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

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

shooting-box in inclement weather, the _Dulcibella_ lost ground in my

estimation, which she had latterly gained.

“I’m fond of shooting,” I said, “but I’m afraid I’m only a fair-weather

yachtsman, and I should much prefer sun and scenery.”

“Scenery,” he repeated, reflectively. “I say, you must have thought it

a queer taste of mine to cruise about on that outlandish Frisian coast.

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 a

wonderful contrast to what you described. Did you ever see another

yacht there?”

“Only one,” he answered. “Good night!”

“Good night!”