The Riddle of the Sands
each occasion I looked at my watch, for I was listening against time,
just as we had rowed against time. We were going to be asked to supper,
and must be back aboard the yacht in time to receive the invitation.
The fog still brooded heavily and the light, always bad, was growing
worse. How would _they_ get back? How had they come from Juist? Could
we forestall them? Questions of time, tide, distance—just the odious
sort of sums I was unfit to cope with—were distracting my attention
when it should have been wholly elsewhere. 4.20—4.25—now it was past
4.30 when Davies said the bank would cover. I should have to make for
the beacon; but it was fatally near that steamboat path, etc., and I
still at intervals heard voices from there. It must have been about
4.35 when there was another shifting of chairs within. Then someone
rose, collected papers, and went out; someone else, _without_ rising
(therefore Grimm), followed him.
There was silence in the room for a minute, and after that, for the
first time, I heard some plain colloquial German, with no accompaniment
of scratching or rustling. “I must wait for this,” I thought, and
waited.
“He insists on coming,” said Böhme.
“Ach!” (an ejaculation of surprise and protest from von Brüning).
“I said the 25th.”
“Why?”
“The tide serves well. The night-train, of course. Tell Grimm to be
ready——” (An inaudible question from von Brüning.)
“No, any weather.” A laugh from von Brüning and some words I could not
catch.
“Only one, with half a load.”
“.....meet?”
“At the station.”
“So—how’s the fog?”
This appeared to be really the end. Both men rose and steps came
towards the window. I leapt aside as I heard it thrown up, and covered
by the noise backed into safety. Von Brüning called “Grimm!” and that,
and the open window, decided me that my line of advance was now too
dangerous to retreat by. The only alternative was to make a circuit
round the bigger of the two buildings—and an interminable circuit it
seemed—and all the while I knew my compass-course “south-east” was
growing nugatory. I passed a padlocked door, two corners, and faced the
void of fog. Out came the compass, and I steadied myself for the sum.
“South-east before—I’m farther to the eastward now—east will about do”;
and off I went, with an error of four whole points, over tussocks and
deep sand. The beach seemed much farther off than I had thought, and I
began to get alarmed, puzzled over the compass several times, and
finally realised that I had lost my way. I had the sense not to make
matters worse by trying to find it again, and, as the lesser of two
evils, blew my whistle, softly at first, then louder. The bray of a
foghorn sounded right _behind_ me. I whistled again and then ran for my
life, the horn sounding at intervals. In three or four minutes I was on
the beach and in the dinghy.
CHAPTER XXIII.
A Change of Tactics
We pushed off without a word, and paddled out of sight of the beach. A
voice was approaching, hailing us. “Hail back,” whispered Davies;
“pretend we’re a galliot.”
“Ho-a,” I shouted, “where am I?”
“Off Memmert,” came back. “Where are you bound?”
“Delfzyl,” whispered Davies.
“Delf-zyl,” I bawled.
A sentence ending with “anchor” was returned.
“The flood’s tearing east,” whispered Davies; “sit still.”
We heard no more, and, after a few minutes’ drifting, “What luck?” said
Davies.
“One or two clues, and an invitation to supper.”
The clues I left till later; the invitation was the thing, and I
explained its urgency.
“How will _they_ get back?” said Davies; “if the fog lasts the
steamer’s sure to be late.”
“We can count for nothing,” I answered. “There was some little
steamboat off the depôt, and the fog may lift. Which is our quickest
way?”
“At this tide, a bee-line to Norderney by compass; we shall have water
over all the banks.”
He had all his preparations made, the lamp lit in advance, the compass
in position, and we started at once; he at the bow-oar where he had
better control over the boat’s nose; lamp and compass on the floor
between us. Twilight thickened into darkness—a choking, pasty
darkness—and still we sped unfalteringly over that trackless waste,
sitting and swinging in our little pool of stifled orange light. To
drown fatigue and suspense I conned over my clues, and tried to carve
into my memory every fugitive word I had overheard.
“What are there seven of round here?” I called back to Davies once
(thinking of A to G). “Sorry,” I added, for no answer came.
“I see a star,” was my next word, after a long interval. “Now it’s
gone. There it is again! Right aft!”
“That’s Borkum light,” said Davies, presently; “the fog’s lifting.” A
keen wind from the west struck our faces, and as swiftly as it had come
the fog rolled away from us, in one mighty mass, stripping clean and
pure the starry dome of heaven, still bright with the western
after-glow, and beginning to redden in the east to the rising moon.
Norderney light was flashing ahead, and Davies could take his tired
eyes from the pool of light.
“Damn!” was all he uttered in the way of gratitude for this mercy, and
I felt very much the same; for in a fog Davies in a dinghy was a match
for a steamer; in a clear he lost his handicap.
It was a quarter to seven. “An hour’ll do it, if we buck up,” he
pronounced, after taking a rough bearing with the two lights. He
pointed out a star to me, which we were to keep exactly astern, and
again I applied to their labour my aching back and smarting palms.
“What did you say about seven of something?” said Davies.
“What are there seven of hereabouts?”
“Islands, of course,” said Davies. “Is that the clue?”
“Maybe.”
Then followed the most singular of all our confabulations. Two memories
are better than one, and the sooner I carved the cipher into his memory
as well as mine the better record we should have. So, with rigid
economy of breath, I snapped out all my story, and answered his
breathless questions. It saved me from being mesmerised by the star,
and both of us from the consciousness of over-fatigue.
“Spying at Chatham, the blackguard?” he hissed.
“What do you make of it?” I asked.
“Nothing about battleships, mines, forts?” he said.
“No.”
“Nothing about the Ems, Emden, Wilhelmshaven?”
“No.”
“Nothing about transports?”
“No.”
“I believe—I was right—after all—something to do—with the
channels—behind islands.”
And so that outworn creed took a new lease of life; though for my part
the words that clashed with it were those that had sunk the deepest.
“Esens,” I protested; “that town behind Bensersiel.”
“Wassertiefe, Lotsen, Schleppboote,” spluttered Davies.
“Kilometre—Eisenbahn,” from me, and so on.
I should earn the just execration of the reader if I continued to
report such a dialogue. Suffice to say that we realised very soon that
the substance of the plot was still a riddle. On the other hand, there
was fresh scent, abundance of it; and the question was already taking
shape—were we to follow it up or revert to last night’s decision and
strike with what weapons we had? It was a pressing question, too, the
last of many—was there to be no end to the emergencies of this crowded
day?—pressing for reasons I could not define, while convinced that we
must be ready with an answer by supper-time to-night.
Meantime, we were nearing Norderney; the See Gat was crossed, and with
the last of the flood tide fair beneath us, and the red light on the
west pier burning ahead, we began insensibly to relax our efforts. But
I dared not rest, for I was at that point of exhaustion when mechanical
movement was my only hope.
“Light astern,” I said, thickly. “Two—white and red.”
“Steamer,” said Davies; “going south though.”
“Three now.”
A neat triangle of gems—topaz, ruby, and emerald—hung steady behind us.
“Turned east,” said Davies. “Buck up—steamer from Juist. No, by Jove!
too small. What is it?”
On we laboured, while the gems waxed in brilliancy as the steamer
overhauled us.
“Easy,” said Davies, “I seem to know those lights—the _Blitz_’s
launch—don’t let’s be caught rowing like madmen in a muck sweat. Paddle
inshore a bit.” He was right, and, as in a dream, I saw hurrying and
palpitating up the same little pinnace that had towed us out of
Bensersiel.
“We’re done for now,” I remember thinking, for the guilt of the runaway
was strong in me; and an old remark of von Brüning’s about “police” was
in my ears. But she was level with and past us before I could sink far
into despair.
“Three of them behind the hood,” said Davies: “what are we to do?”
“Follow,” I answered, and essayed a feeble stroke, but the blade
scuttered over the surface.
“Let’s wait about for a bit,” said Davies. “We’re late anyhow. If they
go to the yacht they’ll think we’re ashore.”
“Our shore clothes—lying about.”
“Are you up to talking?”
“No; but we must. The least suspicion’ll do for us now.”
“Give me your scull, old chap, and put on your coat.”
He extinguished the lantern, lit a pipe, and then rowed slowly on,
while I sat on a slack heap in the stern and devoted my last resources
of will to the emancipation of the spirit from the tired flesh.
In ten minutes or so we were rounding the pier, and there was the
yacht’s top-mast against the sky. I saw, too, that the launch was
alongside of her, and told Davies so. Then I lit a cigarette, and made
a lamentable effort to whistle. Davies followed suit, and emitted a
strange melody which I took to be “Home, Sweet Home,” but he has not
the slightest ear for music.
“Why, they’re on board, I believe,” said I; “the cabin’s lighted. Ahoy
there!” I shouted as we came up. “Who’s that?”
“Good evening, sir,” said a sailor, who was fending off the yacht with
a boathook. “It’s Commander von Brüning’s launch. I think the gentlemen
want to see you.”
Before we could answer, an exclamation of: “Why, here they are!” came
from the deck of the _Dulcibella_, and the dim form of von Brüning
himself emerged from the companionway. There was something of a scuffle
down below, which the Commander nearly succeeded in drowning by the
breeziness of his greeting. Meanwhile, the ladder creaked under fresh
weight, and Dollmann appeared.
“Is that you, Herr Davies?” he said.
“Hullo! Herr Dollmann,” said Davies; “how are you?”
I must explain that we had floated up between the yacht and the launch,
whose sailors had passed her a little aside in order to give us room.
Her starboard side-light was just behind and above us, pouring its
green rays obliquely over the deck of the _Dulcibella_, while we and
the dinghy were in deep shadow between. The most studied calculation
could not have secured us more favourable conditions for a moment which
I had always dreaded—the meeting of Davies and Dollmann. The former,
having shortened his sculls, just sat where he was, half turned towards
the yacht and looking up at his enemy. No lineament of his own face
could have been visible to the latter, while those pitiless green
rays—you know their ravaging effect on the human physiognomy—struck
full on Dollmann’s face. It was my first fair view of it at close
quarters, and, secure in my background of gloom, I feasted with a
luxury of superstitious abhorrence on the livid smiling mask that for a
few moments stooped peering down towards Davies. One of the caprices of
the crude light was to obliterate, or at any rate so penetrate, beard
and moustache, as to reveal in outline lips and chin, the features in
which defects of character are most surely betrayed, especially when
your victim smiles. Accuse me, if you will, of stooping to melodramatic
embroidery; object that my own prejudiced fancy contributed to the
result; but I can, nevertheless, never efface the impression of