The Riddle of the Sands
with a long reach at an indefinite space on the crowded sheet. “Now
which side of that buoy off the point do we pass?”
I had scarcely taken in which was land and which was water, much less
the significance of the buoy, when he resumed:
“Never mind; I’m pretty sure it’s all deep water about here. I expect
that marks the fairway for steamers.
In a minute or two we were passing the buoy in question, on the wrong
side I am pretty certain, for weeds and sand came suddenly into view
below us with uncomfortable distinctness. But all Davies said was:
“There’s never any sea here, and the plate’s not down,” a dark
utterance which I pondered doubtfully. “The best of these Schleswig
waters,” he went on, “is that a boat of this size can go almost
anywhere. There’s no navigation required. Why——” At this moment a faint
scraping was felt, rather than heard, beneath us.
“Aren’t we aground?” I asked with great calmness.
“Oh, she’ll blow over,” he replied, wincing a little.
She “blew over”, but the episode caused a little naïve vexation in
Davies. I relate it as a good instance of one of his minor
peculiarities. He was utterly without that didactic pedantry which
yachting has a fatal tendency to engender in men who profess it. He had
tossed me the chart without a thought that I was an ignoramus, to whom
it would be Greek, and who would provide him with an admirable subject
to drill and lecture, just as his neglect of me throughout the morning
had been merely habitual and unconscious independence. In the second
place, master of his _métier_, as I knew him afterwards to be,
resourceful, skilful, and alert, he was liable to lapse into a certain
amateurish vagueness, half irritating and half amusing. I think truly
that both these peculiarities came from the same source, a hatred of
any sort of affectation. To the same source I traced the fact that he
and his yacht observed none of the superficial etiquette of yachts and
yachtsmen, that she never, for instance, flew a national ensign, and he
never wore a “yachting suit”.
We rounded a low green point which I had scarcely noticed before.
“We must jibe,” said Davies: “just take the helm, will you?” and,
without waiting for my co-operation, he began hauling in the mainsheet
with great vigour. I had rude notions of steering, but jibing is a
delicate operation. No yachtsman will be surprised to hear that the
boom saw its opportunity and swung over with a mighty crash, with the
mainsheet entangled round me and the tiller.
“Jibed all standing,” was his sorrowful comment. “You’re not used to
her yet. She’s very quick on the helm.”
“Where am I to steer for?” I asked, wildly.
“Oh, don’t trouble, I’ll take her now,” he replied.
I felt it was time to make my position clear. “I’m an utter duffer at
sailing,” I began. “You’ll have a lot to teach me, or one of these days
I shall be wrecking you. You see, there’s always been a crew——”
“Crew!”—with sovereign contempt—“why, the whole fun of the thing is to
do everything oneself.”
“Well, I’ve felt in the way the whole morning.”
“I’m awfully sorry!” His dismay and repentance were comical. “Why, it’s
just the other way; you may be all the use in the world.” He became
absent.
We were following the inward trend of a small bay towards a cleft in
the low shore.
“That’s Ekken Sound,” said Davies; “let’s look into it,” and a minute
or two later we were drifting through a dainty little strait, with a
peep of open water at the end of it. Cottages bordered either side,
some overhanging the very water, some connecting with it by a rickety
wooden staircase or a miniature landing-stage. Creepers and roses
rioted over the walls and tiny porches. For a space on one side, a rude
quay, with small smacks floating off it, spoke of some minute
commercial interests; a very small tea-garden, with neglected-looking
bowers and leaf-strewn tables, hinted at some equally minute tripping
interest. A pervading hue of mingled bronze and rose came partly from
the weather-mellowed woodwork of the cottages and stages, and partly
from the creepers and the trees behind, where autumn’s subtle fingers
were already at work. Down this exquisite sea-lane we glided till it
ended in a broad mere, where our sails, which had been shivering and
complaining, filled into contented silence.
“Ready about!” said Davies, callously. “We must get out of this again.”
And round we swung.
“Why not anchor and stop here?” I protested; for a view of tantalising
loveliness was unfolding itself.
“Oh, we’ve seen all there is to be seen, and we must take this breeze
while we’ve got it.” It was always torture to Davies to feel a good
breeze running to waste while he was inactive at anchor or on shore.
The “shore” to him was an inferior element, merely serving as a useful
annexe to the water—a source of necessary supplies.
“Let’s have lunch,” he pursued, as we resumed our way down the fiord. A
vision of iced drinks, tempting salads, white napery, and an attentive
steward mocked me with past recollections.
“You’ll find a tongue,” said the voice of doom, “in the starboard
sofa-locker; beer under the floor in the bilge. I’ll see her round that
buoy, if you wouldn’t mind beginning.” I obeyed with a bad grace, but
the close air and cramped posture must have benumbed my faculties, for
I opened the port-side locker, reached down, and grasped a sticky body,
which turned out to be a pot of varnish. Recoiling wretchedly, I tried
the opposite one, combating the embarrassing heel of the boat and the
obstructive edges of the centreboard case. A medley of damp tins of
varied sizes showed in the gloom, exuding a mouldy odour. Faded legends
on dissolving paper, like the remnants of old posters on a disused
hoarding, spoke of soups, curries, beefs, potted meats, and other
hidden delicacies. I picked out a tongue, re-imprisoned the odour, and
explored for beer. It was true, I supposed, that bilge didn’t hurt it,
as I tugged at the plank on my hands and knees, but I should have
myself preferred a more accessible and less humid wine-cellar than the
cavities among slimy ballast from which I dug the bottles. I regarded
my hard-won and ill-favoured pledges of a meal with giddiness and
discouragement.
“How are you getting on?” shouted Davies; “the tin-opener’s hanging up
on the bulkhead; the plates and knives are in the cupboard.”
I doggedly pursued my functions. The plates and knives met me half-way,
for, being on the weather side, and thus having a downward slant, its
contents, when I slipped the latch, slid affectionately into my bosom,
and overflowed with a clatter and jingle on to the floor.
“That often happens,” I heard from above. “Never mind! There are no
breakables. I’m coming down to help.” And down he came, leaving the
_Dulcibella_ to her own devices.
“I think I’ll go on deck,” I said. “Why in the world couldn’t you lunch
comfortably at Ekken and save this infernal pandemonium of a picnic?
Where’s the yacht going to meanwhile? And how are we to lunch on that
slanting table? I’m covered with varnish and mud, and ankle-deep in
crockery. There goes the beer!”
“You shouldn’t have stood it on the table with this list on,” said
Davies, with intense composure, “but it won’t do any harm; it’ll drain
into the bilge” (ashes to ashes, dust to dust, I thought). “You go on
deck now, and I’ll finish getting ready.” I regretted my explosion,
though wrung from me under great provocation.
“Keep her straight on as she’s going,” said Davies, as I clambered up
out of the chaos, brushing the dust off my trousers and varnishing the
ladder with my hands. I unlashed the helm and kept her as she was
going.
We had rounded a sharp bend in the fiord, and were sailing up a broad
and straight reach which every moment disclosed new beauties, sights
fair enough to be balm to the angriest spirit. A red-roofed hamlet was
on our left, on the right an ivied ruin, close to the water, where some
contemplative cattle stood knee-deep. The view ahead was a white strand
which fringed both shores, and to it fell wooded slopes, interrupted
here and there by low sandstone cliffs of warm red colouring, and now
and again by a dingle with cracks of greensward.
I forgot petty squalors and enjoyed things—the coy tremble of the
tiller and the backwash of air from the dingy mainsail, and, with a
somewhat chastened rapture, the lunch which Davies brought up to me and
solicitously watched me eat.
Later, as the wind sank to lazy airs, he became busy with a larger
topsail and jib; but I was content to doze away the afternoon,
drenching brain and body in the sweet and novel foreign atmosphere, and
dreamily watching the fringe of glen cliff and cool white sand as they
passed ever more slowly by.
CHAPTER IV
Retrospect
“Wake up!” I rubbed my eyes and wondered where I was; stretched myself
painfully, too, for even the cushions had not given me a true bed of
roses. It was dusk, and the yacht was stationary in glassy water,
coloured by the last after-glow. A roofing of thin upper-cloud had
spread over most of the sky, and a subtle smell of rain was in the air.
We seemed to be in the middle of the fiord, whose shores looked distant
and steep in the gathering darkness. Close ahead they faded away
suddenly, and the sight lost itself in a grey void. The stillness was
absolute.
“We can’t get to Sonderburg to-night,” said Davies.
“What’s to be done then?” I asked, collecting my senses.
“Oh! we’ll anchor anywhere here, we’re just at the mouth of the fiord;
I’ll tow her inshore if you’ll steer in that direction.” He pointed
vaguely at a blur of trees and cliff. Then he jumped into the dinghy,
cast off the painter, and, after snatching at the slack of a rope,
began towing the reluctant yacht by short jerks of the sculls. The
menacing aspect of that grey void, combined with a natural preference
for getting to some definite place at night, combined to depress my
spirits afresh. In my sleep I had dreamt of Morven Lodge, of heather
tea-parties after glorious slaughters of grouse, of salmon leaping in
amber pools—and now——
“Just take a cast of the lead, will you?” came Davies’s voice above the
splash of the sculls.
“Where is it?” I shouted back.
“Never mind—we’re close enough now; let—— Can you manage to let go the
anchor?”
I hurried forward and picked impotently at the bonds of the sleeping
monster. But Davies was aboard again, and stirred him with a deft touch
or two, till he crashed into the water with a grinding of chain.
“We shall do well here,” said he.
“Isn’t this rather an open anchorage?” I suggested.
“It’s only open from that quarter,” he replied. “If it comes on to blow
from there we shall have to clear out; but I think it’s only rain.
Let’s stow the sails.”
Another whirlwind of activity, in which I joined as effectively as I
could, oppressed by the prospect of having to “clear out”—who knows
whither?—at midnight. But Davies’s _sang froid_ was infectious, I
suppose, and the little den below, bright-lit and soon fragrant with
cookery, pleaded insistently for affection. Yachting in this singular
style was hungry work, I found. Steak tastes none the worse for having
been wrapped in newspaper, and the slight traces of the day’s news
disappear with frying in onions and potato-chips. Davies was indeed on
his mettle for this, his first dinner to his guest; for he produced
with stealthy pride, not from the dishonoured grave of the beer, but
from some more hallowed recess, a bottle of German champagne, from
which we drank success to the _Dulcibella_.
“I wish you would tell me all about your cruise from England,” I asked.
“You must have had some exciting adventures. Here are the charts; let’s
go over them.”
“We must wash up first,” he replied, and I was tactfully introduced to