The Riddle of the Sands
Davies had his bearings, and struck on his course confidently. “Now for
the lead,” he said; “the compass’ll be little use soon. We must feel
the edge of the sands till we pick up more booms.”
“Where are we going to anchor for the night?” I asked.
“Under the Hohenhörn,” said Davies, “for auld lang syne!”
Partly by sight and mostly by touch we crept round the outermost alley
of the hidden maze till a new clump of booms appeared, meaningless to
me, but analysed by him into two groups. One we followed for some
distance, and then struck finally away and began another beat to
windward.
Dusk was falling. The Hanover coast-line, never very distinct, had
utterly vanished; an ominous heave of swell was under-running the short
sea. I ceased to attend to Davies imparting instruction on his beloved
hobby, and sought to stifle in hard manual labour the dread that had
been latent in me all day at the prospect of our first anchorage at
sea.
“Sound, like blazes now!” he said at last. I came to a fathom and a
half. “That’s the bank,” he said; “we’ll give it a bit of a berth and
then let go.”
“Let go now!” was the order after a minute, and the chain ran out with
a long-drawn moan. The _Dulcibella_ snubbed up to it and jauntily faced
the North Sea and the growing night.
“There we are!” said Davies, as we finished stowing the mainsail, “safe
and snug in four fathoms in a magnificent sand-harbour, with no one to
bother us and the whole of it to ourselves. No dues, no stinks, no
traffic, no worries of any sort. It’s better than a Baltic cove even,
less beastly civilization about. We’re seven miles from the nearest
coast, and five even from Neuerk—look, they’re lighting up.” There was
a tiny spark in the east.
“I suppose it’s all right,” I said, “but I’d rather see a solid
breakwater somewhere; it’s a dirty-looking night, and I don’t like this
swell.”
“The swell’s nothing,” said Davies; “it’s only a stray drain from
outside. As for breakwaters, you’ve got them all round you, only
they’re hidden. Ahead and to starboard is the West Hohenhörn, curling
round to the sou’-west for all the world like a stone pier. You can
hear the surf battering on its outside over to the north. That’s where
I was nearly wrecked that day, and the little channel I stumbled into
must be quite near us somewhere. Half a mile away—to port there—is the
East Hohenhörn, where I brought up, after dashing across this lake
we’re in. Another mile astern is the main body of the sands, the top
prong of your fork. So you see we’re shut in—practically. Surely you
remember the chart? Why, it’s——”
“Oh, confound the chart!” I broke out, finding this flow of plausible
comfort too dismally suggestive for my nerves. “_Look_ at it, man!
Supposing anything happens—supposing it blows a gale! But it’s no good
shivering here and staring at the view. I’m going below.”
There was a _mauvais quart d’heure_ below, during which, I am ashamed
to say, I forgot the quest.
“Which soup do you feel inclined for?” said Davies, timidly, after a
black silence of some minutes.
That simple remark, more eloquent of security than a thousand technical
arguments, saved the situation.
“I say, Davies,” I said, “I’m a white-livered cur at the best, and you
mustn’t spare me. But you’re not like any yachtsman I ever met before,
or any sailor of any sort. You’re so casual and quiet in the
extraordinary things you do. I believe I should like you better if you
let fly a volley of deep-sea oaths sometimes, or threatened to put me
in irons.”
Davies opened wide eyes, and said it was all his fault for forgetting
that I was not as used to such anchorages as he was. “And, by the way,”
he added, “as to its blowing a gale, I shouldn’t wonder if it did; the
glass is falling hard; but it can’t hurt us. You see, even at high
water the drift of the sea——”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, don’t begin again. You’ll prove soon that we’re
safer here than in an hotel. Let’s have dinner, and a thundering good
one!”
Dinner ran a smooth course, but just as coffee was being brewed the
hull, from pitching regularly, began to roll.
“I knew she would,” said Davies. “I was going to warn you, only—the ebb
has set in _against_ the wind. It’s quite safe——”
“I thought you said it would get calmer when the tide fell?”
“So it will, but it may _seem_ rougher. Tides are queer things,” he
added, as though in defence of some not very respectable acquaintances.
He busied himself with his logbook, swaying easily to the motion of the
boat; and I for my part tried to write up my diary, but I could not fix
my attention. Every loose article in the boat became audibly restless.
Cans clinked, cupboards rattled, lockers uttered hollow groans. Small
things sidled out of dark hiding-places, and danced grotesque drunken
figures on the floor, like goblins in a haunted glade. The mast whined
dolorously at every heel, and the centreboard hiccoughed and choked.
Overhead another horde of demons seemed to have been let loose. The
deck and mast were conductors which magnified every sound and made the
tap-tap of every rope’s end resemble the blows of a hammer, and the
slapping of the halyards against the mast the rattle of a Maxim gun.
The whole tumult beat time to a rhythmical chorus which became
maddening.
“We might turn in now,” said Davies; “it’s half-past ten.”
“What, sleep through this?” I exclaimed. “I can’t stand this, I must
_do_ something. Can’t we go for another walk?”
I spoke in bitter, half-delirious jest.
“Of course we can,” said Davies, “if you don’t mind a bit of a tumble
in the dinghy.”
I reconsidered my rash suggestion, but it was too late now to turn
back, and some desperate expedient was necessary. I found myself on
deck, gripping a backstay and looking giddily down and then up at the
dinghy, as it bobbed like a cork in the trough of the sea alongside,
while Davies settled the sculls and rowlocks.
“Jump!” he shouted, and before I could gather my wits and clutch the
sides we were adrift in the night, reeling from hollow to hollow of the
steep curling waves. Davies nursed our walnut-shell tenderly over their
crests, edging her slantwise across their course. He used very little
exertion, relying on the tide to carry us to our goal. Suddenly the
motion ceased. A dark slope loomed up out of the night, and the dinghy
rested softly in a shallow eddy.
“The West Hohenhörn,” said Davies. We jumped out and sank into soft
mud, hauled up the dinghy a foot or two, then mounted the bank and were
on hard, wet sand. The wind leapt on us, and choked our voices.
“Let’s find my channel,” bawled Davies. “This way. Keep Neuerk light
right astern of you.”
We set off with a long, stooping stride in the teeth of the wind, and
straight towards the roar of the breakers on the farther side of the
sand. A line of Matthew Arnold’s, “The naked shingles of the world,”
was running in my head. “Seven miles from land,” I thought, “scuttling
like sea-birds on a transient islet of sand, encircled by rushing tides
and hammered by ocean, at midnight in a rising gale—cut off even from
our one dubious refuge.” It was the time, if ever, to conquer weakness.
A mad gaiety surged through me as I drank the wind and pressed forward.
It seemed but a minute or two and Davies clutched me.
“Look out!” he shouted. “It’s my channel.”
The ground sloped down, and a rushing river glimmered before us. We
struck off at a tangent and followed its course to the north, stumbling
in muddy rifts, slipping on seaweed, beginning to be blinded by a fine
salt spray, and deafened by the thunder of the ocean surf. The river
broadened, whitened, roughened, gathered itself for the shock, was
shattered, and dissolved in milky gloom. We wheeled away to the right,
and splashed into yeasty froth. I turned my back to the wind, scooped
the brine out of my eyes, faced back and saw that our path was barred
by a welter of surf. Davies’s voice was in my ear and his arm was
pointing seaward.
“This—is—about where—I—bumped first—worse then—nor’-west
wind—this—is—nothing. Let’s—go—right—round.”
We galloped away with the wind behind us, skirting the line of surf. I
lost all account of time and direction. Another sea barred our road,
became another river as we slanted along its shore. Again we were in
the teeth of that intoxicating wind. Then a point of light was swaying
and flickering away to the left, and now we were checking and circling.
I stumbled against something sharp—the dinghy’s gunwale. So we had
completed the circuit of our fugitive domain, that
dream-island—nightmare island as I always remember it.
“You must scull, too,” said Davies. “It’s blowing hard now. Keep her
nose _up_ a little—all you know!”
We lurched along, my scull sometimes buried to the thwart, sometimes
striking at the bubbles of a wave top. Davies, in the bows, said
“Pull!” or “Steady!” at intervals. I heard the scud smacking against
his oilskin back. Then a wan, yellow light glanced over the waves.
“Easy! Let her come!” and the bowsprit of the _Dulcibella_, swollen to
spectral proportions, was stabbing the darkness above me. “Back a bit!
Two good strokes. Ship your scull! Now jump!” I clawed at the tossing
hull and landed in a heap. Davies followed with the painter, and the
dinghy swept astern.
“She’s riding beautifully now,” said he, when he had secured the
painter. “There’ll be no rolling on the flood, and it’s nearly low
water.”
I don’t think I should have cared, however much she had rolled. I was
finally cured of funk.
It was well that I was, for to be pitched out of your bunk on to wet
oil-cloth is a disheartening beginning to a day. This happened about
eight o’clock. The yacht was pitching violently, and I crawled on all
fours into the cabin, where Davies was setting out breakfast on the
floor.
“I let you sleep on,” he said; “we can’t do anything till the water
falls. We should never get the anchor up in this sea. Come and have a
look round. It’s clearing now,” he went on, when we were crouching low
on deck, gripping cleats for safety. “Wind’s veered to nor’-west. It’s
been blowing a full gale, and the sea is at its worst now—near high
water. You’ll never see worse than this.”
I was prepared for what I saw—the stormy sea for leagues around, and a
chaos of breakers where our dream-island had stood—and took it quietly,
even with a sort of elation. The _Dulcibella_ faced the storm as
doggedly as ever, plunging her bowsprit into the sea and flinging green
water over her bows. A wave of confidence and affection for her welled
through me. I had been used to resent the weight and bulk of her
unwieldy anchor and cable, but I saw their use now; varnish, paint,
spotless decks, and snowy sails were foppish absurdities of a hateful
past.
“What can we do to-day?” I asked.
“We must keep well inside the banks and be precious careful wherever
there’s a swell. It’s rampant in here, you see, in spite of the barrier
of sand. But there’s plenty we can do farther back.”
We breakfasted in horrible discomfort; then smoked and talked till the
roar of the breakers dwindled. At the first sign of bare sand we got
under way, under mizzen and headsails only, and I learned how to sail a
reluctant anchor out of the ground. Pivoting round, we scudded east
before the wind, over the ground we had traversed the evening before,
while an archipelago of new banks slowly shouldered up above the fast
weakening waves. We trod delicately among and around them, sounding and
observing; heaving to where space permitted, and sometimes using the
dinghy. I began to see where the risks lay in this sort of navigation.
Wherever the ocean swell penetrated, or the wind blew straight down a
long deep channel, we had to be very cautious and leave good margins.