The Riddle of the Sands
received in succession our stores, and stowed the cargo as best I
could, while the dinghy sank lower and lower in the water, and its
precarious superstructure grew higher.
“Catch!” was the final direction from above, and a damp soft parcel hit
me in the chest. “Be careful of that, it’s meat. Now back to the
stairs!”
I painfully acquiesced, and Davies appeared.
“It’s a bit of a load, and she’s rather deep; but I _think_ we shall
manage,” he reflected. “You sit right aft, and I’ll row.”
I was too far gone for curiosity as to how this monstrous pyramid was
to be rowed, or even for surmises as to its foundering by the way. I
crawled to my appointed seat, and Davies extricated the buried sculls
by a series of tugs, which shook the whole structure, and made us roll
alarmingly. How he stowed himself into rowing posture I have not the
least idea, but eventually we were moving sluggishly out into the open
water, his head just visible in the bows. We had started from what
appeared to be the head of a narrow loch, and were leaving behind us
the lights of a big town. A long frontage of lamp-lit quays was on our
left, with here and there the vague hull of a steamer alongside. We
passed the last of the lights and came out into a broader stretch of
water, when a light breeze was blowing and dark hills could be seen on
either shore.
“I’m lying a little way down the fiord, you see,” said Davies. “I hate
to be too near a town, and I found a carpenter handy here— There she
is! I wonder how you’ll like her!”
I roused myself. We were entering a little cove encircled by trees, and
approaching a light which flickered in the rigging of a small vessel,
whose outline gradually defined itself.
“Keep her off,” said Davies, as we drew alongside.
In a moment he had jumped on deck, tied the painter, and was round at
my end.
“You hand them up,” he ordered, “and I’ll take them.”
It was a laborious task, with the one relief that it was not far to
hand them—a doubtful compensation, for other reasons distantly shaping
themselves. When the stack was transferred to the deck I followed it,
tripping over the flabby meat parcel, which was already showing ghastly
signs of disintegration under the dew. Hazily there floated through my
mind my last embarkation on a yacht; my faultless attire, the trim gig
and obsequious sailors, the accommodation ladder flashing with varnish
and brass in the August sun; the orderly, snowy decks and basket chairs
under the awning aft. What a contrast with this sordid midnight
scramble, over damp meat and littered packing-cases! The bitterest
touch of all was a growing sense of inferiority and ignorance which I
had never before been allowed to feel in my experience of yachts.
Davies awoke from another reverie over my portmanteau to say, cheerily:
“I’ll just show you round down below first, and then we’ll stow things
away and get to bed.”
He dived down a companion ladder, and I followed cautiously. A complex
odour of paraffin, past cookery, tobacco, and tar saluted my nostrils.
“Mind your head,” said Davies, striking a match and lighting a candle,
while I groped into the cabin. “You’d better sit down; it’s easier to
look round.”
There might well have been sarcasm in this piece of advice, for I must
have cut a ridiculous figure, peering awkwardly and suspiciously round,
with shoulders and head bent to avoid the ceiling, which seemed in the
half-light to be even nearer the floor than it was.
“You see,” were Davies’s reassuring words, “there’s plenty of room to
_sit_ upright” (which was strictly true; but I am not very tall, and he
is short). “Some people make a point of head-room, but I never mind
much about it. That’s the centreboard case,” he explained, as, in
stretching my legs out, my knee came into contact with a sharp edge.
I had not seen this devilish obstruction, as it was hidden beneath the
table, which indeed rested on it at one end. It appeared to be a long,
low triangle, running lengthways with the boat and dividing the
naturally limited space into two.
“You see, she’s a flat-bottomed boat, drawing very little water without
the plate; that’s why there’s so little headroom. For deep water you
lower the plate; so, in one way or another, you can go practically
anywhere.”
I was not nautical enough to draw any very definite conclusions from
this, but what I did draw were not promising. The latter sentences were
spoken from the forecastle, whither Davies had crept through a low
sliding door, like that of a rabbit-hutch, and was already busy with a
kettle over a stove which I made out to be a battered and disreputable
twin brother of the No. 3 Rippingille.
“It’ll be boiling soon,” he remarked, “and we’ll have some grog.”
My eyes were used to the light now, and I took in the rest of my
surroundings, which may be very simply described. Two long
cushion-covered seats flanked the cabin, bounded at the after end by
cupboards, one of which was cut low to form a sort of miniature
sideboard, with glasses hung in a rack above it. The deck overhead was
very low at each side but rose shoulder high for a space in the middle,
where a “coach-house roof” with a skylight gave additional cabin space.
Just outside the door was a fold-up washing-stand. On either wall were
long net-racks holding a medley of flags, charts, caps, cigar-boxes,
hanks of yarn, and such like. Across the forward bulkhead was a
bookshelf crammed to overflowing with volumes of all sizes, many upside
down and some coverless. Below this were a pipe-rack, an aneroid, and a
clock with a hearty tick. All the woodwork was painted white, and to a
less jaundiced eye than mine the interior might have had an enticing
look of snugness. Some Kodak prints were nailed roughly on the after
bulkhead, and just over the doorway was the photograph of a young girl.
“That’s my sister,” said Davies, who had emerged and saw me looking at
it. “Now, let’s get the stuff down.” He ran up the ladder, and soon my
portmanteau blackened the hatchway, and a great straining and squeezing
began. “I was afraid it was too big,” came down; “I’m sorry, but you’ll
have to unpack on deck—we may be able to squash it down when it’s
empty.”
Then the wearisome tail of packages began to form a fresh stack in the
cramped space at my feet, and my back ached with stooping and moiling
in unfamiliar places. Davies came down, and with unconcealed pride
introduced me to the sleeping cabin (he called the other one “the
saloon”). Another candle was lit and showed two short and narrow berths
with blankets, but no sign of sheets; beneath these were drawers, one
set of which Davies made me master of, evidently thinking them a
princely allowance of space for my wardrobe.
“You can chuck your things down the skylight on to your berth as you
unpack them,” he remarked. “By the way, I doubt if there’s room for all
you’ve got. I suppose you couldn’t manage——”
“No, I couldn’t,” I said shortly.
The absurdity of argument struck me; two men, doubled up like monkeys,
cannot argue.
“If you’ll go out I shall be able to get out too,” I added. He seemed
miserable at this ghost of an altercation, but I pushed past, mounted
the ladder, and in the expiring moonlight unstrapped that accursed
portmanteau and, brimming over with irritation, groped among its
contents, sorting some into the skylight with the same feeling that
nothing mattered much now, and it was best to be done with it;
repacking the rest with guilty stealth ere Davies should discover their
character, and strapping up the whole again. Then I sat down upon my
white elephant and shivered, for the chill of autumn was in the air. It
suddenly struck me that if it had been raining things might have been
worse still. The notion made me look round. The little cove was still
as glass; stars above and stars below; a few white cottages glimmering
at one point on the shore; in the west the lights of Flensburg; to the
east the fiord broadening into unknown gloom. From Davies toiling below
there were muffled sounds of wrenching, pushing, and hammering,
punctuated occasionally by a heavy splash as something shot up from the
hatchway and fell into the water.
How it came about I do not know. Whether it was something pathetic in
the look I had last seen on his face—a look which I associated for no
reason whatever with his bandaged hand; whether it was one of those
instants of clear vision in which our separate selves are seen divided,
the baser from the better, and I saw my silly egotism in contrast with
a simple generous nature; whether it was an impalpable air of mystery
which pervaded the whole enterprise and refused to be dissipated by its
most mortifying and vulgarising incidents—a mystery dimly connected
with my companion’s obvious consciousness of having misled me into
joining him; whether it was only the stars and the cool air rousing
atrophied instincts of youth and spirits; probably, indeed, it was all
these influences, cemented into strength by a ruthless sense of humour
which whispered that I was in danger of making a mere commonplace fool
of myself in spite of all my laboured calculations; but whatever it
was, in a flash my mood changed. The crown of martyrdom disappeared,
the wounded vanity healed; that precious fund of fictitious resignation
drained away, but left no void. There was left a fashionable and
dishevelled young man sitting in the dew and in the dark on a
ridiculous portmanteau which dwarfed the yacht that was to carry it; a
youth acutely sensible of ignorance in a strange and strenuous
atmosphere; still feeling sore and victimised; but withal sanely
ashamed and sanely resolved to enjoy himself. I anticipate; for though
the change was radical its full growth was slow. But in any case it was
here and now that it took its birth.
“Grog’s ready!” came from below. Bunching myself for the descent I
found to my astonishment that all trace of litter had miraculously
vanished, and a cosy neatness reigned. Glasses and lemons were on the
table, and a fragrant smell of punch had deadened previous odours. I
showed little emotion at these amenities, but enough to give intense
relief to Davies, who delightedly showed me his devices for storage,
praising the “roominess” of his floating den. “There’s your stove, you
see,” he ended; “I’ve chucked the old one overboard.” It was a weakness
of his, I should say here, to rejoice in throwing things overboard on
the flimsiest pretexts. I afterwards suspected that the new stove had
not been “really necessary” any more than the rigging-screws, but was
an excuse for gratifying this curious taste.
We smoked and chatted for a little, and then came the problem of going
to bed. After much bumping of knuckles and head, and many giddy
writhings, I mastered it, and lay between the rough blankets. Davies,
moving swiftly and deftly, was soon in his.
“It’s quite comfortable, isn’t it?” he said, as he blew out the light
from where he lay, with an accuracy which must have been the fruit of
long practice.
I felt prickly all over, and there was a damp patch on the pillow,
which was soon explained by a heavy drop of moisture falling on my
forehead.
“I suppose the deck’s not leaking?” I said, as mildly as I could.
“I’m awfully sorry,” said Davies, earnestly, tumbling out of his bunk.
“It must be the heavy dew. I did a lot of caulking yesterday, but I
suppose I missed that place. I’ll run up and square it with an
oilskin.”
“What’s wrong with your hand?” I asked, sleepily, on his return, for
gratitude reminded me of that bandage.
“Nothing much; I strained it the other day,” was the reply; and then
the seemingly inconsequent remark: “I’m glad you brought that prismatic
compass. It’s not really necessary, of course; but” (muffled by
blankets) “it may come in useful.”