The Riddle of the Sands
way there it doesn’t matter by this route; we shall be miles from
land.”
“What about getting back?”
“We shall have a rising tide, anyway. If the fog lasts—can you manage
in a fog _and_ dark?”
“The dark makes it no more difficult, if we’ve a light to see the
compass and chart by. You trim the binnacle lamp—no, the riding-light.
Now give me the scissors, and don’t speak a word for ten minutes.
Meanwhile, think it out, and load the dinghy—(by Jove! though, don’t
make a sound)—some grub and whisky, the boat-compass, lead,
riding-light, matches, _small_ boathook, grapnel and line.”
“Foghorn?”
“Yes, and the whistle too.”
“A gun?”
“What for?”
“We’re after ducks.”
“All right. And muffle the rowlocks with cotton-waste.”
I left Davies absorbed in the charts, and softly went about my own
functions. In ten minutes he was on the ladder, beckoning.
“I’ve done,” he whispered. “Now _shall_ we go?”
“I’ve thought it out. Yes,” I answered.
This was only roughly true, for I could not have stated in words all
the pros and cons that I had balanced. It was an impulse that drove me
forward; but an impulse founded on reason, with just a tinge, perhaps,
of superstition; for the quest had begun in a fog and might fitly end
in one.
It was twenty-five minutes to eleven when we noiselessly pushed off.
“Let her drift,” whispered Davies, “the ebb’ll carry her past the
pier.”
We slid by the _Dulcibella_, and she disappeared. Then we sat without
speech or movement for about five minutes, while the gurgle of tide
through piles approached and passed. The dinghy appeared to be
motionless, just as a balloon in the clouds may appear to its occupants
to be motionless, though urged by a current of air. In reality we were
driving out of the Riff Gat into the See Gat. The dinghy swayed to a
light swell.
“Now, pull,” said Davies, under his breath; “keep it long and steady,
above all steady—both arms with equal force.”
I was on the bow-thwart; he _vis-à-vis_ to me on the stern seat, his
left hand behind him on the tiller, his right forefinger on a small
square of paper which lay on his knees; this was a section cut out from
the big German chart. _[See Chart B]_ On the midship-thwart between us
lay the compass and a watch. Between these three objects—compass,
watch, and chart—his eyes darted constantly, never looking up or out,
save occasionally for a sharp glance over the side at the flying
bubbles, to see if I was sustaining a regular speed. My duty was to be
his automaton, the human equivalent of a marine engine whose
revolutions can be counted and used as data by the navigator. My arms
must be regular as twin pistons; the energy that drove them as
controllable as steam. It was a hard ideal to reach, for the complex
mortal tends to rely on all the senses God has given him, so unfitting
himself for mechanical exactitude when a sense (eyesight, in my case)
fails him. At first it was constantly “left” or “right” from Davies,
accompanied by a bubbling from the rudder.
“This won’t do, too much helm,” said Davies, without looking up. “Keep
your stroke, but listen to me. Can you see the compass card?”
“When I come forward.”
“Take your time, and don’t get flurried, but each time you come forward
have a good look at it. The course is sou’-west half-west. You take the
opposite, north-east half-east, and keep her _stern_ on that. It’ll be
rough, but it’ll save some helm, and give me a hand free if I want it.”
I did as he said, not without effort, and our progress gradually became
smoother, till he had no need to speak at all. The only sound now was
one like the gentle simmer of a saucepan away to port—the lisp of surf
I knew it to be—and the muffled grunt of the rowlocks. I broke the
silence once to say “It’s very shallow.” I had touched sand with my
right scull.
“Don’t talk,” said Davies.
About half an hour passed, and then he added sounding to his other
occupations. “Plump” went the lead at regular intervals, and he steered
with his hip while pulling in the line. Very little of it went out at
first, then less still. Again I struck bottom, and, glancing aside, saw
weeds. Suddenly he got a deep cast, and the dinghy, freed from the
slight drag which shallow water always inflicts on a small boat, leapt
buoyantly forward. At the same time, I knew by boils on the smooth
surface that we were in a strong tideway.
“The Buse Tief,” _[See Chart B]_ muttered Davies. “Row hard now, and
steady as a clock.”
For a hundred yards or more I bent to my sculls and made her fly.
Davies was getting six fathom casts, till, just as suddenly as it had
deepened, the water shoaled—ten feet, six, three, one—the dinghy
grounded.
“Good!” said Davies. “Back her off! Pull your right only.” The dinghy
spun round with her bow to N.N.W. “Both arms together! Don’t you worry
about the compass now; just pull, and listen for orders. There’s a
tricky bit coming.”
He put aside the chart, kicked the lead under the seat, and, kneeling
on the dripping coils of line, sounded continuously with the butt-end
of the boathook, a stumpy little implement, notched at intervals of a
foot, and often before used for the same purpose. All at once I was
aware that a check had come, for the dinghy swerved and doubled like a
hound ranging after scent.
“Stop her,” he said, suddenly, “and throw out the grapnel.”
I obeyed and we brought up, swinging to a slight current, whose
direction Davies verified by the compass. Then for half a minute he
gave himself up to concentrated thought. What struck me most about him
was that he never for a moment strained his eyes through the fog; a
useless exercise (for five yards or so was the radius of our vision)
which, however, I could not help indulging in, while I rested. He made
up his mind, and we were off again, straight and swift as an arrow this
time, and in water deeper than the boathook. I could see by his face
that he was taking some bold expedient whose issue hung in the
balance.... Again we touched mud, and the artist’s joy of achievement
shone in his eyes. Backing away, we headed west, and for the first time
he began to gaze into the fog.
“There’s one!” he snapped at last. “Easy all!”
A boom, one of the usual upright saplings, glided out of the mist. He
caught hold of it, and we brought up.
“Rest for three minutes now,” he said. “We’re in fairly good time.”
It was 11.10. I ate some biscuits and took a nip of whisky while Davies
prepared for the next stage.
We had reached the eastern outlet of Memmert Balje, the channel which
runs east and west behind Juist Island, direct to the south point of
Memmert. How we had reached it was incomprehensible to me at the time,
but the reader will understand by comparing my narrative with the
dotted line on the chart. I add this brief explanation, that Davies’s
method had been to cross the channel called the Buse Tief, and strike
the other side of it at a point well _south_ of the outlet of the
Memmert Balje (in view of the northward set of the ebb-tide), and then
to drop back north and feel his way to the outlet. The check was caused
by a deep indentation in the Itzendorf Flat; a _cul-de-sac,_ with a
wide mouth, which Davies was very near mistaking for the Balje itself.
We had no time to skirt dents so deep as that; hence the dash across
its mouth with the chance of missing the upper lip altogether, and of
either being carried out to sea (for the slightest error was
cumulative) or straying fruitlessly along the edge.
The next three miles were the most critical of all. They included the
“watershed”, whose length and depth were doubtful; they included, too,
the crux of the whole passage, a spot where the channel forks, our own
branch continuing west, and another branch diverging from it
north-westward. We must row against time, and yet we must negotiate
that crux. Add to this that the current was against us till the
watershed was crossed; that the tide was just at its most baffling
stage, too low to allow us to risk short cuts, and too high to give
definition to the banks of the channel; and that the compass was no aid
whatever for the minor bends. “Time’s up,” said Davies, and on we went.
I was hugging the comfortable thought that we should now have booms on
our starboard for the whole distance; on our starboard, I say, for
experience had taught us that all channels running parallel with the
coast and islands were uniformly boomed on the northern side. Anyone
less confident than Davies would have succumbed to the temptation of
slavishly relying on these marks, creeping from one to the other, and
wasting precious time. But Davies knew our friend the “boom” and his
eccentricities too well; and preferred to trust to his sense of touch,
which no fog in the world could impair. If we happened to sight one,
well and good, we should know which side of the channel we were on. But
even this contingent advantage he deliberately sacrificed after a short
distance, for he crossed over to the _south_ or unboomed side and
steered and sounded along it, using the ltzendorf Flat as his handrail,
so to speak. He was compelled to do this, he told me afterwards, in
view of the crux, where the converging lines of booms would have
involved us in irremediable confusion. Our branch was the southern one,
and it followed that we must use the southern bank, and defer obtaining
any help from booms until sure we were past that critical spot.
For an hour we were at the extreme strain, I of physical exertion, he
of mental. I could not get into a steady swing, for little checks were
constant. My right scull was for ever skidding on mud or weeds, and the
backward suck of shoal water clogged our progress. Once we were both of
us out in the slime tugging at the dinghy’s sides; then in again,
blundering on. I found the fog bemusing, lost all idea of time and
space, and felt like a senseless marionette kicking and jerking to a
mad music without tune or time. The misty form of Davies as he sat with
his right arm swinging rhythmically forward and back, was a clockwork
figure as mad as myself, but didactic and gibbering in his madness.
Then the boathook he wielded with a circular sweep began to take
grotesque shapes in my heated fancy; now it was the antenna of a
groping insect, now the crank of a cripple’s self-propelled
perambulator, now the alpenstock of a lunatic mountaineer, who sits in
his chair and climbs and climbs to some phantom “watershed”. At the
back of such mind as was left me lodged two insistent thoughts: “we
must hurry on,” “we are going wrong.” As to the latter, take a link-boy
through a London fog and you will experience the same thing: he always
goes the way you think is wrong. “We’re rowing _back_!” I remember
shouting to Davies once, having become aware that it was now my left
scull which splashed against obstructions. “Rubbish,” said Davies.
“I’ve crossed over”; and I relapsed.
By degrees I returned to sanity, thanks to improved conditions. It is
an ill wind that blows nobody good, and the state of the tide, though
it threatened us with total failure, had the compensating advantage
that the lower it fell the more constricted and defined became our
channel; till the time came when the compass and boathook were alike
unnecessary, because our handrail, the muddy brink of the channel, was
visible to the eye, close to us; on our right hand always now, for the
crux was far behind, and the northern side was now our guide. All that
remained was to press on with might and main ere the bed of the creek
dried.
What a race it was! Homeric, in effect; a struggle of men with gods,
for what were the gods but forces of nature personified? If the God of
the Falling Tide did not figure in the Olympian circle he is none the