The Riddle of the Sands
one of his very few “standing orders”, that tobacco should not burn,
nor post-prandial chat begin, until that distasteful process had ended.
“It would never get done otherwise,” he sagely opined. But when we were
finally settled with cigars, a variety of which, culled from many
ports—German, Dutch, and Belgian—Davies kept in a battered old box in
the net-rack, the promised talk hung fire.
“I’m no good at description,” he complained; “and there’s really very
little to tell. We left Dover—Morrison and I—on the 6th of August; made
a good passage to Ostend.”
“You had some fun there, I suppose?” I put in, thinking of—well, of
Ostend in August.
“Fun! A filthy hole I call it; we had to stop a couple of days, as we
fouled a buoy coming in and carried away the bobstay; we lay in a dirty
little tidal dock, and there was nothing to do on shore.”
“Well, what next?”
“We had a splendid sail to the East Scheldt, but then, like fools,
decided to go through Holland by canal and river. It was good fun
enough navigating the estuary—the tides and banks there are
appalling—but farther inland it was a wretched business, nothing but
paying lock-dues, bumping against schuyts, and towing down stinking
canals. Never a peaceful night like this—always moored by some quay or
tow-path, with people passing and boys. Heavens! shall I ever forget
those boys! A perfect murrain of them infests Holland; they seem to
have nothing in the world to do but throw stones and mud at foreign
yachts.”
“They want a Herod, with some statesmanlike views on infanticide.”
“By Jove! yes; but the fact is that you want a crew for that pottering
inland work; they can smack the boys and keep an eye on the sculls. A
boat like this should stick to the sea, or out-of-the-way places on the
coast. Well, after Amsterdam.”
“You’ve skipped a good deal, haven’t you?” I interrupted.
“Oh! have I? Well, let me see, we went by Dordrecht to Rotterdam;
nothing to see there, and swarms of tugs buzzing about and shaving
one’s bows every second. On by the Vecht river to Amsterdam, and
thence—Lord, what a relief it was!—out into the North Sea again. The
weather had been still and steamy; but it broke up finely now, and we
had a rattling three-reef sail to the Zuyder Zee.”
He reached up to the bookshelf for what looked like an ancient ledger,
and turned over the leaves.
“Is that your log?” I asked. “I should like to have a look at it.”
“Oh! you’d find it dull reading—if you could read it at all; it’s just
short notes about winds and bearings, and so on.” He was turning some
leaves over rapidly. “Now, why don’t you keep a log of what we do? I
can’t describe things, and you can.”
“I’ve half a mind to try,” I said.
“We want another chart now,” and he pulled down a second yet more
stained and frayed than the first. “We had a splendid time then
exploring the Zuyder Zee, its northern part at least, and round those
islands which bound it on the north. Those are the Frisian Islands, and
they stretch for 120 miles or so eastward. You see, the first two of
them, Texel and Vlieland, shut in the Zuyder Zee, and the rest border
the Dutch and German coasts.” _[See Map A]_
“What’s all this?” I said, running my finger over some dotted patches
which covered much of the chart. The latter was becoming
unintelligible; clean-cut coasts and neat regiments of little figures
had given place to a confusion of winding and intersecting lines and
bald spaces.
“All _sand_,” said Davies, enthusiastically. “You can’t think what a
splendid sailing-ground it is. You can explore for days without seeing
a soul. These are the channels, you see; they’re very badly charted.
This chart was almost useless, but it made it all the more fun. No
towns or harbours, just a village or two on the islands, if you wanted
stores.”
“They look rather desolate,” I said.
“Desolate’s no word for it; they’re really only gigantic sandbanks
themselves.”
“Wasn’t all this rather dangerous?” I asked.
“Not a bit; you see, that’s where our shallow draught and flat bottom
came in—we could go anywhere, and it didn’t matter running
aground—she’s perfect for that sort of work; and she doesn’t really
_look_ bad either, does she?” he asked, rather wistfully. I suppose I
hesitated, for he said, abruptly:
“Anyway, I don’t go in for looks.”
He had leaned back, and I detected traces of incipient
absentmindedness. His cigar, which he had lately been lighting and
relighting feverishly—a habit of his when excited—seemed now to have
expired for good.
“About running aground,” I persisted; “surely that’s apt to be
dangerous?”
He sat up and felt round for a match.
“Not the least, if you know where you can run risks and where you
can’t; anyway, you can’t possibly help it. That chart may look simple
to you”—(“simple!” I thought)—“but at half flood all those banks are
covered; the islands and coasts are scarcely visible, they are so low,
and everything looks the same.” This graphic description of a “splendid
cruising-ground” took away my breath. “Of course there _is_ risk
sometimes—choosing an anchorage requires care. You can generally get a
nice berth under the lee of a bank, but the tides run strong in the
channels, and if there’s a gale blowing——”
“Didn’t you ever take a pilot?” I interrupted.
“Pilot? Why, the whole point of the thing”—he stopped short—“I did take
one once, later on,” he resumed, with an odd smile, which faded at
once.
“Well?” I urged, for I saw a reverie was coming.
“Oh! he ran me ashore, of course. Served me right. I wonder what the
weather’s doing”; he rose, glanced at the aneroid, the clock, and the
half-closed skylight with a curious circular movement, and went a step
or two up the companion-ladder, where he remained for several minutes
with head and shoulders in the open air.
There was no sound of wind outside, but the _Dulcibella_ had begun to
move in her sleep, as it were, rolling drowsily to some faint send of
the sea, with an occasional short jump, like the start of an uneasy
dreamer.
“What does it look like?” I called from my sofa. I had to repeat the
question.
“Rain coming,” said Davies, returning, “and possibly wind; but we’re
safe enough here. It’s coming from the sou’-west; shall we turn in?”
“We haven’t finished your cruise yet,” I said. “Light a pipe and tell
me the rest.”
“All right,” he agreed, with more readiness than I expected.
“After Terschelling—here it is, the third island from the west—I
pottered along eastward.” _[See Map A]_
“I?”
“Oh! I forgot. Morrison had to leave me there. I missed him badly, but
I hoped at that time to get —— to join me. I could manage all right
single-handed, but for that sort of work two are much better than one.
The plate’s beastly heavy; in fact, I had to give up using it for fear
of a smash.”
“After Terschelling?” I jogged his memory.
“Well, I followed the Dutch islands, Ameland, Schiermonnikoog, Rottum
(outlandish names, aren’t they?), sometimes outside them, sometimes
inside. It was a bit lonely, but grand sport and very interesting. The
charts were shocking, but I worried out most of the channels.”
“I suppose those waters are only used by small local craft?” I put in;
“that would account for inaccuracies.” Did Davies think that
Admiralties had time to waste on smoothing the road for such quixotic
little craft as his, in all its inquisitive ramblings? But he fired up.
“That’s all very well,” he said, “but think what folly it is. However,
that’s a long story, and will bore you. To cut matters short, for we
ought to be turning in, I got to Borkum—that’s the first of the
_German_ islands.” He pointed at a round bare lozenge lying in the
midst of a welter of sandbanks. “Rottum—this queer little one—it has
only one house on it—is the most easterly Dutch island, and the
mainland of Holland ends _here_, opposite it, at the Ems
River”—indicating a dismal cavity in the coast, sown with names
suggestive of mud, and wrecks, and dreariness.
“What date was this?” I asked.
“About the ninth of this month.”
“Why, that’s only a fortnight before you wired to me! You were pretty
quick getting to Flensburg. Wait a bit, we want another chart. Is this
the next?”
“Yes; but we scarcely need it. I only went a little way farther on—to
Norderney, in fact, the third German island—then I decided to go
straight for the Baltic. I had always had an idea of getting there, as
Knight did in the _Falcon_. So I made a passage of it to the Eider
River, _there_ on the West Schleswig coast, took the river and canal
through to Kiel on the Baltic, and from there made another passage up
north to Flensburg. I was a week there, and then you came, and here we
are. And now let’s turn in. We’ll have a fine sail to-morrow!” He ended
with rather forced vivacity, and briskly rolled up the chart. The
reluctance he had shown from the first to talk about his cruise had
been for a brief space forgotten in his enthusiasm about a portion of
it, but had returned markedly in this bald conclusion. I felt sure that
there was more in it than mere disinclination to spin nautical yarns in
the “hardy Corinthian” style, which can be so offensive in amateur
yachtsmen; and I thought I guessed the explanation. His voyage
single-handed to the Baltic from the Frisian Islands had been a
foolhardy enterprise, with perilous incidents, which, rather than make
light of, he would not refer to at all. Probably he was ashamed of his
recklessness and wished to ignore it with me, an inexperienced
acquaintance not yet enamoured of the _Dulcibella_’s way of life, whom
both courtesy and interest demanded that he should inspire with
confidence. I liked him all the better as I came to this conclusion,
but I was tempted to persist a little.
“I slept the whole afternoon,” I said; “and, to tell the truth, I
rather dread the idea of going to bed, it’s so tiring. Look here,
you’ve rushed over that last part like an express train. That passage
to the Schleswig coast—the Eider River, did you say?—was a longish one,
wasn’t it?”
“Well, you see what it was; about seventy miles, I suppose, direct.” He
spoke low, bending down to sweep up some cigar ashes on the floor.
“Direct?” I insinuated. “Then you put in somewhere?”
“I stopped once, anchored for the night; oh, that’s nothing of a sail
with a fair wind. By Jove! I’ve forgotten to caulk that seam over your
bunk, and it’s going to rain. I must do it now. You turn in.”
He disappeared. My curiosity, never very consuming, was banished by
concern as to the open seam; for the prospect of a big drop,
remorseless and regular as Fate, falling on my forehead throughout the
night, as in the torture-chamber of the Inquisition, was alarming
enough to recall me wholly to the immediate future. So I went to bed,
finding on the whole that I had made progress in the exercise, though
still far from being the trained contortionist that the occasion called
for. Hammering ceased, and Davies reappeared just as I was stretched on
the rack—tucked up in my bunk, I mean.
“I say,” he said, when he was settled in his, and darkness reigned, “do
you think you’ll like this sort of thing?”
“If there are many places about here as beautiful as this,” I replied,
“I think I shall. But _I_ should like to land now and then and have a
walk. Of course, a great deal depends on the weather, doesn’t it? I
hope this rain” (drops had begun to patter overhead) “doesn’t mean that
the summer’s over for good.”
“Oh, you can sail just the same,” said Davies, “unless it’s very bad.
There’s plenty of sheltered water. There’s bound to be a change soon.
But then there are the ducks. The colder and stormier it is, the better
for them.”
I had forgotten the ducks and the cold, and, suddenly presented as a