The Riddle of the Sands
Grimm had done his work for the present, I felt certain, and was on his
way by the shortest road to Norderney and Memmert.
We were soon outside and heading west, our boom squared away and the
island sand-dunes just apparent under our lee. Then the breeze died to
the merest draught, and left us rolling inert in a long swell. Consumed
with impatience to get on I saw fatality in this failure of wind, after
a fortnight of unprofitable meanderings, when we had generally had too
much of it, and always enough for our purpose. I tried to read below,
but the vile squirting of the centreboard drove me up.
“Can’t we go any faster?” I burst out once. I felt that there ought to
be a pyramid of gauzy canvas aloft, spinnakers, flying jibs and what
not.
“I don’t go in for speed,” said Davies, shortly. He loyally did his
best to “shove her” along, but puffs and calms were the rule all day,
and it was only by towing in the dinghy for two hours in the afternoon
that we covered the length of Langeoog, and crept before dark to an
anchorage behind Baltrum, its slug-shaped neighbour on the west.
Strictly, I believe, we should have kept the sea all night; but I had
not the grit to suggest that course, and Davies was only too glad of an
excuse for threading the shoals of the Accumer Ee on a rising tide. The
atmosphere had been slowly clearing as the day wore on; but we had
scarcely anchored ten minutes before a blanket of white fog, rolling in
from seaward, swallowed us up. Davies was already afield in the dinghy,
and I had to guide him back with a foghorn, whose music roused hosts of
sea birds from the surrounding flats, and brought them wheeling and
complaining round us, a weird invisible chorus to my mournful solo.
The fog hung heavy still at daybreak on the 20th, but dispersed
partially under a catspaw from the south about eight o’clock, in time
for us to traverse the boomed channel behind Baltrum, before the tide
left the watershed.
“We shan’t get far to-day,” said Davies, with philosophy. “And this
sort of thing may go on for any time. It’s a regular autumn
anti-cyclone—glass thirty point five and steady. That gale was the last
of a stormy equinox.”
We took the inside route as a matter of course to-day. It was now the
shortest to Norderney harbour, and scarcely less intricate than the
Wichter Ee, which appeared to be almost totally blocked by banks, and
is, in fact, the most impassable of all these outlets to the North Sea.
But, as I say, this sort of navigation, always puzzling to me, was
utterly bewildering in hazy weather. Any attempt at orientation made me
giddy. So I slaved at the lead, varying my labour with a fierce bout of
kedge-work when we grounded somewhere. I had two rests before two
o’clock, one of an hour, when we ran into a patch of windless fog;
another of a few moments, when Davies said, “There’s Norderney!” and I
saw, surmounting a long slope of weedy sand, still wet with the
receding sea, a cluster of sandhills exactly like a hundred others I
had seen of late, but fraught with a new and unique interest.
The usual formula, “What have you got now?” checked my reverie, and
“Helm’s a-lee,” ended it for the time. We tacked on (for the wind had
headed us) in very shoal water.
Suddenly Davies said: “Is that a boat ahead?”
“Do you mean that galliot?” I asked. I could plainly distinguish one of
those familiar craft about half a mile away, just within the limit of
vision.
“The _Kormoran_, do you think?” I added. Davies said nothing, but grew
inattentive to his work. “Barely four,” from me passed unnoticed, and
we touched once, but swung off under some play of the current. Then
came abruptly, “Stand by the anchor. Let go,” and we brought up in
mid-stream of the narrow creek we were following. I triced up the
main-tack, and stowed the headsails unaided. When I had done Davies was
still gazing to windward through his binoculars, and, to my
astonishment, I noticed that his hands were trembling violently. I had
never seen this happen before, even at moments when a false turn of the
wrist meant death on a surf-battered bank.
“What is it?” I asked; “are you cold?”
“That little boat,” he said. I gazed to windward, too, and now saw a
scrap of white in the distance, in sharp relief.
“Small standing lug and jib; it’s her, right enough,” said Davies to
himself, in a sort of nervous stammer.
“Who? What?”
“_Medusa_’s dinghy.”
He handed, or rather pushed, me the glasses, still gazing.
“Dollmann?” I exclaimed.
“No, it’s _hers_—the one she always sails. She’s come to meet m—, us.”
Through the glasses the white scrap became a graceful little sail,
squared away for the light following breeze. An angle of the creek hid
the hull, then it glided into view. Someone was sitting aft steering,
man or woman I could not say, for the sail hid most of the figure. For
full two minutes—two long, pregnant minutes—we watched it in silence.
The damp air was fogging the lenses, but I kept them to my eyes; for I
did not want to look at Davies. At last I heard him draw a deep breath,
straighten himself up, and give one of his characteristic “h’ms”. Then
he turned briskly aft, cast off the dinghy’s painter, and pulled her up
alongside.
“You come too,” he said, jumping in, and fixing the rowlocks. (His
hands were steady again.) I laughed, and shoved the dinghy off.
“I’d rather you did,” he said, defiantly.
“I’d rather stay. I’ll tidy up, and put the kettle on.” Davies had
taken a half stroke, but paused.
“She oughtn’t to come aboard.” he said.
“She might like to,” I suggested. “Chilly day, long way from home,
common courtesy——”
“Carruthers,” said Davies, “if she comes aboard, please remember that
she’s outside this business. There are no clues to be got from _her_.”
A little lecture which would have nettled me more if I had not been
exultantly telling myself that, once and for all, for good or ill, the
Rubicon was passed.
“It’s your affair this time,” I said; “run it as you please.”
He sculled away with vigorous strokes. “Just as he is,” I thought to
myself: bare head, beaded with fog-dew, ancient oilskin coat (only one
button); grey jersey; grey woollen trousers (like a deep-sea
fisherman’s) stuffed into long boots. A vision of his antitype, the
Cowes Philanderer, crossed me for a second. As to his face—well, I
could only judge by it, and marvel, that he was gripping his dilemma by
either horn, as firmly as he gripped his sculls.
I watched the two boats converging. They would meet in the natural
course about three hundred yards away, but a hitch occurred. First, the
sail-boat checked and slewed; “aground,” I concluded. The rowboat leapt
forward still; then checked, too. From both a great splashing of sculls
floated across the still air, then silence. The summit of the
watershed, a physical Rubicon, prosaic and slimy, had still to be
crossed, it seemed. But it could be evaded. Both boats headed for the
northern side of the creek: two figures were out on the brink, hauling
on two painters. Then Davies was striding over the sand, and a girl—I
could see her now—was coming to meet him. And then I thought it was
time to go below and tidy up.
Nothing on earth could have made the _Dulcibella_’s saloon a worthy
reception-room for a lady. I could only use hurried efforts to make it
look its best by plying a bunch of cotton-waste and a floor-brush; by
pitching into racks and lockers the litter of pipes, charts, oddments
of apparel, and so on, that had a way of collecting afresh, however
recently we had tidied up; by neatly arranging our demoralised library,
and by lighting the stove and veiling the table under a clean white
cloth.
I suppose about twenty minutes had elapsed, and I was scrubbing
fruitlessly at the smoky patch on the ceiling, when I heard the sound
of oars and voices outside. I threw the cotton-waste into the fo’c’sle,
made an onslaught on my hands, and then mounted the companion ladder.
Our own dinghy was just rounding up alongside, Davies sculling in the
bows, facing him in the stern a young girl in a grey tam-o’-shanter,
loose waterproof jacket and dark serge skirt, the latter, to be
frigidly accurate, disclosing a pair of workman-like rubber boots
which, _mutatis mutandis,_ were very like those Davies was wearing. Her
hair, like his, was spangled with moisture, and her rose-brown skin
struck a note of delicious colour against the sullen Stygian
background.
“There he is,” said Davies. Never did his “meiner Freund, Carruthers,”
sound so pleasantly in my ears; never so discordantly the “Fräulein
Dollmann” that followed it. Every syllable of the four was a lie. Two
honest English eyes were looking up into mine; an honest English
hand—is this insular nonsense? Perhaps so, but I stick to it—a brown,
firm hand—no, not so very small, my sentimental reader—was clasping
mine. Of course I had strong reasons, apart from the racial instinct,
for thinking her to be English, but I believe that if I had had none at
all I should at any rate have congratulated Germany on a clever bit of
plagiarism. By her voice, when she spoke, I knew that she must have
talked German habitually from childhood; diction and accent were
faultless, at least to my English ear; but the native constitutional
ring was wanting.
She came on board. There was a hollow discussion first about time and
weather, but it ended as we all in our hearts wished it to end. None of
us uttered our real scruples. Mine, indeed, were too new and
rudimentary to be worth uttering, so I said common-sense things about
tea and warmth; but I began to think about my compact with Davies.
“Just for a few minutes, then,” she said.
I held out my hand and swung her up. She gazed round the deck and
rigging with profound interest—a breathless, hungry interest—touching
to see.
“You’ve seen her before, haven’t you?” I said.
“I’ve not been on board before,” she answered.
This struck me in passing as odd; but then I had only too few details
from Davies about his days at Norderney in September.
“Of course, _that_ is what puzzled me,” she exclaimed, suddenly,
pointing to the mizzen. “I knew there was something different.”
Davies had belayed the painter, and now had to explain the origin of
the mizzen. This was a cumbrous process, and his hearer’s attention
soon wandered from the subject and became centred in him—his was
already more than half in her—and the result was a golden opportunity
for the discerning onlooker. It was very brief, but I made the most of
it; buried deep a few regrets, did a little heartfelt penance, told
myself I had been a cynical fool not to have foreseen this, and faced
the new situation with a sinking heart; I am not ashamed to admit that,
for I was fond of Davies, and I was keen about the quest.
She had never been a guilty agent in that attempt on Davies. Had she
been an unconscious tool or only an unwilling one? If the latter, did
she know the secret we were seeking? In the last degree unlikely, I
decided. But, true to the compact, whose importance I now fully
appreciated, I flung aside my diplomatic weapons, recoiling, as
strongly, or nearly as strongly, let us say, from any effort direct or
indirect to gain information from such a source. It was not our fault
if by her own conversation and behaviour she gave us some idea of how
matters stood. Davies already knew more than I did.
We spent a few minutes on deck while she asked eager questions about
our build and gear and seaworthiness, with a quaint mixture of
professional acumen and personal curiosity.
“How _did_ you manage alone that day?” she asked Davies, suddenly.
“Oh, it was quite safe,” was the reply. “But it’s much better to have a
friend.”
She looked at me; and—well, I would have died for Davies there and
then.