CHAPTER V.
Wanted, a North Wind
Nothing disturbed my rest that night, so adaptable is youth and so
masterful is nature. At times I was remotely aware of a threshing of
rain and a humming of wind, with a nervous kicking of the little hull,
and at one moment I dreamt I saw an apparition by candle-light of
Davies, clad in pyjamas and huge top-boots, grasping a misty lantern of
gigantic proportions. But the apparition mounted the ladder and
disappeared, and I passed to other dreams.
A blast in my ear, like the voice of fifty trombones, galvanised me
into full consciousness. The musician, smiling and tousled, was at my
bedside, raising a foghorn to his lips with deadly intention. “It’s a
way we have in the _Dulcibella_,” he said, as I started up on one
elbow. “I didn’t startle you much, did I?” he added.
“Well, I like the _mattinata_ better than the cold douche,” I answered,
thinking of yesterday.
“Fine day and magnificent breeze!” he answered. My sensations this
morning were vastly livelier than those of yesterday at the same hour.
My limbs were supple again and my head clear. Not even the searching
wind could mar the ecstasy of that plunge down to smooth, seductive
sand, where I buried greedy fingers and looked through a medium 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 to see the uncouth
anchor stabbing the sand’s soft bosom with one rusty fang, deaf and
inert to the _Dulcibella_’s puny efforts to drag him from his prey.
Back, holding by the cable as a rusty clue from heaven to earth, up to
that _bourgeoise_ little maiden’s bows; back to breakfast, with an
appetite not to be blunted by condensed milk and somewhat _passé_
bread. An hour later we had dressed the _Dulcibella_ for the road, and
were foaming into the grey void of yesterday, now a noble 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 those
forward leaps, heard that persuasive song the foam sings under the
lee-bow, saw the flashing harmonies of sea and sky; but sensuous
perception was deadened by nervousness. The yacht looked smaller than
ever outside the quiet fiord. The song of the foam seemed very near,
the wave crests aft very high. The novice in sailing clings desperately
to the thoughts of sailors—effective, prudent persons, with a typical
jargon and a typical dress, versed in local currents and winds. I could
not help missing this professional element. Davies, as he sat grasping
his beloved tiller, looked strikingly efficient in his way, and
supremely at home in his surroundings; but he looked the amateur
through and through, as with one hand, and (it seemed) one eye, he
wrestled with a spray-splashed chart half unrolled on the deck beside
him. All his casual ways returned to me—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 I
could answer; “We must take another reef.” He let go of the tiller and
relit his pipe, while the yacht rounded sharply to, and in a twinkling
was tossing head to sea with loud claps of her canvas and passionate
jerks of her boom, as the wind leapt on its quarry, now turning to bay,
with redoubled force. The sting of spray in my eyes and the Babel of
noise dazed me; but Davies, with a pull on the fore-sheet, soothed the
tormented little ship, and left her coolly sparring with the waves
while he shortened sail and puffed his pipe. An hour later the narrow
vista of Als Sound was visible, with quiet old Sonderburg sunning
itself on the island shore, and the Dybbol heights towering above—the
Dybbol of bloody memory; scene of the last desperate stand of the Danes
in ’64, ere the Prussians wrested the two fair provinces from them.
“It’s early to anchor, and I hate towns,” said Davies, as one section
of a lumbering pontoon bridge opened to give us passage. But I was firm
on the need for a walk, and got my way on condition that I bought
stores as well, and returned in time to admit of further advance to a
“quiet anchorage”. Never did I step on the solid earth with stranger
feelings, partly due to relief from confinement, partly to that sense
of independence in travelling, which, for those who go down to the sea
in small ships, can make the foulest coal-port in Northumbria seem
attractive. And here I had fascinating Sonderburg, with its broad-eaved
houses of carved woodwork, each fresh with cleansing, yet reverend with
age; its fair-haired Viking-like men, and rosy, plain-faced women, with
their bullet foreheads and large mouths; Sonderburg still Danish to the
core under its Teuton veneer. Crossing the bridge I climbed the
Dybbol—dotted with memorials of that heroic defence—and thence could
see the wee form and gossamer rigging of the _Dulcibella_ on the silver
ribbon of the Sound, and was reminded by the sight that there were
stores to be bought. So I hurried down again to the old quarter and
bargained over eggs and bread with a dear old lady, pink as a
_débutante,_ made a patriotic pretence of not understanding German, and
called in her strapping son, whose few words of English, being chiefly
nautical slang picked up on a British trawler, were peculiarly useless
for the purpose. Davies had tea ready when I came aboard again, and,
drinking it on deck, we proceeded up the sheltered Sound, which, in
spite of its imposing name, was no bigger than an inland river, only
the hosts of rainbow jelly-fish reminding us that we were threading a
highway of ocean. There is no rise and fall of tide in these regions to
disfigure the shore with mud. Here was a shelving gravel bank; there a
bed of whispering rushes; there again young birch trees growing to the
very brink, each wearing a stocking of bright moss and setting its foot
firmly in among golden leaves and scarlet fungus.
Davies was preoccupied, but he lighted up when I talked of the Danish
war. “Germany’s a thundering great nation,” he said; “I wonder if we
shall ever fight her.” A little incident that happened after we
anchored deepened the impression left by this conversation. We crept at
dusk into a shaded back-water, where our keel almost touched the gravel
bed. Opposite us on the Alsen shore there showed, clean-cut against the
sky, the spire of a little monument rising from a leafy hollow.
“I wonder what that is,” I said. It was scarcely a minute’s row in the
dinghy, and when the anchor was down we sculled over to it. A bank of
loam led to gorse and bramble. Pushing aside some branches we came to a
slender Gothic memorial in grey stone, inscribed with bas-reliefs of
battle scenes, showing Prussians forcing a landing in boats and Danes
resisting with savage tenacity. In the failing light we spelt out an
inscription: “Den bei dem Meeres Uebergange und der Eroberung von Alsen
am 29. Juni 1864 heldenmüthig gefallenen zum ehrenden Gedächtniss.” “To
the honoured memory of those who died heroically at the invasion and
storming of Alsen.” I knew the German passion for commemoration; I had
seen similar memorials on Alsatian battlefields, and several on the
Dybbol only that afternoon; but there was something in the scene, the
hour, and the circumstances, which made this one seem singularly
touching. As for Davies, I scarcely recognised him; his eyes flashed
and filled with tears as he glanced from the inscription to the path we
had followed and the water beyond. “It was a landing in boats, I
suppose,” he said, half to himself. “I wonder they managed it. What
does _heldenmüthig_ mean?”—“Heroically.”—“Heldenmüthig gefallenen,” he
repeated, under his breath, lingering on each syllable. He was like a
schoolboy reading of Waterloo.
Our conversation at dinner turned naturally on war, and in naval
warfare I found I had come upon Davies’s literary hobby. I had not
hitherto paid attention to the medley on our bookshelf, but I now saw
that, besides a Nautical Almanack and some dilapidated _Sailing
Directions_, 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 reference to
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 at
the chops.”
They had indeed been crying aloud for notice for some minutes, and drew
candid attention to their neglect when they appeared. The diversion
they caused put Davies out of vein. I tried to revive the subject, but
he was reserved and diffident.
The untidy bookshelf reminded me of the logbook, and when Davies had
retired with the crockery to the forecastle, I pulled the ledger down
and turned over the leaves. It was a mass of short entries, with
cryptic abbreviations, winds, tides, weather, and courses appearing to
predominate. The voyage from Dover to Ostend was dismissed in two
lines: “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 pages
very technical and _staccato_ in style. Inland Holland was given a
contemptuous summary, with some half-hearted allusions to windmills,
and so on, and a caustic word or two about boys, paint, and canal
smells.
At Amsterdam technicalities began again, and a brisker tone pervaded
the entries, which became progressively fuller as the writer cruised on
the Frisian coast. He was clearly in better spirits, for here and there
were quaint and laboured efforts to describe nature out of material
which, as far as I could judge, was repellent enough to discourage the
most brilliant and observant of writers; with an occasional note of a
visit on shore, generally reached by a walk of half a mile over sand,
and of talks with shop people and fishermen. But such lighter relief
was rare. The bulk dealt with channels and shoals with weird and
depressing names, with the centre-plate, the sails, and the wind, buoys
and “booms”, tides and “berths” for the night. “Kedging off” appeared
to be a frequent diversion; “running aground” was of almost daily
occurrence.
It was not easy reading, and I turned the leaves rapidly. I was
curious, too, to see the latter part. I came to a point where the rain
of little sentences, pattering out like small shot, ceased abruptly. 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. Wind W.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 Hohenhörn 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. Norderpiep 9.30. Eider River
11.30.” This recital of naked facts was quite characteristic when
“passages” were concerned, and any curiosity I had felt about his
reticence on the previous night would have been rather allayed than
stimulated had I not noticed that a page had been torn out of the book
just at this point. The frayed edge left had been pruned and picked
into very small limits; but dissimulation was not Davies’s strong
point, and a child could have seen that a leaf was missing, and that
the entries, starting from the evening of September 9 (where a page
ended), had been written together at one sitting. I was on the point of
calling to Davies, and chaffing him with having committed a grave
offence against maritime law in having “cooked” his log; but I checked
myself, I scarcely know why, probably because I guessed the joke would
touch a sensitive place and fail. Delicacy shrank from seeing him
compelled either to amplify a deception 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 the shelf, the only definite result of its perusal
being to recall my promise to keep a diary myself, and I then and there
dedicated a notebook to the purpose.
We were just lighting our cigars when we heard voices and the splash of
oars, followed by a bump against the hull which made Davies wince, as
violations of his paint always did. “Guten Abend; wo fahren Sie hin?”
greeted us as we climbed on deck. It turned out to be some jovial
fishermen returning to their smack from a visit to Sonderburg. A short
dialogue proved to them that we were mad Englishmen in bitter need of
charity.
“Come to Satrup,” they said; “all the smacks are there, round the
point. 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 in
front of it. We were escorted to the inn, and introduced to a
formidable beverage, called coffee-punch, and a smoke-wreathed circle
of smacksmen, who talked German out of courtesy, but were Danish in all
else. Davies was at once at home with them, to a degree, indeed, that I
envied. His German was of the crudest kind, _bizarre_ in vocabulary and
comical in accent; but the freemasonry of the sea, or some charm of his
own, gave intuition to both him and his hearers. I cut a poor figure in
this nautical gathering, though Davies, who persistently referred to me
as “meiner Freund”, tried hard to represent me as a kindred spirit and
to include me in the general talk. I was detected at once as an
uninteresting hybrid. Davies, who sometimes appealed to me for a word,
was deep in talk over anchorages and ducks, especially, as I well
remember now, about the chance of sport in a certain _Schlei Fiord_. I
fell into utter neglect, till rescued by a taciturn person in
spectacles and a very high cap, who appeared to be the only landsman
present. After silently puffing smoke in my direction for some time, he
asked me if I was married, and if not, when I proposed to be. After
this inquisition he abandoned me.
It was eleven before we left this hospitable inn, escorted by the whole
party to the dinghy. Our friends of the smack insisted on our sharing
their boat out of pure good-fellowship—for there was not nearly room
for us—and would not let us go till a bucket of fresh-caught fish had
been emptied into her bottom. After much shaking of scaly hands, we
sculled back to the _Dulcibella_, where she slept in a bed of tremulous
stars.
Davies sniffed the wind and scanned the tree-tops, where light gusts
were toying with the leaves.
“Sou’-west still,” he said, “and more rain coming. But it’s bound to
shift into the north.”
“Will that be a good wind for us?”
“It depends where we go,” he said, slowly. “I was asking those fellows
about duck-shooting. They seemed to think the best place would be
Schlei Fiord. That’s about fifteen miles south of Sonderburg, on the
way to Kiel. They said there was a pilot chap living at the mouth who
would tell us all about it. They weren’t very encouraging 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 a
slight 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 a
moment at the little grey memorial; its slender fretted arch outlined
in tender lights and darks above the hollow on the Alsen shore. The
night was that of September 27, the third I had spent on the
_Dulcibella_.