V. Wanted, a North Wind
NOTHING disturbed my rest that night, so adaptable is youth and somasterful is nature. At times I was remotely aware of a threshing ofrain and a humming of wind, with a nervous kicking of the littlehull, and at one moment I dreamt I saw an apparition by candle-lightof Davies, clad in pyjamas and huge top-boots, grasping a mistylantern of gigantic proportions. But the apparition mounted theladder and disappeared, and I passed to other dreams.
A blast in my ear, like the voice of fifty trombones, galvanized meinto full consciousness. The musician, smiling and tousled, was at mybedside, raising a foghorn to his lips with deadly intention. 'It's away we have in the _Dulcibella_,' he said, as I started up on oneelbow. 'I didn't startle you much, did I?' he added.
'Well, I like the _mattinata_ better than the cold douche,' Ianswered, thinking of yesterday.
'Fine day and magnificent breeze!' he answered. My sensations thismorning were vastly livelier than those of yesterday at the samehour. My limbs were supple again and my head clear. Not even thesearching wind could mar the ecstasy of that plunge down to smooth,seductive sand, where I buried greedy fingers and looked through amedium blue, with that translucent blue, fairy-faint and angel-pure,that you see in perfection only in the heart of ice. Up again to sun,wind, and the forest whispers from the shore; down just once more tosee the uncouth anchor stabbing the sand's soft bosom with one rustyfang, deaf and inert to the _Dulcibella_s' puny efforts to drag himfrom his prey. Back, holding by the cable as a rusty clue from heavento earth, up to that _bourgeoise_ little maiden's bows; back tobreakfast, with an appetite not to be blunted by condensed milk andsomewhat _pass?_ bread. An hour later we had dressed the _Dulcibella_for the road, and were foaming into the grey void of yesterday, now anoble expanse of wind-whipped blue, half surrounded by distant hills,their every outline vivid in the rain-washed air.
I cannot pretend that I really enjoyed this first sail into the open,though I was keenly anxious to do so. I felt the thrill of thoseforward leaps, heard that persuasive song the foam sings under thelee-bow, saw the flashing harmonies of sea and sky; but sensuousperception was deadened by nervousness. The yacht looked smaller thanever outside the quiet fiord. The song of the foam seemed very near,the wave crests aft very high. The novice in sailing clingsdesperately to the thoughts of sailors--effective, prudent persons,with a typical jargon and a typical dress, versed in local currentsand winds. I could not help missing this professional element.Davies, as he sat grasping his beloved tiller, looked strikinglyefficient in his way, and supremely at home in his surroundings; buthe looked the amateur through and through, as with one hand, and (itseemed) one eye, he wrestled with a spray-splashed chart halfunrolled on the deck beside him. All his casual ways returned tome--his casual talk and that last adventurous voyage to the Baltic,and the suspicions his reticence had aroused.
'Do you see a monument anywhere?' he said, all at once; and, before Icould answer; 'We must take another reef.' He let go of the tillerand relit his pipe, while the yacht rounded sharply to, and in atwinkling was tossing head to sea with loud claps of her canvas andpassionate jerks of her boom, as the wind leapt on its quarry, nowturning to bay, with redoubled force. The sting of spray in my eyesand the Babel of noise dazed me; but Davies, with a pull on thefore-sheet, soothed the tormented little ship, and left her coollysparring with the waves while he shortened sail and puffed his pipe.An hour later the narrow vista of Als Sound was visible, with quietold Sonderburg sunning itself on the island shore, and the Dybbolheights towering above--the Dybbol of bloody memory; scene of thelast desperate stand of the Danes in '64, ere the Prussians wrestedthe two fair provinces from them.
'It's early to anchor, and I hate towns,' said Davies, as one sectionof a lumbering pontoon bridge opened to give us passage. But I wasfirm on the need for a walk, and got my way on condition that Ibought stores as well, and returned in time to admit of furtheradvance to a 'quiet anchorage'. Never did I step on the solid earthwith stranger feelings, partly due to relief from confinement, partlyto that sense of independence in travelling, which, for those who godown to the sea in small ships, can make the foulest coal-port inNorthumbria seem attractive. And here I had fascinating Sonderburg,with its broad-eaved houses of carved woodwork, each fresh withcleansing, yet reverend with age; its fair-haired Viking-like men,and rosy, plain-faced women, with their bullet foreheads and largemouths; Sonderburg still Danish to the core under its Teuton veneer.Crossing the bridge I climbed the Dybbol--dotted with memorials ofthat heroic defence--and thence could see the wee form and gossamerrigging of the _Dulcibella_ on the silver ribbon of the Sound, and wasreminded by the sight that there were stores to be bought. So Ihurried down again to the old quarter and bargained over eggs andbread with a dear old lady, pink as a _d?butante,_ made a patrioticpretence of not understanding German, and called in her strappingson, whose few words of English, being chiefly nautical slang pickedup on a British trawler, were peculiarly useless for the purpose.Davies had tea ready when I came aboard again, and, drinking it ondeck, we proceeded up the sheltered Sound, which, in spite of itsimposing name, was no bigger than an inland river, only the hosts ofrainbow jelly-fish reminding us that we were threading a highway ofocean. There is no rise and fall of tide in these regions todisfigure the shore with mud. Here was a shelving gravel bank; therea bed of whispering rushes; there again young birch trees growing tothe very brink, each wearing a stocking of bright moss and settingits foot firmly in among golden leaves and scarlet fungus.
Davies was preoccupied, but he lighted up when I talked of the Danishwar. 'Germany's a thundering great nation,' he said; 'I wonder if weshall ever fight her.' A little incident that happened after weanchored deepened the impression left by this conversation. We creptat dusk into a shaded back-water, where our keel almost touched thegravel bed. Opposite us on the Alsen shore there showed, clean-cutagainst the sky, the spire of a little monument rising from a leafyhollow.
'I wonder what that is,' I said. It was scarcely a minute's row inthe dinghy, and when the anchor was down we sculled over to it. Abank of loam led to gorse and bramble. Pushing aside some branches wecame to a slender Gothic memorial in grey stone, inscribed withbas-reliefs of battle scenes, showing Prussians forcing a landing inboats and Danes resisting with savage tenacity. In the failing lightwe spelt out an inscription: 'Den bei dem Meeres Uebergange und derEroberung von Alsen am 29. Juni 1864 heldenm?thig gefallenen zumehrenden Ged?chtniss.' 'To the honoured memory of those who diedheroically at the invasion and storming of Alsen.' I knew the Germanpassion for commemoration; I had seen similar memorials on Alsatianbattlefields, and several on the Dybbol only that afternoon; butthere was something in the scene, the hour, and the circumstances,which made this one seem singularly touching. As for Davies, Iscarcely recognized him; his eyes flashed and filled with tears as heglanced from the inscription to the path we had followed and thewater beyond. 'It was a landing in boats, I suppose,' he said, halfto himself. 'I wonder they managed it. What does _heldenm?thig_mean?'--'Heroically.'--'Heldenm?thig gefallenen,' he repeated, underhis breath, lingering on each syllable. He was like a schoolboyreading of Waterloo.
Our conversation at dinner turned naturally on war, and in navalwarfare I found I had come upon Davies's literary hobby. I had nothitherto paid attention to the medley on our bookshelf, but I now sawthat, besides a Nautical Almanack and some dilapidated _SailingDirections_, there were several books on the cruises of small yachts,and also some big volumes crushed in anyhow or lying on the top.Squinting painfully at them I saw Mahan's _Life of Nelson_, Brassey's_Naval Annual_, and others.
'It's a tremendously interesting subject,' said Davies, pulling down(in two pieces) a volume of Mahan's _Influence of Sea Power_.
Dinner flagged (and froze) while he illustrated a point by referenceto the much-thumbed pages. He was very keen, and not very articulate.I knew just enough to be an intelligent listener, and, though hungry,was delighted to hear him talk.
'I'm not boring you,
am I?' he said, suddenly.
'I should think not,' I protested. 'But you might just have a look atthe chops.'
They had indeed been crying aloud for notice for some minutes, anddrew candid attention to their neglect when they appeared. Thediversion they caused put Davies out of vein. I tried to revive thesubject, but he was reserved and diffident.
The untidy bookshelf reminded me of the logbook, and when Davies hadretired with the crockery to the forecastle, I pulled the ledger downand turned over the leaves. It was a mass of short entries, withcryptic abbreviations, winds, tides, weather, and courses appearingto predominate. The voyage from Dover to Ostend was dismissed in twolines: 'Under way 7 p.m., wind W.S.W. moderate; West Hinder 5 a.m.,outside all banks; Ostend 11 a.m.' The Scheldt had a couple of pagesvery technical and _staccato_ in style. Inland Holland was given acontemptuous summary, with some half-hearted allusions to windmills,and so on, and a caustic word or two about boys, paint, and canalsmells.
At Amsterdam technicalities began again, and a brisker tone pervadedthe entries, which became progressively fuller as the writer cruisedon the Frisian coast. He was clearly in better spirits, for here andthere were quaint and laboured efforts to describe nature out ofmaterial which, as far as I could judge, was repellent enough todiscourage the most brilliant and observant of writers; with anoccasional note of a visit on shore, generally reached by a walk ofhalf a mile over sand, and of talks with shop people and fishermen.But such lighter relief was rare. The bulk dealt with channels andshoals with weird and depressing names, with the centre-plate, thesails, and the wind, buoys and 'booms', tides and 'berths' for thenight. 'Kedging off' appeared to be a frequent diversion; 'runningaground' was of almost daily occurrence.
It was not easy reading, and I turned the leaves rapidly. I wascurious, too, to see the latter part. I came to a point where therain of little sentences, pattering out like small shot, ceasedabruptly. It was at the end of September 9. That day, with its'kedging' and 'boom-dodging', was filled in with the usual detail.The log then leapt over three days, and went on: '_Sept._ 13. WindW.N.W. fresh. Decided to go to Baltic. Sailed 4 a.m. Quick passage E.1/2 S. to mouth of Weser. Anchored for night under Hohenh?rn Sand.Sept. 14, _nil_. Sept. 15., under way at 4 a.m. Wind East moderate.Course W. by S.; four miles; N.E. by N. fifteen miles. Norderpiep9.30. Eider River 11.30.' This recital of naked facts was quitecharacteristic when 'passages' were concerned, and any curiosity Ihad felt about his reticence on the previous night would have beenrather allayed than stimulated had I not noticed that a page had beentorn out of the book just at this point. The frayed edge left hadbeen pruned and picked into very small limits; but dissimulation wasnot Davies's strong point, and a child could have seen that a leafwas missing, and that the entries, starting from the evening ofSeptember 9 (where a page ended), had been written together at onesitting. I was on the point of calling to Davies, and chaffing himwith having committed a grave offence against maritime law in having'cooked' his log; but I checked myself, I scarcely know why, probablybecause I guessed the joke would touch a sensitive place and fail.Delicacy shrank from seeing him compelled either to amplify adeception or blunder out a confession--he was too easy a prey; and,after all, the matter was of small moment. I returned the book to theshelf, the only definite result of its perusal being to recall mypromise to keep a diary myself, and I then and there dedicated anotebook to the purpose.
We were just lighting our cigars when we heard voices and the splashof oars, followed by a bump against the hull which made Davies wince,as violations of his paint always did. 'Guten Abend; wo fahren Siehin?' greeted us as we climbed on deck. It turned out to be somejovial fishermen returning to their smack from a visit to Sonderburg.A short dialogue proved to them that we were mad Englishmen in bitterneed of charity.
'Come to Satrup,' they said; 'all the smacks are there, round thepoint. There is good punch in the inn.'
Nothing loth, we followed in the dinghy, skirted a bend of the Sound,and opened up the lights of a village, with some smacks at anchor infront of it. We were escorted to the inn, and introduced to aformidable beverage, called coffee-punch, and a smoke-wreathed circleof smacksmen, who talked German out of courtesy, but were Danish inall else. Davies was at once at home with them, to a degree, indeed,that I envied. His German was of the crudest kind, _bizarre_ invocabulary and comical in accent; but the freemasonry of the sea, orsome charm of his own, gave intuition to both him and his hearers. Icut a poor figure in this nautical gathering, though Davies, whopersistently referred to me as 'meiner Freund', tried hard torepresent me as a kindred spirit and to include me in the generaltalk. I was detected at once as an uninteresting hybrid. Davies, whosometimes appealed to me for a word, was deep in talk over anchoragesand ducks, especially, as I well remember now, about the chance ofsport in a certain _Schlei Fiord_. I fell into utter neglect, tillrescued by a taciturn person in spectacles and a very high cap, whoappeared to be the only landsman present. After silently puffingsmoke in my direction for some time, he asked me if I was married,and if not, when I proposed to be. After this inquisition heabandoned me.
It was eleven before we left this hospitable inn, escorted by thewhole party to the dinghy. Our friends of the smack insisted on oursharing their boat out of pure good-fellowship--for there was notnearly room for us--and would not let us go till a bucket offresh-caught fish had been emptied into her bottom. After muchshaking of scaly hands, we sculled back to the _Dulcibella_, where sheslept in a bed of tremulous stars.
Davies sniffed the wind and scanned the tree-tops, where light gustswere toying with the leaves.
'Sou'-west still,' he said, 'and more rain coming. But it's bound toshift into the north.'
'Will that be a good wind for us?'
'It depends where we go,' he said, slowly. 'I was asking thosefellows about duck-shooting. They seemed to think the best placewould be Schlei Fiord. That's about fifteen miles south ofSonderburg, on the way to Kiel. They said there was a pilot chapliving at the mouth who would tell us all about it. They weren't veryencouraging though. We should want a north wind for that.'
'I don't care where we go,' I said, to my own surprise.
'Don't you really?' he rejoined, with sudden warmth. Then, with aslight change of voice. 'You mean it's all very jolly about here?'
Of course I meant that. Before we went below we both looked for amoment at the little grey memorial; its slender fretted arch outlinedin tender lights and darks above the hollow on the Alsen shore. Thenight was that of September 27, the third I had spent on the_Dulcibella_.
The Riddle of the Sands Page 6