The Riddle of the Sands
intricacies, nor is there space to reproduce it for the benefit of the
instructed reader. For both classes the general map should be
sufficient, taken with the large-scale fragment _[See Chart A]_ which
gives a fair example of the region in detail. It will be seen that the
three broad fairways of the Jade, Weser, and Elbe split up the sands
into two main groups. The westernmost of these is symmetrical in
outline, an acute-angled triangle, very like a sharp steel-shod pike,
if you imagine the peninsula from which it springs to be the wooden
haft. The other is a huge congeries of banks, its base resting on the
Hanover coast, two of its sides tolerably clean and even, and the
third, that facing the north-west, ribboned and lacerated by the fury
of the sea, which has eaten out deep cavities and struck hungry
tentacles far into the interior. The whole resembles an inverted E, or,
better still, a rude fork, on whose three deadly prongs, the Scharhorn
Reef, the Knecht Sand, and the Tegeler Flat, as on the no less deadly
point of the pike, many a good ship splinters herself in northerly
gales. Following this simile, the Hohenhörn bank, where Davies was
wrecked, is one of those that lie between the upper and middle prongs.
Our business was to explore the Pike and the Fork and the channels
which ramify through them. I use the general word “channel”, but in
fact they differ widely in character, and are called in German by
various names: Balje, Gat, Loch, Diep, Rinne. For my purpose I need
only divide them into two sorts—those which have water in them at all
states of the tide, and those which have not, which dry off, that is,
either wholly or partly at low-tide.
Davies explained that the latter would take most learning, and were to
be our chief concern, because they were the “through-routes”—the
connecting links between the estuaries. You can always detect them on
the chart by rows of little Y-shaped strokes denoting “booms”, that is
to say, poles or saplings fixed in the sand to mark the passage. The
strokes, of course, are only conventional signs, and do not correspond
in the least to individual “booms”, which are far too numerous and
complex to be indicated accurately on a chart, even of the largest
scale. The same applies to the course of the channels themselves, whose
minor meanderings cannot be reproduced.
It was on the edge of one of these tidal swatchways that the yacht was
now lying. It is called Sticker’s Gat, and you cannot miss it _[See
Chart A]_ if you carry your eye westward along our course from
Cuxhaven. It was, so Davies told me, the last and most intricate stage
of the “short cut” which the _Medusa_ had taken on that memorable day—a
stage he himself had never reached. Discussion ended, we went on deck,
Davies arming himself with a notebook, binoculars, and the prismatic
compass, whose use—to map the angles of the channels—was at last
apparent. This is what I saw when we emerged.
CHAPTER XII.
My Initiation
The yacht lay with a very slight heel (thanks to a pair of small
bilge-keels on her bottom) in a sort of trough she had dug for herself,
so that she was still ringed with a few inches of water, as it were
with a moat.
For miles in every direction lay a desert of sand. To the north it
touched the horizon, and was only broken by the blue dot of Neuerk
Island and its lighthouse. To the east it seemed also to stretch to
infinity, but the smoke of a steamer showed where it was pierced by the
stream of the Elbe. To the south it ran up to the pencil-line of the
Hanover shore. Only to the west was its outline broken by any vestiges
of the sea it had risen from. There it was astir with crawling white
filaments, knotted confusedly at one spot in the north-west, whence
came a sibilant murmur like the hissing of many snakes. Desert as I
call it, it was not entirely featureless. Its colour varied from light
fawn, where the highest levels had dried in the wind, to brown or deep
violet, where it was still wet, and slate-grey where patches of mud
soiled its clean bosom. Here and there were pools of water, smitten
into ripples by the impotent wind; here and there it was speckled by
shells and seaweed. And close to us, beginning to bend away towards
that hissing knot in the north-west, wound our poor little channel,
mercilessly exposed as a stagnant, muddy ditch with scarcely a foot of
water, not deep enough to hide our small kedge-anchor, which perked up
one fluke in impudent mockery. The dull, hard sky, the wind moaning in
the rigging as though crying in despair for a prey that had escaped it,
made the scene inexpressibly forlorn.
Davies scanned it with gusto for a moment, climbed to a point of
vantage on the boom, and swept his glasses to and fro along the course
of the channel.
“Fairly well boomed,” he said, meditatively, “but one or two are very
much out. By Jove! that’s a tricky bend there.” He took a bearing with
the compass, made a note or two, and sprang with a vigorous leap down
on to the sand.
This, I may say, was the only way of “going ashore” that he really
liked. We raced off as fast as our clumsy sea-boots would let us, and
followed up the course of our channel to the west, reconnoitring the
road we should have to follow when the tide rose.
“The only way to learn a place like this,” he shouted, “is to see it at
low water. The banks are dry then, and the channels are plain. Look at
that boom”—he stopped and pointed contemptuously—“it’s all out of
place. I suppose the channel’s shifted there. It’s just at an important
bend too. If you took it as a guide when the water was up you’d run
aground.”
“Which would be very useful,” I observed.
“Oh, hang it!” he laughed, “we’re exploring. I want to be able to run
through this channel without a mistake. We will, next time.” He
stopped, and plied compass and notebook. Then we raced on till the next
halt was called.
“Look,” he said, “the channel’s getting deeper, it was nearly dry a
moment ago; see the current in it now? That’s the flood tide coming
up—from the _west,_ mind you; that is, from the Weser side. That shows
we’re past the watershed.”
“Watershed?” I repeated, blankly.
“Yes, that’s what I call it. You see, a big sand such as this is like a
range of hills dividing two plains, it’s never dead flat though it
looks it; there’s always one point, one ridge, rather, where it’s
highest. Now a channel cutting right through the sand is, of course,
always at its shallowest when it’s crossing this ridge; at low water
it’s generally dry there, and it gradually deepens as it gets nearer to
the sea on either side. Now at high tide, when the whole sand is
covered, the water can travel where it likes; but directly the ebb sets
in the water falls away on either side the ridge and the channel
becomes two rivers flowing in opposite directions _from_ the centre, or
watershed, as I call it. So, also, when the ebb has run out and the
flood begins, the channel is fed by two currents flowing to the centre
and meeting in the middle. Here the Elbe and the Weser are our two
feeders. Now this current here is going eastwards; we know by the time
of day that the tide’s rising, _therefore_ the watershed is between us
and the yacht.”
“Why is it so important to know that?”
“Because these currents are strong, and you want to know when you’ll
lose a fair one and strike a foul one. Besides, the ridge is the
critical point when you’re crossing on a falling tide, and you want to
know when you’re past it.”
We pushed on till our path was barred by a big lagoon. It looked far
more imposing than the channel; but Davies, after a rapid scrutiny,
treated it to a grunt of contempt.
“It’s a _cul de sac_,” he said. “See that hump of sand it’s making for,
beyond?”
“It’s boomed,” I remonstrated, pointing to a decrepit stem drooping
over the bank, and shaking a palsied finger at the imposture.
“Yes, that’s just where one goes wrong, it’s an old cut that’s silted
up. That boom’s a fraud; there’s no time to go farther, the flood’s
making fast. I’ll just take bearings of what we can see.”
The false lagoon was the first of several that began to be visible in
the west, swelling and joining hands over the ribs of sand that divided
them. All the time the distant hissing grew nearer and louder, and a
deep, thunderous note began to sound beneath it. We turned our backs to
the wind and hastened back towards the _Dulcibella_, the stream in our
channel hurrying and rising alongside of us.
“There’s just time to do the other side,” said Davies, when we reached
her, and I was congratulating myself on having regained our base
without finding our communications cut. And away we scurried in the
direction we had come that morning, splashing through pools and jumping
the infant runnels that were stealing out through rifts from the
mother-channel as the tide rose. Our observations completed, back we
travelled, making a wide circuit over higher ground to avoid the
encroaching flood, and wading shin-deep in the final approach to the
yacht.
As I scrambled thankfully aboard, I seemed to hear a far-off voice
saying, in languid depreciation of yachting, that it did not give one
enough exercise. It was mine, centuries ago, in another life. From east
and west two sheets of water had overspread the desert, each pushing
out tongues of surf that met and fused.
I waited on deck and watched the death-throes of the suffocating sands
under the relentless onset of the sea. The last strongholds were
battered, stormed, and overwhelmed; the tumult of sounds sank and
steadied, and the sea swept victoriously over the whole expanse. The
_Dulcibella_, hitherto contemptuously inert, began to wake and tremble
under the buffetings she received. Then, with an effort, she jerked
herself on to an even keel and bumped and strained fretfully, impatient
to vanquish this insolent invader and make him a slave for her own
ends. Soon her warp tightened and her nose swung slowly round; only her
stern bumped now, and that with decreasing force. Suddenly she was free
and drifting broadside to the wind till the anchor checked her and she
brought up to leeward of it, rocking easily and triumphantly.
Good-humoured little person! At heart she was friends alike with sand
and sea. It was only when the old love and the new love were in mortal
combat for her favours, and she was mauled in the _fracas_, that her
temper rose in revolt.
We swallowed a hasty cup of tea, ran up the sails, and started off west
again. Once across the “watershed” we met a strong current, but the
trend of the passage was now more to the north-west, so that we could
hold our course without tacking, and consequently could stem the tide.
“Give her just a foot of the centre-plate,” said Davies. “We know the
way here, and she’ll make less leeway; but we shall generally have to
do without it always on a falling tide. If you run aground with the
plate down you deserve to be drowned.” I now saw how valuable our walk
had been. The booms were on our right; but they were broken reeds,
giving no hint as to the breadth of the channel. A few had lost their
tops, and were being engulfed altogether by the rising water. When we
came to the point where they ceased, and the false lagoon had lain, I
should have felt utterly lost. We had crossed the high and relatively
level sands which form the base of the Fork, and were entering the
labyrinth of detached banks which obstruct the funnel-shaped cavity
between the upper and middle prongs. This I knew from the chart. My
unaided eye saw nothing but the open sea, growing dark green as the
depths increased; a dour, threatening sea, showing its white fangs. The
waves grew longer and steeper, for the channels, though still tortuous,
now begin to be broad and deep.