The Riddle of the Sands

by Erskine Childers

  IV. Retrospect

  'WAKE up!' I rubbed my eyes and wondered where I was; stretchedmyself painfully, too, for even the cushions had not given me a truebed of roses. It was dusk, and the yacht was stationary in glassywater, coloured by the last after-glow. A roofing of thin upper-cloudhad spread over most of the sky, and a subtle smell of rain was inthe air. We seemed to be in the middle of the fiord, whose shoreslooked distant and steep in the gathering darkness. Close ahead theyfaded away suddenly, and the sight lost itself in a grey void. Thestillness 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 thefiord; I'll tow her inshore if you'll steer in that direction.' Hepointed vaguely at a blur of trees and cliff. Then he jumped into thedinghy, cast off the painter, and, after snatching at the slack of arope, began towing the reluctant yacht by short jerks of the sculls.The menacing aspect of that grey void, combined with a naturalpreference for getting to some definite place at night, combined todepress my spirits afresh. In my sleep I had dreamt of Morven Lodge,of heather tea-parties after glorious slaughters of grouse, of salmonleaping in amber pools--and now----

  'Just take a cast of the lead, will you?' came Davies's voice abovethe splash of the sculls.

  'Where is it?' I shouted back.

  'Never mind--we're close enough now; let---- Can you manage to let gothe anchor?'

  I hurried forward and picked impotently at the bonds of the sleepingmonster. But Davies was aboard again, and stirred him with a defttouch or two, till he crashed into the water with a grinding ofchain.

  '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 toblow from there we shall have to clear out; but I think it's onlyrain. Let's stow the sails.'

  Another whirlwind of activity, in which I joined as effectively as Icould, oppressed by the prospect of having to 'clear out'--who knowswhither?--at midnight. But Davies's _sang froid_ was infectious, Isuppose, and the little den below, bright-lit and soon fragrant withcookery, pleaded insistently for affection. Yachting in this singularstyle was hungry work, I found. Steak tastes none the worse forhaving been wrapped in newspaper, and the slight traces of the day'snews disappear with frying in onions and potato-chips. Davies wasindeed on his mettle for this, his first dinner to his guest; for heproduced with stealthy pride, not from the dishonoured grave of thebeer, but from some more hallowed recess, a bottle of Germanchampagne, from which we drank success to the _Dulcibella_.

  'I wish you would tell me all about your cruise from England,' Iasked. 'You must have had some exciting adventures. Here are thecharts; let's go over them.'

  'We must wash up first,' he replied, and I was tactfully introducedto one of his very few 'standing orders', that tobacco should notburn, nor post-prandial chat begin, until that distasteful processhad ended. 'It would never get done otherwise,' he sagely opined. Butwhen we were finally settled with cigars, a variety of which, culledfrom many ports--German, Dutch, and Belgian--Davies kept in abattered old box in the net-rack, the promised talk hung fire.

  'I'm no good at description,' he complained; 'and there's really verylittle to tell. We left Dover--Morrison and I--on the 6th of August; made agood passage to Ostend.'

  'You had some fun there, I suppose?' I put in, thinking of--well, ofOstend in August.

  'Fun! A filthy hole I call it; we had to stop a couple of days, as wefouled a buoy coming in and carried away the bobstay; we lay in adirty 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 funenough navigating the estuary--the tides and banks there areappalling--but farther inland it was a wretched business, nothing butpaying lock-dues, bumping against schuyts, and towing down stinkingcanals. Never a peaceful night like this--always moored by some quayor tow-path, with people passing and boys. Heavens! shall I everforget those boys! A perfect murrain of them infests Holland; theyseem to have nothing in the world to do but throw stones and mud atforeign yachts.'

  'They want a Herod, with some statesmanlike views on infanticide.'

  'By Jove! yes; but the fact is that you want a crew for thatpottering inland work; they can smack the boys and keep an eye on thesculls. A boat like this should stick to the sea, or out-of-the-wayplaces 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 shavingone's bows every second. On by the Vecht river to Amsterdam, andthence--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 ancientledger, 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'sjust short notes about winds and bearings, and so on.' He was turningsome leaves over rapidly. 'Now, why don't you keep a log of what wedo? 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 morestained and frayed than the first. 'We had a splendid time thenexploring the Zuyder Zee, its northern part at least, and round thoseislands which bound it on the north. Those are the Frisian Islands,and they stretch for 120 miles or so eastward. You see, the first twoof them, Texel and Vlieland, shut in the Zuyder Zee, and the restborder the Dutch and German coasts.' _[See Map A]_

  'What's all this?' I said, running my finger over some dotted patcheswhich covered much of the chart. The latter was becomingunintelligible; clean-cut coasts and neat regiments of little figureshad given place to a confusion of winding and intersecting lines andbald spaces.

  'All _sand,_' said Davies, enthusiastically. 'You can't think what asplendid sailing-ground it is. You can explore for days withoutseeing a soul. These are the channels, you see; they're very badlycharted. This chart was almost useless, but it made it all the morefun. No towns or harbours, just a village or two on the islands, ifyou wanted stores.'

  'They look rather desolate,' I said.

  'Desolate's no word for it; they're really only gigantic sandbanksthemselves.'

  'Wasn't all this rather dangerous?' I asked.

  'Not a bit; you see, that's where our shallow draught and flat bottomcame in--we could go anywhere, and it didn't matter runningaground--she's perfect for that sort of work; and she doesn't really_look_ bad either, does she?' he asked, rather wistfully. I suppose Ihesitated, for he said, abruptly:

  'Anyway, I don't go in for looks.'

  He had leaned back, and I detected traces of incipientabsentmindedness. His cigar, which he had lately been lighting andrelighting feverishly--a habit of his when excited--seemed now tohave expired for good.

  'About running aground,' I persisted; 'surely that's apt to bedangerous?'

  He sat up and felt round for a match.

  'Not the least, if you know where you can run risks and where youcan't; anyway, you can't possibly help it. That chart may look simpleto you'--('simple!' I thought)--'but at half flood all those banksare covered; the islands and coasts are scarcely visible, they are solow, 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 cangenerally get a nice berth under the lee of a bank, but the tides runstrong in the channels, and if there's a gale blowing----'

  'Didn't you ever take a pilot?' I interrupted.

  'Pilot? Why, the who
le point of the thing'--he stopped short--'I didtake one once, later on,' he resumed, with an odd smile, which fadedat once.

  'Well?' I urged, for I saw a reverie was coming.

  'Oh! he ran me ashore, of course. Served me right. I wonder what theweather's doing'; he rose, glanced at the aneroid, the clock, and thehalf-closed skylight with a curious circular movement, and went astep or two up the companion-ladder, where he remained for severalminutes with head and shoulders in the open air.

  There was no sound of wind outside, but the _Dulcibella_ had begun tomove in her sleep, as it were, rolling drowsily to some faint send ofthe sea, with an occasional short jump, like the start of an uneasydreamer.

  'What does it look like?' I called from my sofa. I had to repeat thequestion.

  'Rain coming,' said Davies, returning, 'and possibly wind; but we'resafe 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 tellme the rest.'

  'All right,' he agreed, with more readiness than I expected.

  'After Terschelling--here it is, the third island from the west--Ipottered 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 rightsingle-handed, but for that sort of work two are much better thanone. The plate's beastly heavy; in fact, I had to give up using itfor 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, sometimesinside. 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 putin; 'that would account for inaccuracies.' Did Davies think thatAdmiralties had time to waste on smoothing the road for such quixoticlittle craft as his, in all its inquisitive ramblings? But he firedup.

  '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 mattersshort, for we ought to be turning in, I got to Borkum--that's thefirst of the _German_ islands.' He pointed at a round bare lozengelying in the midst of a welter of sandbanks. 'Rottum--this queerlittle one--it has only one house on it--is the most easterly Dutchisland, and the mainland of Holland ends _here_, opposite it, at theEms River'--indicating a dismal cavity in the coast, sown with namessuggestive 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 prettyquick getting to Flensburg. Wait a bit, we want another chart. Isthis the next?'

  'Yes; but we scarcely need it. I only went a little way fartheron--to Norderney, in fact, the third German island--then I decided togo straight for the Baltic. I had always had an idea of gettingthere, as Knight did in the _Falcon_. So I made a passage of it to theEider River, _there_ on the West Schleswig coast, took the river andcanal through to Kiel on the Baltic, and from there made anotherpassage 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 sailto-morrow!' He ended with rather forced vivacity, and briskly rolledup the chart. The reluctance he had shown from the first to talkabout his cruise had been for a brief space forgotten in hisenthusiasm about a portion of it, but had returned markedly in thisbald conclusion. I felt sure that there was more in it than meredisinclination to spin nautical yarns in the 'hardy Corinthian'style, which can be so offensive in amateur yachtsmen; and I thoughtI guessed the explanation. His voyage single-handed to the Balticfrom the Frisian Islands had been a foolhardy enterprise, withperilous incidents, which, rather than make light of, he would notrefer to at all. Probably he was ashamed of his recklessness andwished to ignore it with me, an inexperienced acquaintance not yetenamoured of the _Dulcibella_s' way of life, whom both courtesy andinterest demanded that he should inspire with confidence. I liked himall the better as I came to this conclusion, but I was tempted topersist a little.

  'I slept the whole afternoon,' I said; 'and, to tell the truth, Irather 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 passageto the Schleswig coast--the Eider River, did you say?--was a longishone, 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 sailwith a fair wind. By Jove! I've forgotten to caulk that seam overyour bunk, and it's going to rain. I must do it now. You turn in.'

  He disappeared. My curiosity, never very consuming, was banished byconcern as to the open seam; for the prospect of a big drop,remorseless and regular as Fate, falling on my forehead throughoutthe night, as in the torture-chamber of the Inquisition, was alarmingenough 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, thoughstill far from being the trained contortionist that the occasioncalled for. Hammering ceased, and Davies reappeared just as I wasstretched 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,' Ireplied, 'I think I shall. But I should like to land now and then andhave a walk. Of course, a great deal depends on the weather, doesn'tit? I hope this rain' (drops had begun to patter overhead) 'doesn'tmean 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, thebetter for them.'

  I had forgotten the ducks and the cold, and, suddenly presented as ashooting-box in inclement weather, the _Dulcibella_ lost ground in myestimation, which she had latterly gained.

  'I'm fond of shooting,' I said, 'but I'm afraid I'm only afair-weather yachtsman, and I should much prefer sun and scenery.'

  'Scenery,' he repeated, reflectively. 'I say, you must have thoughtit a queer taste of mine to cruise about on that outlandish Frisiancoast. How would you like that sort of thing?'

  'I should loathe it,' I answered, promptly, with a clear conscience.'Weren't you delighted yourself to get to the Baltic? It must be awonderful contrast to what you described. Did you ever see anotheryacht there?'

  'Only one,' he answered. 'Good night!'

  'Good night!'