The Riddle of the Sands
perplexing and ominous direction, which somehow chilled me in spite of
its subject matter.
Indeed, my resolution was continually faltering. It faltered when I
turned out my gun in the evening and thought of the grouse it ought to
have accounted for. It faltered again when I contemplated the
miscellaneous list of commissions, sown broadcast through Davies’s
letter, to fulfil which seemed to make me a willing tool where my
chosen _rôle_ was that of an embittered exile, or at least a
condescending ally. However, I faced the commissions manfully, after
leaving the office.
At Lancaster’s I inquired for his gun, was received coolly, and had to
pay a heavy bill, which it seemed to have incurred, before it was
handed over. Having ordered the gun and No. 4’s to be sent to my
chambers, I bought the Raven mixture with that peculiar sense of injury
which the prospect of smuggling in another’s behalf always entails; and
wondered where in the world Carey and Neilson’s was, a firm which
Davies spoke of as though it were as well known as the Bank of England
or the Stores, instead of specialising in “rigging-screws”, whatever
they might be. They sounded important, though, and it would be only
polite to unearth them. I connected them with the “few repairs,” and
awoke new misgivings. At the Stores I asked for a No. 3 Rippingille
stove, and was confronted with a formidable and hideous piece of
ironmongery, which burned petroleum in two capacious tanks, horribly
prophetic of a smell of warm oil. I paid for this miserably, convinced
of its grim efficiency, but speculating as to the domestic conditions
which caused it to be sent for as an afterthought by telegram. I also
asked about rigging-screws in the yachting department, but learnt that
they were not kept in stock; that Carey and Neilson’s would certainly
have them, and that their shop was in the Minories, in the far east,
meaning a journey nearly as long as to Flensburg, and twice as
tiresome. They would be shut by the time I got there, so after this
exhausting round of duty I went home in a cab, omitted dressing for
dinner (an epoch in itself), ordered a chop up from the basement
kitchen, and spent the rest of the evening packing and writing, with
the methodical gloom of a man setting his affairs in order for the last
time.
The last of those airless nights passed. The astonished Withers saw me
breakfasting at eight, and at 9.30 I was vacantly examining
rigging-screws with what wits were left me after a sulphurous ride in
the underground to Aldgate. I laid great stress on the 3/8’s, and the
galvanism, and took them on trust, ignorant as to their functions. For
the eleven-shilling oilskins I was referred to a villainous den in a
back street, which the shopman said they always recommended, and where
a dirty and bejewelled Hebrew chaffered with me (beginning at 18_s_.)
over two reeking orange slabs distantly resembling moieties of the
human figure. Their odour made me close prematurely for 14_s_., and I
hurried back (for I was due there at 11) to my office with my two
disreputable brown-paper parcels, one of which made itself so
noticeable in the close official air that Carter attentively asked if I
would like to have it sent to my chambers, and K—— was inquisitive to
bluntness about it and my movements. But I did not care to enlighten
K——, whose comments I knew would be provokingly envious or wounding to
my pride in some way.
I remembered, later on, the prismatic compass, and wired to the
Minories to have one sent at once, feeling rather relieved that I was
not present there to be cross-examined as to size and make. The reply
was, “Not stocked; try surveying-instrument maker”—a reply both
puzzling and reassuring, for Davies’s request for a compass had given
me more uneasiness than anything, while, to find that what he wanted
turned out to be a surveying-instrument, was a no less perplexing
discovery. That day I made my last _précis_ and handed over my
schedules—Procrustean beds, where unwilling facts were stretched and
tortured—and said good-bye to my temporary chief, genial and lenient
M——, who wished me a jolly holiday with all sincerity.
At seven I was watching a cab packed with my personal luggage and the
collection of unwieldy and incongruous packages that my shopping had
drawn down on me. Two deviations after that wretched prismatic
compass—which I obtained in the end secondhand, _faute de mieux_, near
Victoria, at one of those showy shops which look like jewellers’ and
are really pawnbrokers’—nearly caused me to miss my train. But at 8.30
I had shaken off the dust of London from my feet, and at 10.30 I was,
as I have announced, pacing the deck of a Flushing steamer, adrift on
this fatuous holiday in the far Baltic.
An air from the west, cooled by a midday thunderstorm, followed the
steamer as she slid through the calm channels of the Thames estuary,
passed the cordon of scintillating lightships that watch over the
sea-roads to the imperial city like pickets round a sleeping army, and
slipped out into the dark spaces of the North Sea. Stars were bright,
summer scents from the Kent cliffs mingled coyly with vulgar
steamer-smells; the summer weather held immutably. Nature, for her
part, seemed resolved to be no party to my penance, but to be
imperturbably bent on shedding mild ridicule over my wrongs. An
irresistible sense of peace and detachment, combined with that
delicious physical awakening that pulses through the nerve-sick
townsman when city airs and bald routine are left behind him, combined
to provide me, however thankless a subject, with a solid background of
resignation. Stowing this safely away, I could calculate my intentions
with cold egotism. If the weather held I might pass a not intolerable
fortnight with Davies. When it broke up, as it was sure to, I could
easily excuse myself from the pursuit of the problematical ducks; the
wintry logic of facts would, in any case, decide him to lay up his
yacht, for he could scarcely think of sailing home at such a season. I
could then take a chance lying ready of spending a few weeks in Dresden
or elsewhere. I settled this programme comfortably and then turned in.
From Flushing eastward to Hamburg, then northward to Flensburg, I cut
short the next day’s sultry story. Past dyke and windmill and still
canals, on to blazing stubbles and roaring towns; at the last, after
dusk, through a quiet level region where the train pottered from one
lazy little station to another, and at ten o’clock I found myself,
stiff and stuffy, on the platform at Flensburg, exchanging greetings
with Davies.
“It’s awfully good of you to come.”
“Not at all; it’s very good of you to ask me.”
We were both of us ill at ease. Even in the dim gaslight he clashed on
my notions of a yachtsman—no cool white ducks or neat blue serge; and
where was the snowy crowned yachting cap, that precious charm that so
easily converts a landsman into a dashing mariner? Conscious that this
impressive uniform, in high perfection, was lying ready in my
portmanteau, I felt oddly guilty. He wore an old Norfolk jacket, muddy
brown shoes, grey flannel trousers (or had they been white?), and an
ordinary tweed cap. The hand he gave me was horny, and appeared to be
stained with paint; the other one, which carried a parcel, had a
bandage on it which would have borne renewal. There was an instant of
mutual inspection. I thought he gave me a shy, hurried scrutiny as
though to test past conjectures, with something of anxiety in it, and
perhaps (save the mark!) a tinge of admiration. The face was familiar,
and yet not familiar; the pleasant blue eyes, open, clean-cut features,
unintellectual forehead were the same; so were the brisk and impulsive
movements; there was some change; but the moment of awkward hesitation
was over and the light was bad; and, while strolling down the platform
for my luggage, we chatted with constraint about trivial things.
“By the way,” he suddenly said, laughing, “I’m afraid I’m not fit to be
seen; but it’s so late it doesn’t matter. I’ve been painting hard all
day, and just got it finished. I only hope we shall have some wind
to-morrow—it’s been hopelessly calm lately. I say, you’ve brought a
good deal of stuff,” he concluded, as my belongings began to collect.
Here was a reward for my submissive exertions in the far east!
“You gave me a good many commissions!”
“Oh, I didn’t mean those things,” he said, absently. “Thanks for
bringing them, by the way. That’s the stove, I suppose; cartridges,
this one, by the weight. You got the rigging-screws all right, I hope?
They’re not really necessary, of course” (I nodded vacantly, and felt a
little hurt); “but they’re simpler than lanyards, and you can’t get
them here. It’s that portmanteau,” he said, slowly, measuring it with a
doubtful eye. “Never mind! we’ll try. You couldn’t do with the
Gladstone only, I suppose? You see, the dinghy—h’m, and there’s the
hatchway, too”—he was lost in thought. “Anyhow, we’ll try. I’m afraid
there are no cabs; but it’s quite near, and the porter’ll help.”
Sickening forebodings crept over me, while Davies shouldered my
Gladstone and clutched at the parcels.
“Aren’t your men here?” I asked, faintly.
“Men?” He looked confused. “Oh, perhaps I ought to have told you, I
never have any paid hands; it’s quite a small boat, you know—I hope you
didn’t expect luxury. I’ve managed her single-handed for some time. A
man would be no use, and a horrible nuisance.” He revealed these
appalling truths with a cheerful assurance, which did nothing to hide a
naïve apprehension of their effect on me. There was a check in our
mobilisation.
“It’s rather late to go on board, isn’t it?” I said, in a wooden voice.
Someone was turning out the gaslights, and the porter yawned
ostentatiously. “I think I’d rather sleep at an hotel to-night.” A
strained pause.
“Oh, of course you can do that, if you like,” said Davies, in
transparent distress of mind. “But it seems hardly worth while to cart
this stuff all the way to an hotel (I believe they’re all on the other
side of the harbour), and back again to the boat to-morrow. She’s quite
comfortable, and you’re sure to sleep well, as you’re tired.”
“We can leave the things here,” I argued feebly, “and walk over with my
bag.”
“Oh, I shall have to go aboard anyhow,” he rejoined; “I _never_ sleep
on shore.”
He seemed to be clinging timidly, but desperately, to some diplomatic
end. A stony despair was invading me and paralysing resistance. Better
face the worst and be done with it.
“Come on,” I said, grimly.
Heavily loaded, we stumbled over railway lines and rubble heaps, and
came on the harbour. Davies led the way to a stairway, whose weedy
steps disappeared below in gloom.
“If you’ll get into the dinghy,” he said, all briskness now, “I’ll pass
the things down.”
I descended gingerly, holding as a guide a sodden painter which ended
in a small boat, and conscious that I was collecting slime on cuffs and
trousers.
“Hold up!” shouted Davies, cheerfully, as I sat down suddenly near the
bottom, with one foot in the water.
I climbed wretchedly into the dinghy and awaited events.
“Now float her up close under the quay wall, and make fast to the ring
down there,” came down from above, followed by the slack of the sodden
painter, which knocked my cap off as it fell. “All fast? Any knot’ll
do,” I heard, as I grappled with this loathsome task, and then a big,
dark object loomed overhead and was lowered into the dinghy. It was my
portmanteau, and, placed athwart, exactly filled all the space
amidships. “Does it fit?” was the anxious inquiry from aloft.
“Beautifully.”
“Capital!”
Scratching at the greasy wall to keep the dinghy close to it, I