The Riddle of the Sands
The steamer backed her paddles, flinging out a wash that set us rolling
to our scuppers. There seemed to be very few passengers aboard, but all
of them were gazing at the _Dulcibella_ while the packet was warped
alongside. On the forward deck there were some market-women with
baskets, a postman, and a weedy youth who might be an hotel-waiter; on
the after-deck, standing close together, were two men in ulsters and
soft felt hats.
“There he is!” said Davies, in a tense whisper; “the tall one.” But the
tall one turned abruptly as Davies spoke and strode away behind the
deck-house, leaving me just a lightning impression of a grey beard and
a steep tanned forehead, behind a cloud of cigar-smoke. It was perverse
of me, but, to tell the truth, I hardly missed him, so occupied was I
by the short one, who remained leaning on the rail, thoughtfully
contemplating the _Dulcibella_ through gold-rimmed pince-nez: a sallow,
wizened old fellow, beetlebrowed, with a bush of grizzled moustache and
a jet-black tuft of beard on his chin. The most remarkable feature was
the nose, which was broad and flat, merging almost imperceptibly in the
wrinkled cheeks. Lightly beaked at the nether extremity, it drooped
towards an enormous cigar which was pointing at us like a gun just
discharged. He looked wise as Satan, and you would say he was smiling
inwardly.
“Who’s that?” I whispered to Davies. (There was no need to talk in
whispers, but we did so instinctively.)
“Can’t think,” said Davies. “Hullo! she’s backing off, and they’ve not
landed.”
Some parcels and mail-bags had been thrown up, and the weedy waiter and
two market-women had gone up the gangway, which was now being hauled
up, and were standing on the quay. I think one or two other persons had
first come aboard unnoticed by us, but at the last moment a man we had
not seen before jumped down to the forward deck. “Grimm!” we both
ejaculated at once.
The steamer whistled sharply, circled backwards into the roadstead, and
then steamed away. The pier soon hid her, but her smoke showed she was
steering towards the North Sea.
“What does this mean?” I asked.
“There must be some other quay to stop at nearer the town,” said
Davies. “Let’s go ashore and get your letters.”
We had made a long and painful toilette that morning, and felt quite
shy of one another as we sculled towards the pier, in much-creased blue
suits, conventional collars, and brown boots. It was the first time for
two years that I had seen Davies in anything approaching a respectable
garb; but a fashionable watering-place, even in the dead season, exacts
respect; and, besides, we had friends to visit.
We tied up the dinghy to an iron ladder, and on the pier found our
inquisitor of the night before smoking in the doorway of a shed marked
“Harbour Master”. After some civilities we inquired about the steamer.
The answer was that it was Saturday, and she had, therefore, gone on to
Juist. Did we want a good hotel? The “Vier Jahreszeiten” was still
open, etc.
“Juist, by Jove!” said Davies, as we walked on. “Why are those three
going to Juist?”
“I should have thought it was pretty clear. They’re on their way to
Memmert.”
Davies agreed, and we both looked longingly westward at a
straw-coloured streak on the sea.
“Is it some meeting, do you think?” said Davies.
“Looks like it. We shall probably find the _Kormoran_ here,
wind-bound.”
And find her we did soon after, the outermost of the stack of galliots,
on the farther side of the harbour. Two men, whose faces we took a good
look at, were sitting on her hatch, mending a sail.
Flooded with sun, yet still as the grave, the town was like a dead
butterfly for whom the healing rays had come too late. We crossed some
deserted public gardens commanded by a gorgeous casino, its porticos
heaped with chairs and tables; so past kiosques and _cafés,_ great
white hotels with boarded windows, bazaars and booths, and all the
stale lees of vulgar frivolity, to the post-office, which at least was
alive. I received a packet of letters and purchased a local time-table,
from which we learned that the steamer sailed daily to Borkum _via_
Norderney, touching three times a week at Juist (weather permitting).
On the return journey to-day it was due at Norderney at 7.30 p.m. Then
I inquired the way to the “Vier Jahreszeiten”. “For whatever your
principles, Davies,” I said, “we are going to have the best breakfast
money can buy! We’ve got the whole day before us.”
The “Four Seasons” Hotel was on the esplanade facing the northern
beach. Living up to its name, it announced on an illuminated signboard,
“Inclusive terms for winter visitors; special attention to invalids,
etc.” Here in a great glass restaurant, with the unruffled blue of
ocean spread out before us, we ate the king of breakfasts, dismissed
the waiter, and over long and fragrant Havanas examined my mail at
leisure.
“What a waste of good diplomacy!” was my first thought, for nothing had
been tampered with, so far as we could judge from the minutest
scrutiny, directed, of course, in particular to the franked official
letters (for to my surprise there were two) from Whitehall.
The first in order of date (October 6) ran: “Dear Carruthers.—Take
another week by all means.—Yours, etc.”
The second (marked “urgent”) had been sent to my home address and
forwarded. It was dated October 15, and cancelled the previous letter,
requesting me to return to London without delay—“I am sorry to abridge
your holiday, but we are very busy, and, at present,
short-handed.—Yours, etc.” There was a dry postscript to the effect
that another time I was to be good enough to leave more regular and
definite information as to my whereabouts when absent.
“I’m afraid I never got this!” I said, handing it to Davies.
“You won’t go, will you?” said he, looking, nevertheless, with
unconcealed awe at the great man’s handwriting under the haughty
official crest. Meanwhile I discovered an endorsement on a corner of
the envelope: “Don’t worry; it’s only the chief’s fuss.—M——” I promptly
tore up the envelope. There are domestic mysteries which it would be
indecent and disloyal to reveal, even to one’s best friend. The rest of
my letters need no remark; I smiled over some and blushed over
others—all were voices from a life which was infinitely far away.
Davies, meanwhile, was deep in the foreign intelligence of a newspaper,
spelling it out line by line, and referring impatiently to me for the
meaning of words.
“Hullo!” he said, suddenly; “same old game! Hear that siren?” A curtain
of fog had grown on the northern horizon and was drawing shorewards
slowly but surely.
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” I said.
“Well, we must get back to the yacht. We can’t leave her alone in the
fog.”
There was some marketing to be done on the way back, and in the course
of looking for the shops we wanted we came on the Schwannallée and
noted its position. Before we reached the harbour the fog was on us,
charging up the streets in dense masses. Happily a tramline led right
up to the pier-head, or we should have lost our way and wasted time,
which, in the event, was of priceless value. Presently we stumbled up
against the Harbour Office, which was our landmark for the steps where
we had tied up the dinghy. The same official appeared and
good-naturedly held the painter while we handed in our parcels. He
wanted to know why we had left the flesh-pots of the “Vier
Jahreszeiten”. To look after our yacht, of course. There was no need,
he objected; there would be no traffic moving while the fog lasted, and
the fog, having come on at that hour, had come to stay. If it did clear
he would keep an eye on the yacht for us. We thanked him, but thought
we would go aboard.
“You’ll have a job to find her now,” he said.
The distance was eighty yards at the most, but we had to use a
scientific method, the same one, in fact, that Davies had used last
night in the approach to the eastern pier.
“Row straight out at right angles to the pier,” he said now. I did so,
Davies sounding with his scull between the strokes. He found the bottom
after twenty yards, that being the width of the dredged-out channel at
this point. Then we turned to the right, and moved gently forward,
keeping touch with the edge of the mud-bank (for all the world like
blind men tapping along a kerbstone) and taking short excursions from
it, till the _Dulcibella_ hove in view. “That’s partly luck,” Davies
commented; “we ought to have had the compass as well.”
We exchanged shouts with the man on the pier to show we had arrived.
Illustration: Chart B of Juist, Memmert, and Part of Norderney
“It’s very good practice, that sort of thing,” said Davies, when we had
disembarked.
“You’ve got a sixth sense,” I observed. “How far could you go like
that?”
“Don’t know. Let’s have another try. I can’t sit still all day. Let’s
explore this channel.”
“_Why not go to Memmert?”_ I said, in fun.
“To Memmert?” said Davies, slowly; “by Jove! that’s an idea!”
“Good Heavens, man! I was joking. Why, it’s ten mortal miles.”
“More,” said Davies, absently. “It’s not so much the distance—what’s
the time? Ten fifteen; quarter ebb—— What am I talking about? We made
our plans last night.”
But seeing him, to my amazement, serious, I was stung by the splendour
of the idea I had awakened. Confidence in his skill was second nature
to me. I swept straight on to the logic of the thing, the greatness,
the completeness of the opportunity, if by a miracle it could be seized
and used. Something was going on at Memmert to-day; our men had gone
there; here were we, ten miles away, in a smothering, blinding fog. It
was known we were here—Dollmann and Grimm knew it; the crew of the
_Medusa_ knew it; the crew of the _Kormoran_ knew it; the man on the
pier, whether he cared or not, knew it. But none of them knew Davies as
I knew him. Would anyone dream for an instant——?
“Stop a second,” said Davies; “give me two minutes.” He whipped out the
German chart. “Where exactly should we go?” (“Exactly!” The word
tickled me hugely.)
“To the depôt, of course; it’s our only chance.”
“Listen then—there are two routes: the outside one by the open sea,
right round Juist, and doubling south—the simplest, but the longest;
the depôt’s at the south point of Memmert, and Memmert’s nearly two
miles long.” _[See Chart B]_
“How far would that way be?”
“Sixteen miles good. And we should have to row in a breaking swell most
of the way, close to land.”
“Out of the question; it’s too public, too, if it clears. The steamer
went that way, and will come back that way. We must go inside over the
sands. Am I dreaming, though? Can you possibly find the way?”
“I shouldn’t wonder. But I don’t believe you see the hitch. It’s the
_time_ and the falling tide. High water was about 8.15: it’s now 10.15,
and all those sands are drying off. We must cross the See Gat and
strike that boomed channel, the Memmert Balje; strike it, freeze on to
it—can’t cut off an inch—and pass that ‘watershed’ you see there before
it’s too late. It’s an infernally bad one, I can see. Not even a dinghy
will cross it for an hour each side of low water.”
“Well, how far is the ‘watershed’?”
“Good Lord! What are we talking for? Change, man, change! Talk while
we’re changing.” (He began flinging off his shore clothes, and I did
the same.) “It’s at least five miles to the end of it; six, allowing
for bends; hour and a half hard pulling; two, allowing for checks. Are
you fit? You’ll have to pull the most. Then there are six or seven more
miles—easier ones. And then—What are we to do when we get there?”
“Leave that to me,” I said. “You get me there.”
“Supposing it clears?”
“After we get there? Bad; but we must risk that. If it clears on the