which sloped up to a
weed-grown dyke; behind lay the same flat country, colourless, humid;
and opposite us, two miles away, scarcely visible in the deepening
twilight, ran the outline of a similar shore. Between rolled the turgid
Elbe. “The Styx flowing through Tartarus,” I thought to myself,
recalling some of our Baltic anchorages.
I told my news to Davies as soon as the anchor was down, instinctively
leaving the sex of the inquirer to the last, as my informant had done.
“The _Medusa_ called yesterday?” he interrupted. “And outward bound?
That’s a rum thing. Why didn’t he inquire when he was going _up_?”
“It was a lady,” and I drily retailed the official’s story, very busy
with a deck-broom the while. “We’re all square now, aren’t we?” I
ended. “I’ll go below and light the stove.”
Davies had been engaged in fixing up the riding-light. When I last saw
him he was still so engaged, but motionless, the lantern under his left
arm and his right hand grasping the forestay and the half-knotted
lanyard; his eyes staring fixedly down the river, a strange look in his
face, half exultant, half perplexed. When he joined me and spoke he
seemed to be concluding a difficult argument.
“Anyway, it proves,” he said, “that the _Medusa_ has gone back to
Norderney. That’s the main thing.”
“Probably,” I agreed, “but let’s sum up all we know. First, it’s
certain that nobody we’ve met as yet has any suspicion of _us_——”
“I told you he did it off his own bat,” threw in Davies.
“Or, secondly, of _him._ If he’s what you think it’s not known here.”
“I can’t help that.”
“Thirdly, he inquires for you on his way _back_ from Hamburg, three
weeks after the event. It doesn’t look as if he thought he had disposed
of you—it doesn’t look as if he had _meant_ to dispose of you. He sends
his daughter, too; a curious proceeding under the circumstances.
Perhaps it’s all a mistake.”
“It’s not a mistake,” said Davies, half to himself. “But _did_ he send
her? He’d have sent one of his men. He can’t be on board at all.”
This was a new light.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“He must have left the yacht when he got to Hamburg; some other devil’s
work, I suppose. She’s being sailed back now, and passing here——”
“Oh, I see! It’s a private supplementary inquiry.”
“That’s a long name to call it.”
“Would the girl sail back alone with the crew?”
“She’s used to the sea—and perhaps she isn’t alone. There was that
stepmother—— But it doesn’t make a ha’porth of difference to our plans;
we’ll start on the ebb to-morrow morning.”
We were busier than usual that night, reckoning stores, tidying
lockers, and securing movables. “We must economise,” said Davies, for
all the world as though we were castaways on a raft. “It’s a wretched
thing to have to land somewhere to buy oil,” was a favourite
observation of his.
Before getting to sleep I was made to recognise a new factor in the
conditions of navigation, now that the tideless Baltic was left behind
us. A strong current was sluicing past our sides, and at the eleventh
hour I was turned out, clad in pyjamas and oilskins (a horrible
combination), to assist in running out a kedge or spare anchor.
“What’s kedging-off?” I asked, when we were tucked up again. “Oh, it’s
when you run aground; you have to—but you’ll soon learn all about it.”
I steeled my heart for the morrow.
So behold us, then, at eight o’clock on October 5, standing down the
river towards the field of our first labours. It is fifteen miles to
the mouth; drab, dreary miles like the dullest reaches of the lower
Thames; but scenery was of no concern to us, and a south-westerly
breeze blowing out of a grey sky kept us constantly on the verge of
reefing. The tide as it gathered strength swept us down with a force
attested by the speed with which buoys came in sight, nodded above us
and passed, each boiling in its eddy of dirty foam. I scarcely noticed
at first—so calm was the water, and so regular were the buoys, like
milestones along a road—that the northern line of coast was rapidly
receding and that the “river” was coming to be but a belt of deep water
skirting a vast estuary, three—seven—ten miles broad, till it merged in
open sea.
“Why, we’re at sea!” I suddenly exclaimed, “after an hour’s sailing!”
“Just discovered that?” said Davies, laughing.
“You said it was fifteen miles,” I complained.
“So it is, till we reach this coast at Cuxhaven; but I suppose you may
say we’re at sea; of course that’s all sand over there to starboard.
Look! some of it’s showing already.”
He pointed into the north. Looking more attentively I noticed that
outside the line of buoys patches of the surface heaved and worked; in
one or two places streaks and circles of white were forming; in the
midst of one such circle a sleek mauve hump had risen, like the back of
a sleeping whale. I saw that an old spell was enthralling Davies as his
eye travelled away to the blank horizon. He scanned it all with a
critical eagerness, too, as one who looks for a new meaning in an old
friend’s face. Something of his zest was communicated to me, and
stilled the shuddering thrill that had seized me. The protecting land
was still a comforting neighbour; but our severance with it came
quickly. The tide whirled us down, and our straining canvas aiding it,
we were soon off Cuxhaven, which crouched so low behind its mighty
dyke, that of some of its houses only the chimneys were visible. Then,
a mile or so on, the shore sharpened to a point like a claw, where the
innocent dyke became a long, low fort, with some great guns peeping
over; then of a sudden it ceased, retreating into the far south in a
dim perspective of groins and dunes.
We spun out into the open and leant heavily over to the now
unobstructed wind. The yacht rose and sank to a little swell, but my
first impression was one of wonder at the calmness of the sea, for the
wind blew fresh and free from horizon to horizon.
“Why, it’s all sand _there_ now, and we’re under the lee of it,” said
Davies, with an enthusiastic sweep of his hand over the sea on our left
or port hand. “That’s our hunting ground.”
“What are we going to do?” I inquired.
“Pick up Sticker’s Gat,” was the reply. “It ought to be near Buoy K.”
A red buoy with a huge K on it soon came into view. Davies peered over
to port.
“Just pull up the centreboard, will you?” he remarked abstractedly,
adding, “and hand me up the glasses as you are down there.”
“Never mind the glasses. I’ve got it now; come to the main-sheet,” was
the next remark.
He put down the helm and headed the yacht straight for the troubled and
discoloured expanse which covered the submerged sands. A “sleeping
whale”, with a light surf splashing on it, was right in our path.
“Stand by the lead, will you?” said Davies, politely. “I’ll manage the
sheets, it’s a dead beat in. Ready about!”
The wind was in our teeth now, and for a crowded half-hour we wormed
ourselves forward by ever-shortening tacks into the sinuous recesses of
a channel which threaded the shallows westward. I knelt in a tangle of
line, and, under the hazy impression that something very critical was
going on, plied the lead furiously, bumping and splashing myself, and
shouting out the depths, which lessened steadily, with a great sense of
the importance of my function. Davies never seemed to listen, but
tacked on imperturbably, juggling with the tiller, the sheets, and the
chart, in a way that made one giddy to look at. For all our zeal we
seemed to be making very slow progress.
“It’s no use, tide’s too strong; we must chance it,” he said at last.
“Chance what?” I wondered to myself. Our tacks suddenly began to grow
longer, and the depths, which I registered, shallower. All went well
for some time though, and we made better progress. Then came a longer
reach than usual.
“Two and a half—two—one and a half—one—only five feet,” I gasped,
reproachfully. The water was growing thick and frothy.
“It doesn’t matter if we do,” said Davies, thinking aloud. “There’s an
eddy here, and it’s a pity to waste it—ready about! Back the jib!”
But it was too late. The yacht answered but faintly to the helm,
stopped, and heeled heavily over, wallowing and grinding. Davies had
the mainsail down in a twinkling; it half smothered me as I crouched on
the lee-side among my tangled skeins of line, scared and helpless. I
crawled out from the folds, and saw him standing by the mast in a
reverie.
“It’s not much use,” he said, “on a falling tide, but we’ll try
kedging-off. Pay that warp out while I run out the kedge.”
Like lightning he had cast off the dinghy’s painter, tumbled the
kedge-anchor and himself into the dinghy, pulled out fifty yards into
the deeper water, and heaved out the anchor.
“Now haul,” he shouted.
I hauled, beginning to see what kedging-off meant.
“Steady on! Don’t sweat yourself,” said Davies, jumping aboard again.
“It’s coming,” I spluttered, triumphantly.
“The warp is, the yacht isn’t; you’re dragging the anchor home. Never
mind, she’ll lie well here. Let’s have lunch.”
The yacht was motionless, and the water round her visibly lower.
Petulant waves slapped against her sides, but, scattered as my senses
were, I realised that there was no vestige of danger. Round us the
whole face of the waters was changing from moment to moment, whitening
in some places, yellowing in others, where breadths of sand began to be
exposed. Close on our right the channel we had left began to look like
a turbid little river; and I understood why our progress had been so
slow when I saw its current racing back to meet the Elbe. Davies was
already below, laying out a more than usually elaborate lunch, in high
content of mind.
“Lies quiet, doesn’t she?” he remarked. “If you _do_ want a sit-down
lunch, there’s nothing like running aground for it. And, anyhow, we’re
as handy for work here as anywhere else. You’ll see.”
Like most landsmen I had a wholesome prejudice against running aground,
so that my mentor’s turn for breezy paradox was at first rather
exasperating. After lunch the large-scale chart of the estuaries was
brought down, and we pored over it together, mapping out work for the
next few days. There is no need to tire the general reader with its