Boathouse

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UN CONTRE-AMIRAL EN BONNE FORTUNE.

Un général de mer se plaisait à tyranniser les officiers de la division qu’il commandait, à peu près comme autrefois certain empereur romain s’amusait, pour passer le temps, à tuer des mouches. En retour de ses mauvais traitemens, tous ses officiers l’envoyaient au diable; mais leurs malédictions ne réussissaient qu’à réjouir le vieil amiral, qui se montrait fier surtout de la haine universelle qu’il inspirait; et les arrêts forcés ne réjouissaient nullement les jeunes officiers.

Lorsque l’amiral riait en montant à bord, on pouvait en conclure qu’il venait de jouer quelque bon tour à l’un des élégans de la division. Rien ne l’égayait autant que de pouvoir dire à son capitaine de pavillon: «Monsieur le commandant, vous ordonnerez les arrêts forcés pour quinze jours à M. un tel, qui s’est permis d’aller faire la belle jambe à terre malgré mes ordres.» Il se serait volontiers pâmé d’aise, lorsqu’après avoir rencontré dans une rue un officier déguisé en matelot, il lâchait aux trousses du pauvre fugitif deux ou trois de ses adjudans. Il appelait cela faire la chasse aux lapereaux. Cet homme aurait fait le meilleur chef de police que l’on pût posséder dans une capitale. Le sort, en se trompant, n’en avait fait qu’un contre-amiral.

Tous les officiers lui rendaient depuis long-temps haine pour vexations, et cette haine était devenue telle, qu’on pouvait dire qu’elle avait fini par dégénérer en esprit de corps. Il était d’usage de détester l’amiral, à peu près comme il est ordinaire, dans le service, de respecter ses chefs. C’était presque un article de l’ordonnance.

Mille fois on se serait vengé de ce damné d’homme, si les règles d’une discipline d’airain avaient pu se prêter aux voeux que les subalternes formaient contre leur injuste et inflexible chef. Mais, comme il le disait lui-même, il était le pot de fer, et il ne redoutait pas les cruches qui auraient osé l’aborder.

Les cruches enrageaient donc de n’avoir pu ébrécher le pot de fer que par quelques piquantes plaisanteries et quelques bonnes épigrammes auxquelles leur puissant adversaire avait toujours riposté par les arrêts forcés ou de mauvaises notes envoyées au ministre.

Un jeune enseigne de vaisseau, malgré les difficultés et les dangers de l’entreprise, résolut cependant de venger tous ses camarades de la longue humiliation sous laquelle la main de l’amiral avait courbé leurs fronts craintifs. «Je veux, leur dit-il, pour peu que le ciel seconde mes projets, couvrir de honte celui qui nous a jusqu’ici accablés de vexations. Faites des voeux pour moi, et laissez-moi faire.»

La division se trouvait mouillée depuis quelques jours dans un port étranger. Le Léonidas qui aspire à arrêter le torrent des mauvais traitemens de l’amiral, ne choisit pas pour compagnons trois cents Spartiates, mais il prend avec lui les deux plus jolis petits aspirans qu’il peut trouver, et il marche aux Thermopyles. Mais quelles sont les Thermopyles de notre officier? une maison de joie qu’il loue pour quelques heures à d’aimables filles dans une des rues les plus fréquentées de la Havane.

Les deux petits aspirans, dont les traits sont doux et malins, et dont la taille est encore petite et svelte, se laissent habiller en jeunes personnes. Leur teint, déjà un peu bruni par l’air brûlant de la mer, reprend toute sa fraîcheur native sous une légère couche de blanc de céruse. Leurs pieds adolescens, long-temps comprimés par des bottes épaisses, recouvrent une élégante flexibilité dans de fins souliers de prunelle. Leurs hanches, comprimées sous la ceinture d’un lourd poignard, se dessinent voluptueusement sous un large ruban rose. Nos deux petits chérubins de bord deviennent enfin, avec un peu d’art et de patience, de jolies petites filles agaçantes, faites pour tromper l’oeil enflammé de plus d’un amateur. Au bout de quelques heures d’exercice à la fenêtre du logis où l’on vient de les installer, elles auraient pu prendre dans leurs filets les passans les moins disposés à se laisser séduire par les agaceries de ce sexe dont l’empire s’étend si facilement de la croisée à la rue.

L’amiral, le soir même du jour où nos masculines Laïs étaient entrées en fonctions, s’était rendu au spectacle accompagné d’un de ses aides-de-camp. A onze heures il s’en revenait à bord, précédé par deux matelots qui, sur ses pas, avaient soin de projeter la vive clarté de deux énormes fanaux. En passant par une des rues qu’il lui fallait parcourir pour se rendre vers le warf où l’attendait son canot, il fait remarquer à l’aide-de-camp marchant respectueusement à ses côtés, deux fenêtres d’où sortent des voix qu’il croit reconnaître pour des voix de femmes, et de femmes françaises même!

«Quelle drôle de chose, à la Havane, à cette heure, monsieur mon aide-de-camp! Qu’en dites-vous?

—Mon général, je dis que ce n’est pas plus drôle que partout ailleurs. Il y a dans tous les lieux du monde connu, des Françaises qui font ce métier-là.»

—Quel métier entendez-vous donc?

—Mais, mon général, le métier que font probablement ces deux dames.

—Vous avez raison, elles sont deux, et elles me paraissent même être assez gentilles. Ecoutez! elles parlent…. Il me semble même qu’elles parlent de nous.»

Une de ces dames, en effet, en voyant passer le petit cortège, s’était écriée avec le doux accent de la curiosité et de l’intérêt:

«Ah! c’est le général français nouvellement arrivé!

—Voyez-vous, monsieur mon aide-de-camp, reprend l’amiral en recueillant ces paroles tendrement provocatrices, voyez-vous que ce sont des Françaises!… Mesdames, j’ai bien l’honneur de vous saluer….»

Les dames répondent gracieusement à ce salut…. La porte de la rue, près de laquelle les deux passans se sont arrêtés, s’entr’ouvre au même instant. Les matelots qui portaient les fanaux destinés à éclairer le général, se sont arrêtés aussi…. Mais le général leur ordonne de continuer leur route sans lui, en leur recommandant d’avertir leur patron qu’il ira bientôt rejoindre son canot.

Resté seul avec son aide-de-camp, et délivré de la présence importune de ses deux matelots, il reprend plus librement la conversation avec son interlocateur.

«Si, pour la singularité du fait, nous montions, monsieur l’aide-de-camp?

—Chez ces dames?

—Mais où voulez-vous que nous montions, si ce n’est chez elles?

—Y pensez-vous sérieusement, mon général?

—A quoi voulez-vous que je pense, si ce n’est à ce que je vous propose?

—Mais que dira-t-on si l’on vient à savoir que….

—On dira que j’ai fait le galant et vous un peu le cafard, peut-être! Quel mal y aura-t-il à cela? Partout on veut me faire passer pour une espèce de Hun farouche, insensible à toutes les douces séductions du sexe…. J’ai envie de perdre ce soir une aussi fâcheuse réputation…. Allons, soyez aimable une fois en votre vie. Vous aussi vous n’avez pas plus que moi de temps à perdre pour réparer vos longues années d’endurcissement et de rébellion contre le pouvoir des belles. Entrons. Je vais vous donner l’exemple en ma qualité de chef.

—Mais une seule observation, mon général, elle ne sera pas longue.

—Cela ne l’empêchera pas d’être peut-être fort déplacée, votre observation, et encore assez ennuyeuse probablement.

—En entrant dans cette maison, vous ne risquez rien, vous….

—Il me semble cependant que je risque tout autant que vous au moins?

—Ce n’est pas cela que je veux dire. Je veux dire que le rôle que je jouerai en vous suivant pourra, en ma qualité de subalterne, paraître un peu trop complaisant, et que si l’on vient à apprendre plus tard….

—Ah! oui, vous craignez en votre qualité de subalterne, n’est-ce pas, que l’on dise que…. Quel enfantillage! Est-ce que dans ces sortes d’aventures tous les rangs ne sont pas égaux! Vous voyez bien même que dans la situation où nous nous trouvons, c’est moi qui fais tous les frais de la négociation; et, le diable m’emporte, je crois que si j’avais une chandelle à la main, je serais obligé de vous la tenir pour vous engager à monter l’escalier, tant ce soir vous paraissez tenir à faire la prude. Allons donc, montons, et que cela finisse!

—Puisqu’il le faut et que vous le voulez décidément, montons, mon général. Mais en grand uniforme….

—Pourquoi pas? personne ne nous voit, et la nuit sauve le scandale.»

Pendant tout ce colloque, nos deux syrènes avaient mis en usage leurs plus agaçantes minauderies pour séduire notre vieux navigateur et son scrupuleux compagnon. Leurs enchantemens n’avaient, hélas! que trop triomphé de la faiblesse de cet autre Ulysse.

En entrant dans l’appartement de nos piquantes Françaises, le général fut agréablement surpris de la richesse qui régnait dans le simple ameublement du lieu.

«Je reconnais bien là, s’écria-t-il pour dire quelque chose, le goût et l’élégance de mes compatriotes.»

Les deux beautés reçurent ce compliment d’introduction en faisant une révérence assez gauche et en baissant modestement la tête pour ne pas éclater de rire.

«Mais par quel hasard, ou plutôt par quel destin favorable pour nous, vous trouvez-vous ici, mes belles dames, au milieu de messieurs les Espagnols?

—Des événemens qu’il serait trop long de vous raconter, nous ont conduits … c’est-à-dire nous ont conduites dans ce pays, et ensuite des malheurs nous y ont retenues….

—Vous me trouverez peut-être un peu indiscret, mais l’intérêt que je porte à toutes les jolies femmes de ma patrie excusera la singularité de ma question…. Mesdames, êtes-vous demoiselles ou mariées?

—Nous étions mariées, monsieur le général.

—Et messieurs vos maris?

—Ne sont plus…. Des chagrins et l’inclémence du climat….

—Ah! j’entends, j’entends … la fièvre jaune, n’est-ce pas?… Ah! ce maudit climat…. (Voyez-vous, monsieur l’aide-de-camp, que ce sont des femmes distinguées: l’inclémence du climat….) Mais, mesdames, il paraît que l’air de la Havane, tout redoutable qu’il est, s’il vous a ravi les objets de votre tendresse, a respecté au moins les roses de votre teint; car il serait difficile, avec cette fraîcheur, que l’on ne vous reconnût pas pour françaises.

—Monsieur le général, vous êtes trop bon!

—Non, je ne suis que sincère. Et à cette taille élégante et à cette tournure qu’on n’a qu’en France, on se sent vraiment fier d’être de son pays…. Et qu’en dites-vous, monsieur l’aide-de-camp?

—Je dis, mon général, que vous avez raison, et que les Françaises sont des femmes charmantes.

—Mais il me semble que ces dames, sans doute pour charmer l’ennui du veuvage, ont adopté les moeurs du pays où elles se trouvent exilées; car voilà une guitare, si je ne me trompe.

—C’est une mandoline, général. Oui, quelquefois ma compagne a la bonté de m’accompagner sur cet instrument, confident discret de nos peines!… Ah!

—Ah! vous en pincez, madame: je vous y prends, et je tiens note de l’aveu.

—Mais j’en pince un peu, monsieur le général, je ne m’en défends pas.

LE GÉNÉRAL A SON AIDE-DE-CAMP.—Hum, mon ami, c’est significatif cela, j’espère. Vous ne vous étiez pas trompé. (A ces dames). Vous allez nous chanter une petite chanson, une chanson de France.

UNE DES DAMES.—Je chante si mal!

L’AUTRE DAME.—J’en pince si peu!

—Modestie que tout cela, modestie! Vous allez chanter et en pincer, aimables friponnes. Nous écoutons.

—Mais avant de nous soumettre à l’épreuve que vous voulez nous faire subir ou subir vous-mêmes, messieurs, voudriez-vous vous rafraîchir?… Domingo! Domingo! apportez des confitures et du Sangari à monsieur le général.

—Si Señora,» répond un gros nègre.

Le général dépose sur un canapé son épée et son chapeau. L’aide-de-camp en fait autant. Voilà Mars désarmé par l’Amour.

Une des syrènes chante la plaintive romance. Son amie l’accompagne sur sa mandoline, en faisant rouler sur le général des yeux qu’elle s’efforce de rendre caressans et fripons. Le général est transporté d’aise et d’ivresse.

«Comment trouvez-vous cette voix? demande-t-il à son compagnon.

—Un peu forte, mais assez bien timbrée.

—Et la pinceuse de guitare ou de mandoline?

—Elle me paraît avoir les mains assez fortes et le pied un peu épais.

—Vous ne savez ce que vous dites!

—Je sais bien au moins, mon général, ce que je vois.

—Elles sont charmantes, parfaites en tout; c’est moi qui vous le dis, et je m’y connais.»

Le chant a cessé: les tendres émotions commencent; les félicitations et les complimens vont leur train. Les oeillades se croisent et s’enflamment en se croisant. La pinceuse de mandoline se lève pour suspendre son instrument sonore à l’une des cloisons de l’appartement. En se levant avec grâce, elle sent deux mains un peu roides se presser sur la taille qu’elle s’efforce de dessiner d’une manière avantageuse. Ce sont les mains frémissantes du général qui se sont égarées sur ses hanches. La prude veut se fâcher et repousser avec dignité cet attouchement un peu trop leste. Le général devient plus pressant: il avance toujours: la belle recule jusque vers le canapé, et là, pour faire, en présence d’une attaque trop vive, une retraite digne d’elle, elle s’empare de l’épée et du chapeau du héros, et la coquette disparaît, avec la légèreté d’une sylphide, dans une chambre voisine, en poussant de grands éclats de rire. L’amoureux amiral veut la suivre, sûr qu’il paraît être de son triomphe: mais sa conquête lui échappe encore en grimpant les marches d’un escalier obscur qui paraît conduire au second étage.

Attiré par ce bruit, un gros gaillard à la figure basanée, au menton barbu, et à l’air rébarbatif, entre et arrête ses deux gros yeux noirs et irrités, sur le général…. Cet homme semble être un de ces bravos de la Havane, qui vendent au premier venu, une ou deux gourdes, chaque coup de stylet. Il baragouine quelques mots d’espagnol qui signifient qu’il est le chef de l’établissement. Le général à cette vue veut saisir son épée: elle a disparu! L’aide-de-camp cherche aussi la sienne: elle a disparu de même. La violence triomphera.

«Dans quel guêpier nous sommes-nous jetés là, mon cher ami!

—Ce n’est pas un guêpier, général…. Je vous l’avais bien dit.

—Emparons-nous, si vous m’en croyez, de ces barreaux de chaise, et forçons le passage.

—Forçons le passage, puisque nous ne pouvons faire autrement, et tapons, puisque vous le voulez, mon général. Mais c’est là une bien cruelle extrémité.»

Deux autres bravos espagnols s’avancent: les deux dames se tiennent derrière cette force imposante, arrivant tout exprès pour les protéger: elles rient toujours aux éclats en montrant aux deux officiers désarmés les deux épées et les chapeaux dont elles se sont si perfidement emparées.

«Tas de coquines, me rendrez-vous mon épée! s’écrie en les menaçant le général exaspéré.

—Dinero, dinero! s’écrient les bravos.

—Cela veut dire: Payez, payez, messieurs, et l’on vous rendra vos armes, répètent les dulcinées.

—Nos armes! Tiens, dit le général en jetant aux pieds des malheureuses qui le narguent, une bourse d’or pour rançon; tiens, ramasse cet argent, et rends-nous les armes et les chapeaux que tu nous as volés.»

Les bravos se nantissent d’abord de la bourse. Ils descendent ensuite l’escalier: les deux donzelles les suivent sans rien restituer. Le général et son aide-de-camp veulent aussi gagner la rue. Mais les portes par lesquelles le cortège s’est esquivé se referment sur eux, et pour comble de rage, les victimes entendent dans la rue leurs bourreaux crier: A la guarda! à la guarda! Nul doute, la garde va venir.

Elle arriva en effet. Le sergent de la patrouille, en ouvrant violemment la porte de la maison où le scandale avait lieu, reconnaît dans les deux officiers désarmés et décoiffés, le général de la division française et l’un de ses aides-de-camp. On s’explique du mieux qu’on peut, en espagnol et en français. Le sergent croit apprendre quelque chose de très-nouveau au général, en lui annonçant qu’il se trouve dans une maison suspecte. Le général demande pour toute grâce au chef de la force armée la faveur d’être reconduit à l’embarcation de son vaisseau, qui l’attendait au warf. Mais dans quel état il parut aux yeux de ses canotiers! sans épée et sans chapeau! Les canotiers ne savent que penser de cette circonstance singulière. Ils se contentèrent de nager jusqu’au vaisseau, et là encore, en montant à bord, le général et son piteux camarade en bonnes fortunes, eurent la honte de passer, en faisant de grands saluts, devant l’officier de garde qui les recevait à la lueur des fanaux allumés pour éclairer leur marche. Le lendemain de cette aventure, les flâneurs de la Havane aperçurent, suspendus à un poteau de réverbère, deux chapeaux et deux épées surmontés de cette inscription: «A VENDRE POUR CAUSE DE DÉPART PRÉCIPITÉ.»

Et puis on entendit dire dans toute l’île que le général commandant la division française avait fait hommage de sa bourse, à la caisse des indigens du pays.

Mais ce qu’il y eut de plus étrange dans tout cela, c’est le bruit qui courut avec la rapidité de l’éclair dans toute la division. Les officiers se disaient que les deux coquines qui avaient si adroitement décoiffé et désarmé leur général, n’étaient autre chose que deux petits aspirans travestis, et qu’en cherchant bien parmi les enseignes de vaisseau, on aurait pu reconnaître peut-être les deux ou trois bravos qui avec leur longue barbe factice et leur teint d’emprunt, avaient si galamment assisté les deux belles. Un des légers échos de ce bruit scandaleux alla frapper assez désagréablement l’oreille inquiète du général. Il devina bientôt toute la vérité, et il s’emporta d’abord comme un lion pris dans un piége. Il appela son aide-de-camp. «Vous savez, monsieur, le tour infâme qu’on nous a joué.

—Général, je commence depuis ce matin à m’en douter un peu.

—Je puis ordonner une enquête terrible, et faire fusiller les scélérats qui ont attenté à mon honneur. Commencez-vous à vous douter un peu aussi de toute l’étendue de mon autorité?

—Jamais, mon général, je n’en ai douté. Vous pouvez, il est vrai, ordonner une enquête: une enquête est même une chose excellente; mais n’y a-t-il pas eu, à votre avis, mon général, assez de scandale comme cela?

—Et comment vous, chef d’état-major, vous mon plus fidèle limier en quelque sorte, qui devriez deviner chaque officier de la division rien qu’à l’allure et au pas, n’avez-vous pas reconnu, flairé, dépisté deux polissons d’aspirans dans ces deux coquines de la nuit d’avant-hier?

—Vous les trouviez si aimables et si gentilles, mon général, que le moindre soupçon m’aurait paru inconvenant.

—Moi, je les trouvais gentilles! allons donc! vous ne voyiez pas que je me moquais d’elles? C’est vous peut-être que je devrais faire casser comme du verre, pour ne vous être pas douté de ce que vous deviez savoir mieux que tout autre.

—Moi, mon général, mais il me semble que vous feriez encore mieux d’ordonner une enquête, comme vous en avez eu d’adord l’idée, si décidément vous tenez à faire quelque chose de décisif.

—Ah! je suis bien malheureux! et ne pouvoir pas me venger sans augmenter le scandale! et dévorer ma honte, si je ne me venge pas!… Monsieur l’aide-de-camp!

—Plaît-il, mon général?

—Allez dire à l’officier chargé des signaux, que je lui ordonne d’annoncer à MM. les commandans de la division, que je mets tous les officiers aux arrêts forcés jusqu’à nouvel ordre!…

—De suite, mon général, j’y cours!

—Attendez donc un peu; que diable! aujourd’hui vous êtes bien prompt!

—Qu’y a-t-il encore pour votre service, mon général?

—Il y a pour mon service que, quand vous aurez exécuté l’ordre que je viens de vous donner, vous garderez les arrêts forcés vous-même, pour vous apprendre un autre fois à mieux faire votre devoir.

—Oui … oui … mon … mon général!… J’y vais!

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A note from Boathouse:

It’s going to be a long winter and winter for most is a season to research and plan upcoming trips,  day dream about boating  and also read about boating.  Presented here a chapter  of  ‘The Riddle of the sands’  an excellent  pre WWI sailing adventure.  Every week Boathouse will present a chapter or two of  this public domain work and hopefully this will ease the passage of winter for our readers. If you are inpatient and can’t wait for each weeks installment you can read the entire book  at gutenburg.org If you would rather listen to the book here is a link to an audio version:  Chapter 7 & Chapter 8

If you would like to be notified when posts are added to this blog please send an email to  blogadmin@boathouse.ca   with the words ‘Subscribe to blog’ as the subject.

Have fun!  Post a comment, let  us know what you think.

Boathouse

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VII.

The Missing Page

I WOKE (on 1st October) with that dispiriting sensation that a hitch has occurred in a settled plan. It was explained when I went on deck, and I found the Dulcibella wrapped in a fog, silent, clammy, nothing visible from her decks but the ghostly hull of a galliot at anchor near us. She must have brought up there in the night, for there had been nothing so close the evening before; and I remembered that my sleep had been broken once by sounds of rumbling chain and gruff voices.

‘This looks pretty hopeless for to-day,’ I said, with a shiver, to Davies, who was laying the breakfast.

‘Well, we can’t do anything till this fog lifts,’ he answered, with a good deal of resignation. Breakfast was a cheerless meal. The damp penetrated to the very cabin, whose roof and walls wept a fine dew. I had dreaded a bathe, and yet missed it, and the ghastly light made the tablecloth look dirtier than it naturally was, and all the accessories more sordid. Something had gone wrong with the bacon, and the lack of egg-cups was not in the least humorous.

Davies was just beginning, in his summary way, to tumble the things together for washing up, when there was a sound of a step on deck, two sea-boots appeared on the ladder, and, before we could wonder who the visitor was, a little man in oilskins and a sou’-wester was stooping towards us in the cabin door, smiling affectionately at Davies out of a round grizzled beard.

‘Well met, captain,’ he said, quietly, in German. ‘Where are you bound to this time?’

‘Bartels!’ exclaimed Davies, jumping up. The two stooping figures, young and old, beamed at one another like father and son.

‘Where have you come from? Have some coffee. How’s the Johannes? Was that you that came in last night? I’m delighted to see you!’ (I spare the reader his uncouth lingo.) The little man was dragged in and seated on the opposite sofa to me.

‘I took my apples to Kappeln,’ he said, sedately, ‘and now I sail to Kiel, and so to Hamburg, where my wife and children are. It is my last voyage of the year. You are no longer alone, captain, I see.’ He had taken off his dripping sou’-wester and was bowing ceremoniously towards me.

‘Oh, I quite forgot!’ said Davies, who had been kneeling on one knee in the low doorway, absorbed in his visitor. ‘This is “meiner Freund,” Herr Carruthers. Carruthers, this is my friend, Schiffer Bartels, of the galliot Johannes.’

Was I never to be at an end of the puzzles which Davies presented to me? All the impulsive heartiness died out of his voice and manner as he uttered the last few words, and there he was, nervously glancing from the visitor to me, like one who, against his will or from tactlessness, has introduced two persons who he knows will disagree.

There was a pause while he fumbled with the cups, poured some cold coffee out and pondered over it as though it were a chemical experiment. Then he muttered something about boiling some more water, and took refuge in the forecastle. I was ill at ease at this period with seafaring men, but this mild little person was easy ground for a beginner. Besides, when he took off his oilskin coat he reminded me less of a sailor than of a homely draper of some country town, with his clean turned-down collar and neatly fitting frieze jacket. We exchanged some polite platitudes about the fog and his voyage last night from Kappeln, which appeared to be a town some fifteen miles up the fiord.

Davies joined in from the forecastle with an excess of warmth which almost took the words out of my mouth. We exhausted the subject very soon, and then my vis-à-vis smiled paternally at me, as he had done at Davies, and said, confidentially:

‘It is good that the captain is no more alone. He is a fine young man—Heaven, what a fine young man! I love him as my son—but he is too brave, too reckless. It is good for him to have a friend.’

I nodded and laughed, though in reality I was very far from being amused.

‘Where was it you met?’ I asked.

‘In an ugly place, and in ugly weather,’ he answered, gravely, but with a twinkle of fun in his eye. ‘But has he not told you?’ he added, with ponderous slyness. ‘I came just in time. No! what am I saying? He is brave as a lion and quick as a cat. I think he cannot drown; but still it was an ugly place and ugly—’

‘What are you talking about, Bartels?’ interrupted Davies, emerging noisily with a boiling kettle.

I answered the question. ‘I was just asking your friend how it was you made his acquaintance.’

‘Oh, he helped me out of a bit of a mess in the North Sea, didn’t you, Bartels?’ he said.

‘It was nothing,’ said Bartels. ‘But the North Sea is no place for your little boat, captain. So I have told you many times. How did you like Flensburg? A fine town, is it not? Did you find Herr Krank, the carpenter? I see you have placed a little mizzen-mast. The rudder was nothing much, but it was well that it held to the Eider. But she is strong and good, your little ship, and—Heaven!—she had need be so.’ He chuckled, and shook his head at Davies as at a wayward child.

This is all the conversation that I need record. For my part I merely waited for its end, determined on my course, which was to know the truth once and for all, and make an end of these distracting mystifications. Davies plied his friend with coffee, and kept up the talk gallantly; but affectionate as he was, his manner plainly showed that he wanted to be alone with me.

The gist of the little skipper’s talk was a parental warning that, though we were well enough here in the ‘Ost-See’, it was time for little boats to be looking for winter quarters. That he himself was going by the Kiel Canal to Hamburg to spend a cosy winter as a decent citizen at his warm fireside, and that we should follow his example. He ended with an invitation to us to visit him on the Johannes, and with suave farewells disappeared into the fog. Davies saw him into his boat, returned without wasting a moment, and sat down on the sofa opposite me.

‘What did he mean?’ I asked.

‘I’ll tell you,’ said Davies, ‘I’ll tell you the whole thing. As far as you’re concerned it’s partly a confession. Last night I had made up my mind to say nothing, but when Bartels turned up I knew it must all come out. It’s been fearfully on my mind, and perhaps you’ll be able to help me. But it’s for you to decide.’

‘Fire away!’ I said.

‘You know what I was saying about the Frisian Islands the other day? A thing happened there which I never told you, when you were asking about my cruise.’

‘It began near Norderney,’ I put in.

‘How did you guess that?’ he asked.

‘You’re a bad hand at duplicity,’ I replied. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, you’re quite right, it was there, on 9th September. I told you the sort of thing I was doing at that time, but I don’t think I said that I made inquiries from one or two people about duck-shooting, and had been told by some fishermen at Borkum that there was a big sailing-yacht in those waters, whose owner, a German of the name of Dollmann, shot a good deal, and might give me some tips. Well, I found this yacht one evening, knowing it must be her from the description I had. She was what is called a “barge-yacht”, of fifty or sixty tons, built for shallow water on the lines of a Dutch galliot, with lee-boards and those queer round bows and square stern. She’s something like those galliots anchored near us now. You sometimes see the same sort of yacht in English waters, only there they copy the Thames barges. She looked a clipper of her sort, and very smart; varnished all over and shining like gold. I came on her about sunset, after a long day of exploring round the Ems estuary. She was lying in—’

‘Wait a bit, let’s have the chart,’ I interrupted.

Davies found it and spread it on the table between us, first pushing back the cloth and the breakfast things to one end, where they lay in a slovenly litter. This was one of the only two occasions on which I ever saw him postpone the rite of washing up, and it spoke volumes for the urgency of the matter in hand.

‘Here it is,’ said Davies [See Map A] and I looked with a new and strange interest at the long string of slender islands, the parallel line of coast, and the confusion of shoals, banks, and channels which lay between. ‘Here’s Norderney, you see. By the way, there’s a harbour there at the west end of the island, the only real harbour on the whole line of islands, Dutch or German, except at Terschelling. There’s quite a big town there, too, a watering place, where Germans go for sea-bathing in the summer. Well, the Medusa, that was her name, was lying in the Riff Gat roadstead, flying the German ensign, and I anchored for the night pretty near her. I meant to visit her owner later on, but I very nearly changed my mind, as I always feel rather a fool on smart yachts, and my German isn’t very good. However, I thought I might as well; so, after dinner, when it was dark, I sculled over in the dinghy, hailed a sailor on deck, said who I was, and asked if I could see the owner. The sailor was a surly sort of chap, and there was a good long delay while I waited on deck, feeling more and more uncomfortable. Presently a steward came up and showed me down the companion and into the saloon, which, after this, looked—well, horribly gorgeous—you know what I mean, plush lounges, silk cushions, and that sort of thing. Dinner seemed to be just over, and wine and fruit were on the table. Herr Dollmann was there at his coffee. I introduced myself somehow—’

‘Stop a moment,’ I said; ‘what was he like?’

‘Oh, a tall, thin chap, in evening dress; about fifty I suppose, with greyish hair and a short beard. I’m not good at describing people. He had a high, bulging forehead, and there was something about him—but I think I’d better tell you the bare facts first. I can’t say he seemed pleased to see me, and he couldn’t speak English, and, in fact, I felt infernally awkward. Still, I had an object in coming, and as I was there I thought I might as well gain it.’

The notion of Davies in his Norfolk jacket and rusty flannels haranguing a frigid German in evening dress in a ‘gorgeous’ saloon tickled my fancy greatly.

‘He seemed very much astonished to see me; had evidently seen the Dulcibella arrive, and had wondered what she was. I began as soon as I could about the ducks, but he shut me up at once, said I could do nothing hereabouts. I put it down to sportsman’s jealousy—you know what that is. But I saw I had come to the wrong shop, and was just going to back out and end this unpleasant interview, when he thawed a bit, offered me some wine, and began talking in quite a friendly way, taking a great interest in my cruise and my plans for the future. In the end we sat up quite late, though I never felt really at my ease. He seemed to be taking stock of me all the time, as though I were some new animal.’ (How I sympathized with that German!) ‘We parted civilly enough, and I rowed back and turned in, meaning to potter on eastwards early next day.

‘But I was knocked up at dawn by a sailor with a message from Dollmann asking if he could come to breakfast with me. I was rather flabbergasted, but didn’t like to be rude, so I said, “Yes.” Well, he came, and I returned the call—and—well, the end of it was that I stayed at anchor there for three days.’ This was rather abrupt.

‘How did you spend the time?’ I asked. Stopping three days anywhere was an unusual event for him, as I knew from his log.

‘Oh, I lunched or dined with him once or twice—with them, I ought to say,’ he added, hurriedly. ‘His daughter was with him. She didn’t appear the evening I first called.’

‘And what was she like?’ I asked, promptly, before he could hurry on.

‘Oh, she seemed a very nice girl,’ was the guarded reply, delivered with particular unconcern, ‘and—the end of it was that I and the Medusa sailed away in company. I must tell you how it came about, just in a few words for the present.

‘It was his suggestion. He said he had to sail to Hamburg, and proposed that I should go with him in the Dulcibella as far as the Elbe, and then, if I liked, I could take the ship canal at Brunsbüttel through to Kiel and the Baltic. I had no very fixed plans of my own, though I had meant to go on exploring eastwards between the islands and the coast, and so reach the Elbe in a much slower way. He dissuaded me from this, sticking to it that I should have no chance of ducks, and urging other reasons. Anyway, we settled to sail in company direct to Cuxhaven, in the Elbe. With a fair wind and an early start it should be only one day’s sail of about sixty miles.

‘The plan only came to a head on the evening of the third day, 12th September.

‘I told you, I think, that the weather had broken after a long spell of heat. That very day it had been blowing pretty hard from the west, and the glass was falling still. I said, of course, that I couldn’t go with him if the weather was too bad, but he prophesied a good day, said it was an easy sail, and altogether put me on my mettle. You can guess how it was. Perhaps I had talked about single-handed cruising as though it were easier than it was, though I never meant it in a boasting way, for I hate that sort of thing, and besides there is no danger if you’re careful—’

‘Oh, go on,’ I said.

‘Anyway, we went next morning at six. It was a dirty-looking day, wind W.N.W., but his sails were going up and mine followed. I took two reefs in, and we sailed out into the open and steered E.N.E. along the coast for the Outer Elbe Lightship about fifty knots off. Here it all is, you see.’ (He showed me the course on the chart.) ‘The trip was nothing for his boat, of course, a safe, powerful old tub, forging through the sea as steady as a house. I kept up with her easily at first. My hands were pretty full, for there was a hard wind on my quarter and a troublesome sea; but as long as nothing worse came I knew I should be all right, though I also knew that I was a fool to have come.

‘All went well till we were off Wangeroog, the last of the islands—here—and then it began to blow really hard. I had half a mind to chuck it and cut into the Jade River, down there,’ but I hadn’t the face to, so I hove to and took in my last reef.’ (Simple words, simply uttered; but I had seen the operation in calm water and shuddered at the present picture.) ‘We had been about level till then, but with my shortened canvas I fell behind. Not that that mattered in the least. I knew my course, had read up my tides, and, thick as the weather was, I had no doubt of being able to pick up the lightship. No change of plan was possible now. The Weser estuary was on my starboard hand, but the whole place was a lee-shore and a mass of unknown banks—just look at them. I ran on, the Dulcibella doing her level best, but we had some narrow shaves of being pooped. I was about here, say six miles south-west of the lightship, [See Chart A] when I suddenly saw that the Medusa had hove to right ahead, as though waiting till I came up. She wore round again on the course as I drew level, and we were alongside for a bit. Dollmann lashed the wheel, leaned over her quarter, and shouted, very slowly and distinctly so that I could understand; “Follow me—sea too bad for you outside—short cut through sands—save six miles.”

‘It was taking me all my time to manage the tiller, but I knew what he meant at once, for I had been over the chart carefully the night before. [See Map A] You see, the whole bay between Wangeroog and the Elbe is encumbered with sand. A great jagged chunk of it runs out from Cuxhaven in a north-westerly direction for fifteen miles or so, ending in a pointed spit, called the Scharhorn. To reach the Elbe from the west you have to go right outside this, round the lightship, which is off the Scharhorn, and double back. Of course, that’s what all big vessels do. But, as you see, these sands are intersected here and there by channels, very shallow and winding, exactly like those behind the Frisian Islands. Now look at this one, which cuts right through the big chunk of sand and comes out near Cuxhaven. The Telte [See Chart A] it’s called. It’s miles wide, you see, at the entrance, but later on it is split into two by the Hohenhörn bank: then it gets shallow and very complicated, and ends in a mere tidal driblet with another name. It’s just the sort of channel I should like to worry into on a fine day or with an off-shore wind. Alone, in thick weather and a heavy sea, it would have been folly to attempt it, except as a desperate resource. But, as I said I knew at once that Dollmann was proposing to run for it and guide me in.

‘I didn’t like the idea, because I like doing things for myself, and, silly as it sounds, I believe I resented being told the sea was too bad for me, which it certainly was. Yet the short cut did save several miles and a devil of a tumble off the Scharhorn, where two tides meet. I had complete faith in Dollmann, and I suppose I decided that I should be a fool not to take a good chance. I hesitated. I know; but in the end I nodded, and held up my arm as she forged ahead again. Soon after, she shifted her course and I followed. You asked me once if I ever took a pilot. That was the only time.’

He spoke with bitter gravity, flung himself back, and felt his pipe. It was not meant for a dramatic pause, but it certainly was one. I had just a glimpse of still another Davies—a Davies five years older throbbing with deep emotions, scorn, passion, and stubborn purpose; a being above my plane, of sterner stuff, wider scope. Intense as my interest had become, I waited almost timidly while he mechanically rammed tobacco into his pipe and struck ineffectual matches. I felt that whatever the riddle to be solved, it was no mean one. He repressed himself with an effort, half rose, and made his circular glance at the clock, barometer, and skylight, and then resumed.

‘We soon came to what I knew must be the beginning of the Telte channel. All round you could hear the breakers on the sands, though it was too thick to see them yet. As the water shoaled, the sea, of course, got shorter and steeper. There was more wind—a whole gale I should say.

‘I kept dead in the wake of the Medusa, but to my disgust I found she was gaining on me very fast. Of course I had taken for granted, when he said he would lead me in, that he would slow down and keep close to me. He could easily have done so by getting his men up to check his sheets or drop his peak. Instead of that he was busting on for all he was worth. Once, in a rain-squall, I lost sight of him altogether; got him faintly again, but had enough to do with my own tiller not to want to be peering through the scud after a runaway pilot. I was all right so far, but we were fast approaching the worst part of the whole passage, where the Hohenhörn bank blocks the road, and the channel divides. I don’t know what it looks like to you on the chart—perhaps fairly simple, because you can follow the twists of the channels, as on a ground-plan; but a stranger coming to a place like that (where there are no buoys, mind you) can tell nothing certain by the eye—unless perhaps at dead low water, when the banks are high and dry, and in very clear weather—he must trust to the lead and the compass, and feel his way step by step. I knew perfectly well that what I should soon see would be a wall of surf stretching right across and on both sides. To feel one’s way in that sort of weather is impossible. You must know your way, or else have a pilot. I had one, but he was playing his own game.

‘With a second hand on board to steer while I conned I should have felt less of an ass. As it was, I knew I ought to be facing the music in the offing, and cursed myself for having broken my rule and gone blundering into this confounded short cut. It was giving myself away, doing just the very thing that you can’t do in single-handed sailing.

‘By the time I realized the danger it was far too late to turn and hammer out to the open. I was deep in the bottle-neck bight of the sands, jammed on a lee shore, and a strong flood tide sweeping me on. That tide, by the way, gave just the ghost of a chance. I had the hours in my head, and knew it was about two-thirds flood, with two hours more of rising water. That meant the banks would be all covering when I reached them, and harder than ever to locate; but it also meant that I might float right over the worst of them if I hit off a lucky place.’ Davies thumped the table in disgust. ‘Pah! It makes me sick to think of having to trust to an accident like that, like a lubberly cockney out for a boozy Bank Holiday sail. Well, just as I foresaw, the wall of surf appeared clean across the horizon, and curling back to shut me in, booming like thunder. When I last saw the Medusa she seemed to be charging it like a horse at a fence, and I took a rough bearing of her position by a hurried glance at the compass. At that very moment I thought she seemed to luff and show some of her broadside; but a squall blotted her out and gave me hell with the tiller. After that she was lost in the white mist that hung over the line of breakers. I kept on my bearing as well as I could, but I was already out of the channel. I knew that by the look of the water, and as we neared the bank I saw it was all awash and without the vestige of an opening. I wasn’t going to chuck her on to it without an effort; so, more by instinct than with any particular hope, I put the helm down, meaning to work her along the edge on the chance of spotting a way over. She was buried at once by the beam sea, and the jib flew to blazes; but the reefed stays’l stood, she recovered gamely, and I held on, though I knew it could only be for a few minutes, as the centre-plate was up, and she made frightful leeway towards the bank.

‘I was half-blinded by scud, but suddenly I noticed what looked like a gap, behind a spit which curled out right ahead. I luffed still more to clear this spit, but she couldn’t weather it. Before you could say knife she was driving across it, bumped heavily, bucked forward again, bumped again, and—ripped on in deeper water! I can’t describe the next few minutes. I was in some sort of channel, but a very narrow one, and the sea broke everywhere. I hadn’t proper command either; for the rudder had crocked up somehow at the last bump. I was like a drunken man running for his life down a dark alley, barking himself at every corner. It couldn’t last long, and finally we went crash on to something and stopped there, grinding and banging. So ended that little trip under a pilot.

‘Well, it was like this—there was really no danger’—I opened my eyes at the characteristic phrase. ‘I mean, that lucky stumble into a channel was my salvation. Since then I had struggled through a mile of sands, all of which lay behind me like a breakwater against the gale. They were covered, of course, and seething like soapsuds; but the force of the sea was deadened. The Dulce was bumping, but not too heavily. It was nearing high tide, and at half ebb she would be high and dry.

‘In the ordinary way I should have run out a kedge with the dinghy, and at the next high water sailed farther in and anchored where I could lie afloat. The trouble was now that my hand was hurt and my dinghy stove in, not to mention the rudder business. It was the first bump on the outer edge that did the damage. There was a heavy swell there, and when we struck, the dinghy, which was towing astern, came home on her painter and down with a crash on the yacht’s weather quarter. I stuck out one hand to ward it off and got it nipped on the gunwale. She was badly stove in and useless, so I couldn’t run out the kedge’—this was Greek to me, but I let him go on—’and for the present my hand was too painful even to stow the boom and sails, which were whipping and racketing about anyhow. There was the rudder, too, to be mended; and we were several miles from the nearest land. Of course, if the wind fell, it was all easy enough; but if it held or increased it was a poor look-out. There’s a limit to strain of that sort—and other things might have happened.

‘In fact, it was precious lucky that Bartels turned up. His galliot was at anchor a mile away, up a branch of the channel. In a clear between squalls he saw us, and, like a brick, rowed his boat out—he and his boy, and a devil of a pull they must have had. I was glad enough to see them—no, that’s not true; I was in such a fury of disgust and shame that I believe I should have been idiot enough to say I didn’t want help, if he hadn’t just nipped on board and started work. He’s a terror to work, that little mouse of a chap. In half an hour he had stowed the sails, unshackled the big anchor, run out fifty fathoms of warp, and hauled her off there and then into deep water. Then they towed her up the channel—it was dead to leeward and an easy job—and berthed her near their own vessel. It was dark by that time, so I gave them a drink, and said good-night. It blew a howling gale that night, but the place was safe enough, with good ground-tackle.

‘The whole affair was over; and after supper I thought hard about it all.’

——————————

VIII.

The Theory

DAVIES leaned back and gave a deep sigh, as though he still felt the relief from some tension. I did the same, and felt the same relief. The chart, freed from the pressure of our fingers, rolled up with a flip, as though to say, ‘What do you think of that?’ I have straightened out his sentences a little, for in the excitement of his story they had grown more and more jerky and elliptical.

‘What about Dollmann?’ I asked.

‘Of course,’ said Davies, ‘what about him? I didn’t get at much that night. It was all so sudden. The only thing I could have sworn to from the first was that he had purposely left me in the lurch that day. I pieced out the rest in the next few days, which I’ll just finish with as shortly as I can. Bartels came aboard next morning, and though it was blowing hard still we managed to shift the Dulcibella to a place where she dried safely at the mid-day low water, and we could get at her rudder. The lower screw-plate on the stern post had wrenched out, and we botched it up roughly as a make-shift. There were other little breakages, but nothing to matter, and the loss of the jib was nothing, as I had two spare ones. The dinghy was past repair just then, and I lashed it on deck.

‘It turned out that Bartels was carrying apples from Bremen to Kappeln (in this fiord), and had run into that channel in the sands for shelter from the weather. To-day he was bound for the Eider River, whence, as I told you, you can get through (by river and canal) into the Baltic. Of course the Elbe route, by the new Kaiser Wilhelm Ship Canal, is the shortest. The Eider route is the old one, but he hoped to get rid of some of his apples at Tönning, the town at its mouth. Both routes touch the Baltic at Kiel. As you know, I had been running for the Elbe, but yesterday’s muck-up put me off, and I changed my mind—I’ll tell you why presently—and decided to sail to the Eider along with the Johannes and get through that way. It cleared from the east next day, and I raced him there, winning hands down, left him at Tönning, and in three days was in the Baltic. It was just a week after I ran ashore that I wired to you. You see, I had come to the conclusion that that chap was a spy.’

In the end it came out quite quietly and suddenly, and left me in profound amazement. ‘I wired to you—that chap was a spy.’ It was the close association of these two ideas that hit me hardest at the moment. For a second I was back in the dreary splendour of the London club-room, spelling out that crabbed scrawl from Davies, and fastidiously criticizing its proposal in the light of a holiday. Holiday! What was to be its issue? Chilling and opaque as the fog that filtered through the skylight there flooded my imagination a mist of doubt and fear.

‘A spy!’ I repeated blankly. ‘What do you mean? Why did you wire to me? A spy of what—of whom?’

‘I’ll tell you how I worked it out,’ said Davies. ‘I don’t think “spy” is the right word; but I mean something pretty bad.

‘He purposely put me ashore. I don’t think I’m suspicious by nature, but I know something about boats and the sea. I know he could have kept close to me if he had chosen, and I saw the whole place at low water when we left those sands on the second day. Look at the chart again. Here’s the Hohenhörn bank that I showed you as blocking the road. [See Chart A] It’s in two pieces—first the west and then the east. You see the Telte channel dividing into two branches and curving round it. Both branches are broad and deep, as channels go in those waters. Now, in sailing in I was nowhere near either of them. When I last saw Dollmann he must have been steering straight for the bank itself, at a point somewhere here, quite a mile from the northern arm of the channel, and two from the southern. I followed by compass, as you know, and found nothing but breakers ahead. How did I get through? That’s where the luck came in. I spoke of only two channels, that is, round the bank—one to the north, the other to the south. But look closely and you’ll see that right through the centre of the West Hohenhörn runs another, a very narrow and winding one, so small that I hadn’t even noticed it the night before, when I was going over the chart. That was the one I stumbled into in that tailor’s fashion, as I was groping along the edge of the surf in a desperate effort to gain time. I bolted down it blindly, came out into this strip of open water, crossed that aimlessly, and brought up on the edge of the East Hohenhörn, here. It was more than I deserved. I can see now that it was a hundred to one in favour of my striking on a bad place outside, where I should have gone to pieces in three minutes.’

‘And how did Dollmann go?’ I asked.

‘It’s as clear as possible,’ Davies answered. ‘He doubled back into the northern channel when he had misled me enough. Do you remember my saying that when I last saw him I thought he had luffed and showed his broadside? I had another bit of luck in that. He was luffing towards the north—so it struck me through the blur—and when I in my turn came up to the bank, and had to turn one way or the other to avoid it, I think I should naturally have turned north too, as he had done. In that case I should have been done for, for I should have had a mile of the bank to skirt before reaching the north channel, and should have driven ashore long before I got there. But as a matter of fact I turned south.’

‘Why?’

‘Couldn’t help it. I was running on the starboard tack—boom over to port; to turn north would have meant a jibe, and as things were I couldn’t risk one. It was blowing like fits; if anything had carried away I should have been on shore in a jiffy. I scarcely thought about it at all, but put the helm down and turned her south. Though I knew nothing about it, that little central channel was now on my port hand, distant about two cables. The whole thing was luck from beginning to end.’

Helped by pluck, I thought to myself, as I tried with my landsman’s fancy to conjure up that perilous scene. As to the truth of the affair, the chart and Davies’s version were easy enough to follow, but I felt only half convinced. The ‘spy’, as Davies strangely called his pilot, might have honestly mistaken the course himself, outstripped his convoy inadvertently, and escaped disaster as narrowly as she did. I suggested this on the spur of the moment, but Davies was impatient.

‘Wait till you hear the whole thing,’ he said. ‘I must go back to when I first met him. I told you that on that first evening he began by being as rude as a bear and as cold as stone, and then became suddenly friendly. I can see now that in the talk that followed he was pumping me hard. It was an easy game to play, for I hadn’t seen a gentleman since Morrison left me, I was tremendously keen about my voyage, and I thought the chap was a good sportsman, even if he was a bit dark about the ducks. I talked quite freely—at least, as freely as I could with my bad German—about my last fortnight’s sailing; how I had been smelling out all the channels in and out of the islands, how interested I had been in the whole business, puzzling out the effect of the winds on the tides, the set of the currents, and so on. I talked about my difficulties, too; the changes in the buoys, the prehistoric rottenness of the English charts. He drew me out as much as he could, and in the light of what followed I can see the point of scores of his questions.

‘The next day and the next I saw a good deal of him, and the same thing went on. And then there were my plans for the future. My idea was, as I told you, to go on exploring the German coast just as I had the Dutch. His idea—Heavens, how plainly I see it now!—was to choke me off, get me to clear out altogether from that part of the coast. That was why he said there were no ducks. That was why he cracked up the Baltic as a cruising-ground and shooting-ground. And that was why he broached and stuck to that plan of sailing in company direct to the Elbe. It was to see me clear.

‘He improved on that.’

‘Yes, but after that, it’s guess-work. I mean that I can’t tell when he first decided to go one better and drown me. He couldn’t count for certain on bad weather, though he held my nose to it when it came. But, granted that he wanted to get rid of me altogether, he got a magnificent chance on that trip to the Elbe lightship. I expect it struck him suddenly, and he acted on the impulse. Left to myself I was all right; but the short cut was a grand idea of his. Everything was in its favour—wind, sea, sand, tide. He thinks I’m dead.’

‘But the crew?’ I said; ‘what about the crew?’

‘That’s another thing. When he first hove to, waiting for me, of course they were on deck (two of them, I think) hauling at sheets. But by the time I had drawn up level the Medusa had worn round again on her course, and no one was on deck but Dollmann at the wheel. No one overheard what he said.’

‘Wouldn’t they have seen you again?’

‘Very likely not; the weather was very thick, and the Dulce is very small.’

The incongruity of the whole business was striking me. Why should anyone want to kill Davies, and why should Davies, the soul of modesty and simplicity, imagine that anyone wanted to kill him? He must have cogent reasons, for he was the last man to give way to a morbid fancy.

‘Go on,’ I said. ‘What was his motive? A German finds an Englishman exploring a bit of German coast, determines to stop him, and even to get rid of him. It looks so far as if you were thought to be the spy.

Davies winced. ‘But he’s not a German,’ he said, hotly. ‘He’s an Englishman.’

‘An Englishman?’

‘Yes, I’m sure of it. Not that I’ve much to go on. He professed to know very little English, and never spoke it, except a word or two now and then to help me out of a sentence; and as to his German, he seemed to me to speak it like a native; but, of course, I’m no judge.’ Davies sighed. ‘That’s where I wanted someone like you. You would have spotted him at once, if he wasn’t German. I go more by a—what do you call it?—a—’

‘General impression,’ I suggested.

‘Yes, that’s what I mean. It was something in his looks and manner; you know how different we are from foreigners. And it wasn’t only himself, it was the way he talked—I mean about cruising and the sea, especially. It’s true he let me do most of the talking; but, all the same—how can I explain it? I felt we understood one another, in a way that two foreigners wouldn’t.

‘He pretended to think me a bit crazy for coming so far in a small boat, but I could swear he knew as much about the game as I did; for lots of little questions he asked had the right ring in them. Mind you, all this is an afterthought. I should never have bothered about it—I’m not cut out for a Sherlock Holmes—if it hadn’t been for what followed.’

‘It’s rather vague,’ I said. ‘Have you no more definite reason for thinking him English?’

‘There were one or two things rather more definite,’ said Davies, slowly. ‘You know when he hove to and hailed me, proposing the short cut, I told you roughly what he said. I forget the exact words, but “abschneiden” came in—”durch Watten” and “abschneiden” (they call the banks “watts”, you know); they were simple words, and he shouted them loud, so as to carry through the wind. I understood what he meant, but, as I told you, I hesitated before consenting. I suppose he thought I didn’t understand, for just as he was drawing ahead again he pointed to the suth’ard, and then shouted through his hands as a trumpet “Verstehen Sie? short-cut through sands; follow me!” the last two sentences in downright English. I can hear those words now, and I’ll swear they were in his native tongue. Of course I thought nothing of it at the time. I was quite aware that he knew a few English words, though he had always mis-pronounced them; an easy trick when your hearer suspects nothing. But I needn’t say that just then I was observant of trifles. I don’t pretend to be able to unravel a plot and steer a small boat before a heavy sea at the same moment.’

‘And if he was piloting you into the next world he could afford to commit himself before you parted! Was there anything else? By the way, how did the daughter strike you? Did she look English too?’

Two men cannot discuss a woman freely without a deep foundation of intimacy, and, until this day, the subject had never arisen between us in any form. It was the last that was likely to, for I could have divined that Davies would have met it with an armour of reserve. He was busy putting on this armour now; yet I could not help feeling a little brutal as I saw how badly he jointed his clumsy suit of mail. Our ages were the same, but I laugh now to think how old and blasé I felt as the flush warmed his brown skin, and he slowly propounded the verdict, ‘Yes, I think she did.’

‘She talked nothing but German, I suppose?’

‘Oh, of course.’

‘Did you see much of her?’

‘A good deal.’

‘Was she—,’ (how frame it?) ‘Did she want you to sail to the Elbe with them?’

‘She seemed to,’ admitted Davies, reluctantly, clutching at his ally, the match-box. ‘But, hang it, don’t dream that she knew what was coming,’ he added, with sudden fire.

I pondered and wondered, shrinking from further inquisition, easy as it would have been with so truthful a victim, and banishing all thought of ill-timed chaff. There was a cross-current in this strange affair, whose depth and strength I was beginning to gauge with increasing seriousness. I did not know my man yet, and I did not know myself. A conviction that events in the near future would force us into complete mutual confidence withheld me from pressing him too far. I returned to the main question; who was Dollmann, and what was his motive? Davies struggled out of his armour.

‘I’m convinced,’ he said, ‘that he’s an Englishman in German service. He must be in German service, for he had evidently been in those waters a long time, and knew every inch of them; of course, it’s a very lonely part of the world, but he has a house on Norderney Island; and he, and all about him, must be well known to a certain number of people. One of his friends I happened to meet; what do you think he was? A naval officer. It was on the afternoon of the third day, and we were having coffee on the deck of the Medusa, and talking about next day’s trip, when a little launch came buzzing up from seaward, drew alongside, and this chap I’m speaking of came on board, shook hands with Dollmann, and stared hard at me. Dollmann introduced us, calling him Commander von Brüning, in command of the torpedo gunboat Blitz. He pointed towards Norderney, and I saw her—a low, grey rat of a vessel—anchored in the Roads about two miles away. It turned out that she was doing the work of fishery guardship on that part of the coast.

‘I must say I took to him at once. He looked a real good sort, and a splendid officer, too—just the sort of chap I should have liked to be. You know I always wanted—but that’s an old story, and can wait. I had some talk with him, and we got on capitally as far as we went, but that wasn’t far, for I left pretty soon, guessing that they wanted to be alone.’

‘Were they alone then?’ I asked, innocently.

‘Oh, Fräulein Dollmann was there, of course,’ explained Davies, feeling for his armour again.

‘Did he seem to know them well?’ I pursued, inconsequently.

‘Oh, yes, very well.’

Scenting a faint clue, I felt the need of feminine weapons for my sensitive antagonist. But the opportunity passed.

‘That was the last I saw of him,’ he said. ‘We sailed, as I told you, at daybreak next morning. Now, have you got any idea what I’m driving at?’

‘A rough idea,’ I answered. ‘Go ahead.’

Davies sat up to the table, unrolled the chart with a vigorous sweep of his two hands, and took up his parable with new zest.

‘I start with two certainties,’ he said. ‘One is that I was “moved on” from that coast, because I was too inquisitive. The other is that Dollmann is at some devil’s work there which is worth finding out. Now’—he paused in a gasping effort to be logical and articulate. ‘Now—well, look at the chart. No, better still, look first at this map of Germany. It’s on a small scale, and you can see the whole thing.’ He snatched down a pocket-map from the shelf and unfolded it. [See Map A] ‘Here’s this huge empire, stretching half over central Europe—an empire growing like wildfire, I believe, in people, and wealth, and everything. They’ve licked the French, and the Austrians, and are the greatest military power in Europe. I wish I knew more about all that, but what I’m concerned with is their sea-power. It’s a new thing with them, but it’s going strong, and that Emperor of theirs is running it for all it’s worth. He’s a splendid chap, and anyone can see he’s right. They’ve got no colonies to speak of, and must have them, like us. They can’t get them and keep them, and they can’t protect their huge commerce without naval strength. The command of the sea is the thing nowadays, isn’t it? I say, don’t think these are my ideas,’ he added, naively. ‘It’s all out of Mahan and those fellows. Well, the Germans have got a small fleet at present, but it’s a thundering good one, and they’re building hard. There’s the—and the—.’ He broke off into a digression on armaments and speeds in which I could not follow him. He seemed to know every ship by heart. I had to recall him to the point. ‘Well, think of Germany as a new sea-power,’ he resumed. ‘The next thing is, what is her coast-line? It’s a very queer one, as you know, split clean in two by Denmark, most of it lying east of that and looking on the Baltic, which is practically an inland sea, with its entrance blocked by Danish islands. It was to evade that block that William built the ship canal from Kiel to the Elbe, but that could be easily smashed in war-time. Far the most important bit of coast-line is that which lies west of Denmark and looks on the North Sea. It’s there that Germany gets her head out into the open, so to speak. It’s there that she fronts us and France, the two great sea-powers of Western Europe, and it’s there that her greatest ports are and her richest commerce.

‘Now it must strike you at once that it’s ridiculously short compared with the huge country behind it. From Borkum to the Elbe, as the crow flies, is only seventy miles. Add to that the west coast of Schleswig, say 120 miles. Total, say, two hundred. Compare that with the seaboard of France and England. Doesn’t it stand to reason that every inch of it is important? Now what sort of coast is it? Even on this small map you can see at once, by all those wavy lines, shoals and sand everywhere, blocking nine-tenths of the land altogether, and doing their best to block the other tenth where the great rivers run in. Now let’s take it bit by bit. You see it divides itself into three. Beginning from the west the first piece is from Borkum to Wangeroog—fifty odd miles. What’s that like? A string of sandy islands backed by sand; the Ems river at the western end, on the Dutch border, leading to Emden—not much of a place. Otherwise, no coast towns at all. Second piece: a deep sort of bay consisting of the three great estuaries—the Jade, the Weser, and the Elbe—leading to Wilhelmshaven (their North Sea naval base), Bremen, and Hamburg. Total breadth of bay twenty odd miles only; sandbanks littered about all through it. Third piece: the Schleswig coast, hopelessly fenced in behind a six to eight mile fringe of sand. No big towns; one moderate river, the Eider. Let’s leave that third piece aside. I may be wrong, but, in thinking this business out, I’ve pegged away chiefly at the other two, the seventy-mile stretch from Borkum to the Elbe—half of it estuaries, and half islands. It was there that I found the Medusa, and it’s that stretch that, thanks to him, I missed exploring.’

I made an obvious conjecture. ‘I suppose there are forts and coast defences? Perhaps he thought you would see too much. By the way, he saw your naval books, of course?’

‘Exactly. Of course that was my first idea; but it can’t be that. It doesn’t explain things in the least. To begin with, there are no forts and can be none in that first division, where the islands are. There might be something on Borkum to defend the Ems; but it’s very unlikely, and, anyway, I had passed Borkum and was at Norderney. There’s nothing else to defend. Of course it’s different in the second division, where the big rivers are. There are probably hosts of forts and mines round Wilhelmshaven and Bremerhaven, and at Cuxhaven just at the mouth of the Elbe. Not that I should ever dream of bothering about them; every steamer that goes in would see as much as me. Personally, I much prefer to stay on board, and don’t often go on shore. And, good Heavens!’ (Davies leant back and laughed joyously) ‘do I look like that kind of spy?’

I figured to myself one of those romantic gentlemen that one reads of in sixpenny magazines, with a Kodak in his tie-pin, a sketch-book in the lining of his coat, and a selection of disguises in his hand luggage. Little disposed for merriment as I was, I could not help smiling, too.

‘About this coast,’ resumed Davies. ‘In the event of war it seems to me that every inch of it would be important, sand and all. Take the big estuaries first, which, of course, might be attacked or blockaded by an enemy. At first sight you would say that their main channels were the only things that mattered. Now, in time of peace there’s no secrecy about the navigation of these. They’re buoyed and lighted like streets, open to the whole world, and taking an immense traffic; well charted, too, as millions of pounds in commerce depend on them. But now look at the sands they run through, intersected, as I showed you, by threads of channels, tidal for the most part, and probably only known to smacks and shallow coasters, like that galliot of Bartels.

‘It strikes me that in a war a lot might depend on these, both in defence and attack, for there’s plenty of water in them at the right tide for patrol-boats and small torpedo craft, though I can see they take a lot of knowing. Now, say we were at war with Germany—both sides could use them as lines between the three estuaries; and to take our own case, a small torpedo-boat (not a destroyer, mind you) could on a dark night cut clean through from the Jade to the Elbe and play the deuce with the shipping there. But the trouble is that I doubt if there’s a soul in our fleet who knows those channels. We haven’t coasters there; and, as to yachts, it’s a most unlikely game for an English yacht to play at; but it does so happen that I have a fancy for that sort of thing and would have explored those channels in the ordinary course.’ I began to see his drift.

‘Now for the islands. I was rather stumped there at first, I grant, because, though there are lashings of sand behind them, and the same sort of intersecting channels, yet there seems nothing important to guard or attack.

‘Why shouldn’t a stranger ramble as he pleases through them? Still Dollmann had his headquarters there, and I was sure that had some meaning. Then it struck me that the same point held good, for that strip of Frisian coast adjoins the estuaries, and would also form a splendid base for raiding midgets, which could travel unseen right through from the Ems to the Jade, and so to the Elbe, as by a covered way between a line of forts.

‘Now here again it’s an unknown land to us. Plenty of local galliots travel it, but strangers never, I should say. Perhaps at the most an occasional foreign yacht gropes in at one of the gaps between the islands for shelter from bad weather, and is precious lucky to get in safe. Once again, it was my fad to like such places, and Dollmann cleared me out. He’s not a German, but he’s in with Germans, and naval Germans too. He’s established on that coast, and knows it by heart. And he tried to drown me. Now what do you think?’ He gazed at me long and anxiously.

———————–

A note from Boathouse:

It’s going to be a long winter and winter for most is a season to research and plan upcoming trips,  day dream about boating  and also read about boating.  Presented here a chapter  of  ‘The Riddle of the sands’  an excellent  pre WWI sailing adventure.  Every week Boathouse will present a chapter or two of  this public domain work and hopefully this will ease the passage of winter for our readers. If you are inpatient and can’t wait for each weeks installment you can read the entire book  at gutenburg.org If you would rather listen to the book here is a link to an audio version:  Chapter 5 & Chapter 6

If you would like to be notified when posts are added to this blog please send an email to  blogadmin@boathouse.ca   with the words ‘Subscribe to blog’ as the subject.

Have fun!  Post a comment, let  us know what you think.

Boathouse

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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, galvanized 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 bourgeois 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 recognized 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 9th September. 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: ‘13th. Sept.—Wind W.N.W. fresh. Decided to go to Baltic. Sailed 4 a.m. Quick passage E. S. to mouth of Weser. Anchored for night under Hohenhörn Sand. 14th Sept.—Nil. 15th Sept.—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 9th September (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 27th September, the third I had spent on the Dulcibella.

VI

Schlei Fiord

I MAKE no apology for having described these early days in some detail. It is no wonder that their trivialities are as vividly before me as the colours of earth and sea in this enchanting corner of the world. For every trifle, sordid or picturesque, was relevant; every scrap of talk a link; every passing mood critical for good or ill. So slight indeed were the determining causes that changed my autumn holiday into an undertaking the most momentous I have ever approached.

Two days more preceded the change. On the first, the southwesterly wind still holding, we sallied forth into Augustenburg Fiord, ‘to practise smartness in a heavy thresh,’ as Davies put it. It was the day of dedication for those disgusting oilskins, immured in whose stiff and odorous angles, I felt distressfully cumbersome; a day of proof indeed for me, for heavy squalls swept incessantly over the loch, and Davies, at my own request, gave me no rest. Backwards and forwards we tacked, blustering into coves and out again, reefing and unreefing, now stung with rain, now warmed with sun, but never with time to breathe or think.

I wrestled with intractable ropes, slaves if they could be subdued, tyrants if they got the upper hand; creeping, craning, straining, I made the painful round of the deck, while Davies, hatless and tranquil, directed my blundering movements.

‘Now take the helm and try steering in a hard breeze to windward. It’s the finest sport on earth.’

So I grappled with the niceties of that delicate craft; smarting eyes, chafed hands, and dazed brain all pressed into the service, whilst Davies, taming the ropes the while, shouted into my ear the subtle mysteries of the art; that fidgeting ripple in the luff of the mainsail, and the distant rattle from the hungry jib—signs that they are starved of wind and must be given more; the heavy list and wallow of the hull, the feel of the wind on your cheek instead of your nose, the broader angle of the burgee at the masthead—signs that they have too much, and that she is sagging recreantly to leeward instead of fighting to windward. He taught me the tactics for meeting squalls, and the way to press your advantage when they are defeated—the iron hand in the velvet glove that the wilful tiller needs if you are to gain your ends with it; the exact set of the sheets necessary to get the easiest and swiftest play of the hull—all these things and many more I struggled to apprehend, careless for the moment as to whether they were worth knowing, but doggedly set on knowing them. Needless to say, I had no eyes for beauty. The wooded inlets we dived into gave a brief respite from wind and spindrift, but called into use the lead and the centre-board tackle—two new and cumbrous complexities. Davies’s passion for intricate navigation had to be sated even in these secure and tideless waters.

‘Let’s get in as near as we can—you stand by the lead,’ was his formula; so I made false casts, tripped up in the slack, sent rivers of water up my sleeves, and committed all the other gaucheries that beginners in the art commit, while the sand showed whiter beneath the keel, till Davies regretfully drew off and shouted: ‘Ready about, centre-plate down,’ and I dashed down to the trappings of that diabolical contrivance, the only part of the Dulcibella‘s equipment that I hated fiercely to the last. It had an odious habit when lowered of spouting jets of water through its chain-lead on to the cabin floor. One of my duties was to gag it with cotton-waste, but even then its choking gurgle was a most uncomfortable sound in your dining-room. In a minute the creek would be behind us and we would be thumping our stem into the short hollow waves of the fiord, and lurching through spray and rain for some point on the opposite shore. Of our destination and objects, if we had any, I knew nothing. At the northern end of the fiord, just before we turned, Davies had turned dreamy in the most exasperating way, for I was steering at the time and in mortal need of sympathetic guidance, if I was to avoid a sudden jibe. As though continuing aloud some internal debate, he held a onesided argument to the effect that it was no use going farther north. Ducks, weather, and charts figured in it, but I did not follow the pros and cons. I only know that we suddenly turned and began to ‘battle’ south again. At sunset we were back once more in the same quiet pool among the trees and fields of Als Sound, a wondrous peace succeeding the turmoil. Bruised and sodden, I was extricating myself from my oily prison, and later was tasting (though not nearly yet in its perfection) the unique exultation that follows such a day, when, glowing all over, deliciously tired and pleasantly sore, you eat what seems ambrosia, be it only tinned beef; and drink nectar, be it only distilled from terrestrial hops or coffee berries, and inhale as culminating luxury balmy fumes which even the happy Homeric gods knew naught of.

On the following morning, the 30th, a joyous shout of ‘Nor’-west wind’ sent me shivering on deck, in the small hours, to handle rain-stiff canvas and cutting chain. It was a cloudy, unsettled day, but still enough after yesterday’s boisterous ordeal. We retraced our way past Sonderburg, and thence sailed for a faint line of pale green on the far south-western horizon. It was during this passage that an incident occurred, which, slight as it was, opened my eyes to much.

A flight of wild duck crossed our bows at some little distance, a wedge-shaped phalanx of craning necks and flapping wings. I happened to be steering while Davies verified our course below; but I called him up at once, and a discussion began about our chances of sport. Davies was gloomy over them.

‘Those fellows at Satrup were rather doubtful,’ he said. ‘There are plenty of ducks, but I made out that it’s not easy for strangers to get shooting. The whole country’s so very civilized; it’s not wild enough, is it?’

He looked at me. I had no very clear opinion. It was anything but wild in one sense, but there seemed to be wild enough spots for ducks. The shore we were passing appeared to be bordered by lonely marshes, though a spacious champaign showed behind. If it were not for the beautiful places we had seen, and my growing taste for our way of seeing them, his disappointing vagueness would have nettled me more than it did. For, after all, he had brought me out loaded with sporting equipment under a promise of shooting.

‘Bad weather is what we want for ducks,’ he said; ‘but I’m afraid we’re in the wrong place for them. Now, if it was the North Sea, among those Frisian islands—’ His tone was timid and interrogative, and I felt at once that he was sounding me as to some unpalatable plan whose nature began to dawn on me.

He stammered on through a sentence or two about ‘wildness’ and ‘nobody to interfere with you,’ and then I broke in: ‘You surely don’t want to leave the Baltic?’

‘Why not?’ said he, staring into the compass.

‘Hang it, man!’ I returned, tartly, ‘here we are in October, the summer over, and the weather gone to pieces. We’re alone in a cockle-shell boat, at a time when every other yacht of our size is laying up for the winter. Luckily, we seem to have struck an ideal cruising-ground, with a wide choice of safe fiords and a good prospect of ducks, if we choose to take a little trouble about them. You can’t mean to waste time and run risks’ (I thought of the torn leaf in the log-book) ‘in a long voyage to those forbidding haunts of yours in the North Sea.’

‘It’s not very long,’ said Davies, doggedly. ‘Part of it’s canal, and the rest is quite safe if you’re careful. There’s plenty of sheltered water, and it’s not really necessary—’

‘What’s it all for?’ I interrupted, impatiently. ‘We haven’t tried for shooting here yet. You’ve no notion, have you, of getting the boat back to England this autumn?’

‘England?’ he muttered. ‘Oh, I don’t much care.’ Again his vagueness jarred on me; there seemed to be some bar between us, invisible and insurmountable. And, after all, what was I doing here? Roughing it in a shabby little yacht, utterly out of my element, with a man who, a week ago, was nothing to me, and who now was a tiresome enigma. Like swift poison the old morbid mood in which I left London spread through me. All I had learnt and seen slipped away; what I had suffered remained. I was on the point of saying something which might have put a precipitate end to our cruise, but he anticipated me.

‘I’m awfully sorry,’ he broke out, ‘for being such a selfish brute. I don’t know what I was thinking about. You’re a brick to join me in this sort of life, and I’m afraid I’m an infernally bad host. Of course this is just the place to cruise. I forgot about the scenery, and all that. Let’s ask about the ducks here. As you say, we’re sure to get sport if we worry and push a bit. We must be nearly there now—yes, there’s the entrance. Take the helm, will you?’

He sprang up the mast like a monkey, and gazed over the land from the cross-trees. I looked up at my enigma and thanked Providence I had not spoken; for no one could have resisted his frank outburst of good nature. Yet it occurred to me that, considering the conditions of our life, our intimacy was strangely slow in growth. I had no clue yet as to where his idiosyncrasies began and his self ended, and he, I surmised, was in the same stage towards me. Otherwise I should have pressed him further now, for I felt convinced that there was some mystery in his behaviour which I had not yet accounted for. However, light was soon to break.

I could see no sign of the entrance he had spoken of, and no wonder, for it is only eighty yards wide, though it leads to a fiord thirty miles long. All at once we were jolting in a tumble of sea, and the channel grudgingly disclosed itself, stealing between marshes and meadows and then broadening to a mere, as at Ekken. We anchored close to the mouth, and not far from a group of vessels of a type that afterwards grew very familiar to me. They were sailing-barges, something like those that ply in the Thames, bluff-bowed, high-sterned craft of about fifty tons, ketch-rigged, and fitted with lee-boards, very light spars, and a long tip-tilted bowsprit. (For the future I shall call them ‘galliots’.) Otherwise the only sign of life was a solitary white house—the pilot’s house, the chart told us—close to the northern point of entrance. After tea we called on the pilot. Patriarchally installed before a roaring stove, in the company of a buxom bustling daughter-in-law and some rosy grandchildren, we found a rotund and rubicund person, who greeted us with a hoarse roar of welcome in German, which instantly changed, when he saw us, to the funniest broken English, spoken with intense relish and pride. We explained ourselves and our mission as well as we could through the hospitable interruptions caused by beer and the strains of a huge musical box, which had been set going in honour of our arrival. Needless to say, I was read like a book at once, and fell into the part of listener.

‘Yes, yes,’ he said, ‘all right. There is plenty ducks, but first we will drink a glass beer; then we will shift your ship, captain—she lies not good there.’ (Davies started up in a panic, but was waved back to his beer.) ‘Then we will drink together another glass beer; then we will talk of ducks—no, then we will kill ducks—that is better. Then we will have plenty glasses beer.’

This was an unexpected climax, and promised well for our prospects. And the programme was fully carried out. After the beer our host was packed briskly by his daughter into an armour of woollen gaiters, coats, and mufflers, topped with a worsted helmet, which left nothing of his face visible but a pair of twinkling eyes. Thus equipped, he led the way out of doors, and roared for Hans and his gun, till a great gawky youth, with high cheek-bones and a downy beard, came out from the yard and sheepishly shook our hands.

Together we repaired to the quay, where the pilot stood, looking like a genial ball of worsted, and bawled hoarse directions while we shifted the Dulcibella to a berth on the farther shore close to the other vessels. We returned with our guns, and the interval for refreshments followed. It was just dusk when we sallied out again, crossed a stretch of bog-land, and took up strategic posts round a stagnant pond. Hans had been sent to drive, and the result was a fine mallard and three ducks. It was true that all fell to the pilot’s gun, perhaps owing to Hans’ filial instinct and his parent’s canny egotism in choosing his own lair, or perhaps it was chance; but the shooting-party was none the less a triumphal success. It was celebrated with beer and music as before, while the pilot, an infant on each podgy knee, discoursed exuberantly on the glories of his country and the Elysian content of his life. ‘There is plenty beer, plenty meat, plenty money, plenty ducks,’ summed up his survey.

It may have been fancy, but Davies, though he had fits and starts of vivacity, seemed very inattentive, considering that we were sitting at the feet of so expansive an oracle. It was I who elicited most of the practical information—details of time, weather, and likely places for shooting, with some shrewd hints as to the kind of people to conciliate. Whatever he thought of me, I warmed with sympathy towards the pilot, for he assumed that we had done with cruising for the year, and thought us mad enough as it was to have been afloat so long, and madder still to intend living on ‘so little a ship’ when we could live on land with beer and music handy. I was tempted to raise the North Sea question, just to watch Davies under the thunder of rebukes which would follow. But I refrained from a wish to be tender with him, now that all was going so well. The Frisian Islands were an extravagant absurdity now. I did not even refer to them as we pulled back to the Dulcibella, after swearing eternal friendship with the good pilot and his family.

Davies and I turned in good friends that night—or rather I should say that I turned in, for I left him sucking an empty pipe and aimlessly fingering a volume of Mahan; and once when I woke in the night I felt somehow that his bunk was empty and that he was there in the dark cabin, dreaming.

———————-

 Traditional weather glass

Boathouse

———————————————

PETIT COMBAT.

GRANDES ÉMOTIONS.

En se rendant par mer de Bréhat à l’Ile-de-Bas, on rencontre, à moitié route à peu près, un petit archipel qui, par rapport au nombre de rochers qui le composent, a reçu le nom des Sept-Iles. Un seul de ces îlots est habité: les autres servent d’asile aux oiseaux de proie qui, lassés de chercher leur nourriture sur les flots que l’on voit s’agiter entre le continent et le petit archipel, vont le soir se reposer dans les cavités de ces rochers battus presque sans cesse par les vagues, la foudre et la tempête.

Entre toutes ces îles, Tomé, la plus rapprochée de la terre ferme, se trouve posée à l’entrée d’une anse assez belle que l’on nomme la rade de Perros. A droite de Tomé, en faisant face au large, on aperçoit les écueils qui hérissent l’embouchure de la rivière de Tréguier. A gauche s’étend la côte qui joint le bourg de Perros au village de la Clarté. Au bas de cette côte se dessine une batterie de quelques canons, destinés à gronder, à l’occasion, sur le petit détroit d’une lieue de large qui sépare l’île de Tomé du rivage des Côtes-du-Nord.

Pendant la guerre, rien n’était plus commun que de voir les croiseurs anglais louvoyer entre les Sept-Iles et la terre de France. Les petits convois de caboteurs avaient bien soin alors de s’assurer, avant de donner dans la passe, qu’aucun navire ennemi ne viendrait troubler leur timide navigation. Quand la plus grande des Sept-Iles avait annoncé, au moyen du sémaphore qu’on avait établi sur son sommet, qu’il n’y avait aucun bâtiment anglais à vue, vite les commandans des convois faisaient appareiller les navires placés sous leur escorte, et on s’efforçait alors de donner dans le courreau avant que l’ennemi pût contrarier la marche de la petite flotte de lougres, de goëlettes et de sloops marchands.

Les Anglais aimaient d’autant plus à s’approcher de cette partie de la côte de Bretagne, que l’île de Tomé, par un privilège assez singulier, leur offrait souvent l’occasion de faire des vivres frais. Ceci a peut-être besoin d’une courte explication topographique.

Pas un arbre ne croît sur cette île qui, avec une demi-lieue de long, ne présente à l’oeil qu’un lambeau de chaîne de montagnes, recouvert d’un peu de bruyère. Pas une source, pas le plus petit ruisseau ne murmure ou ne serpente sur cette terre inculte. Autrefois un cultivateur voulut y établir une ferme et fatiguer son sol dépouillé, pour en tirer quelque chose; mais les ruines de la ferme attestent aujourd’hui l’inutilité des efforts du pauvre fermier. Une seule espèce d’animaux peut se contenter de ce séjour si peu fait pour les hommes. La tradition rapporte qu’un chasseur y jeta une paire de lapins, et depuis ce temps les lapins ont tellement pullulé à Tomé, qu’on ne peut y faire un pas sans rencontrer un de ces insulaires herbivores. Aussi les matelots, dans leur langage pittoresque, disent-ils que Tomé n’est autre chose qu’une colonie de lapins.

Les Anglais manquaient rarement, pour peu qu’ils restassent quelque temps à croiser dans ces parages, d’envoyer des embarcations à Tomé pour y faire du lapin, comme disaient encore les matelots, ainsi qu’on dit qu’un navire a envoyé ses embarcations à terre, pour y faire de l’eau.

La petite île, quelque pauvre et inutile qu’elle fût, avait pourtant un propriétaire; mais, par une de ces lois qui ne sont tolérables qu’en temps de guerre, il était défendu au possesseur suzerain de ce fief maritime de visiter sa propriété: les bâtimens de la station de Perros et les pataches de la douane avaient seuls le privilège d’aborder dans cette île, que l’imagination des anciens aurait peuplée peut-être de dieux ou tout au moins d’heureux mortels, mais qui en réalité n’était peuplée que d’assez mauvais gibier, à la chair aussi sèche que le terrain qui le nourrit.

Le privilège exclusif accordé aux péniches et aux pataches qui visitaient Tomé, produisit assez souvent d’étranges rencontres. Pendant qu’une embarcation française, par exemple, abordait l’île par un bout, un canot anglais l’accostait quelquefois par l’autre bout, et alors venaient les coups de fusil entre les Anglais, qui d’un côté tiraient des lapins pour leur compte, et les Français, qui trouvaient plus piquant de brûler leur poudre sur des ennemis, que sur le gibier qu’ils étaient venus chasser.

Lorsque des canots anglais envoyés à Tomé se voyaient surpris par le mauvais temps pendant leur petite expédition, ils attendaient, cachés dans les rochers de l’île, que la bourrasque s’apaisât, pour aller rejoindre les navires auxquels ils appartenaient, et qui, pour éviter les dangers que leur aurait fait éprouver le coup de vent, avaient prudemment gagné le large.

Sur des côtes moins mal gardées que ne l’étaient les nôtres, on aurait pu quelquefois faire d’assez bonnes captures sur l’ennemi; mais les Anglais se montraient si peu disposés en général à opérer des descentes, que l’on daignait à peine se prémunir contre leurs rares tentatives de débarquement.

Un jour toutefois ils surent faire tourner à leur avantage une situation difficile dans laquelle le mauvais temps les avait soudainement placés.

Trois de leurs embarcations, assaillies par un coup de vent pendant qu’elles étaient à Tomé, cherchèrent en vain, malgré la grosseur de la mer et la force de la brise, à regagner leurs navires. Réduites, après d’impuissans efforts, à se réfugier dans les criques de l’île dont elles avaient voulu s’éloigner, elles revinrent, poussées par la lame, s’échouer dans une petite anse où bientôt les matelots réussirent à les haler à terre, de manière à les soustraire au choc des vagues qui auraient fini par les briser si on les eût laissées à flot.

Le coup de vent dura quarante-huit heures, et pendant ce temps-là, les matelots anglais n’eurent d’autre asile que leurs embarcations tirées à sec, et d’autre nourriture que les lapins qu’ils purent tuer.

La mer enfin et le vent s’apaisèrent. On songea à remettre les canots à flot et à regagner les navires qui, revenant du large, ralliaient déjà la côte pour se rapprocher des canots qu’ils avaient laissés à terre.

Au moment où les officiers anglais ordonnaient à leurs matelots de s’embarquer pour quitter l’île hospitalière, ils aperçurent dans le courreau des Sept-Iles, et non loin d’eux, une grande péniche qu’ils prirent d’abord pour française. C’était en effet une patache des douanes qui, voyant les croiseurs anglais trop au large pour avoir à les redouter, se rendait avec toute sécurité de Tréguier à Lannion.

Par malheur, à bord de la patache s’étaient embarqués ce jour-là même une douzaine de préposés qui, devant passer l’inspection d’un de leurs chefs supérieurs, avaient cru très-bien faire en prenant la voie de mer pour se rendre à Lannion. La tenue de ces passagers était parfaite. La plaque et les jugulaires de leurs schakos reluisaient au soleil qui venait de se montrer. Leurs buffleteries, soigneusement blanchies, tranchaient admirablement sur le vert foncé de leurs fracs époussetés et brossés jusqu’à la corde. Rien enfin ne manquait à leur tenue militaire.

Quelle proie, je vous demande, pour nos Anglais cachés dans les rochers auprès desquels la patache venait virer nonchalamment de bord! Sortir de leur gîte de la nuit, comme des éperviers acharnés; fendre les flots avec la rapidité d’un poisson volant, et se jeter sur la pauvre patache, qui n’y pensait guère, je vous le jure, ne fut que l’affaire d’un moment, d’une minute pour les embarcations ennemies! Les douaniers, surpris et sans doute effrayés de cette attaque si prompte, essayèrent de résister. Ils sautent sur leurs armes; la patache avait un petit canon et deux espingoles: elle fait feu; mais les Anglais, comme agresseurs, étaient disposés à l’attaque, et les douaniers, assaillis à l’improviste, étaient bien loin d’avoir tout préparé pour la défense. Le grand nombre dut avoir l’avantage, et après une inutile résistance, la patache se rendit aux trois péniches.

La joie des vainqueurs dut être grande, lorsque, pour rejoindre les croiseurs qui les attendaient en louvoyant, ils défilèrent sous la Grande-Ile avec leurs trois embarcations et la patache conquise. Le sémaphore placé sur cette Grande-Ile annonça à son confrère le sémaphore situé sur la côte ferme, le triste événement qui venait de se passer dans le courreau des Sept-Iles et presque sous les yeux de la garnison qui gardait le plus important des rochers de l’archipel.

On vit bientôt la frégate ennemie à laquelle appartenaient les canots sortis de Tomé, aller au-devant de la conquête des péniches victorieuses, et prendre à la remorque la pauvre patache. Ce dut être pour elle une capture assez étrange que cette douzaine de préposés de douanes parés, brossés, fourbis, pour aller passer l’inspection à Lannion et arrivant prisonniers de guerre à bord d’une division anglaise.

On parla beaucoup, à Perros, du malheur arrivé à la patache de Tréguier. Les préposés des brigades établies sur les côtes voisines de l’événement, jurèrent de venger leurs camarades sur les Anglais. Plusieurs jours de suite, ils s’embusquèrent dans les rochers de Tomé, pour chercher à surprendre les embarcations des croiseurs qui s’aviseraient de vouloir débarquer dans l’île. Mais leurs tentatives furent vaines. Personne ne parut.

Pour suivre bien le fil des petits détails que j’ai encore à raconter, il est nécessaire de se rappeler succinctement ceux que l’on a déjà lus, et de ne pas oublier surtout l’île de Tomé où venaient aborder les Anglais et les Français; la frégate anglaise avec les douaniers pris en grande tenue, etc.

Lors du dernier événement arrivé à ces pauvres douaniers, je commandais une péniche appartenant à la station de Perros, station très-imposante, composée d’une canonnière qui commandait les forces navales de l’endroit, et de deux mauvaises embarcations dont la mienne faisait partie! Le commandement que l’on m’avait confié, à moi très-jeune aspirant de première classe et futur amiral de France, avait été dans son temps un grand canot de vaisseau. En rehaussant les pavois de ce canot et en plaçant un petit obusier en fonte sur son arrière, on avait cru en faire une péniche. J’oublie de dire qu’on lui avait même donné un nom assez pompeux, mais assez peu convenable à ses qualités: ma péniche se nommait l’Active. Vingt-sept hommes la montaient. Vingt environ à couple pouvaient être bordés, à l’occasion, de l’avant à l’arrière. Un caisson placé au pied du grand mât contenait quelques fusils, une dizaine de pistolets et autant de sabres: c’était là notre arsenal. Un des bancs de l’arrière me servait de cabane; l’autre banc de babord était réservé au chef de timonerie que j’appelais toujours mon second, pour qu’à son tour il m’appelât toujours mon capitaine. Quand il faisait froid, je tapais des pieds sur le tillac, ne pouvant pas me promener faute d’espace. Quand il pleuvait, je me couvrais d’un manteau. Mes hommes faisaient leur soupe à la mer, en plaçant la chaudière, commune à l’état-major et à l’équipage, sur la moitié d’une barrique remplie de sable et au centre de laquelle on allumait du feu. C’était une vie d’Arabes, au milieu des flots; mais à quinze ou seize ans, avec un poignard au côté, des épaulettes en or mélangé de bleu sur le dos, et deux douzaines d’hommes à commander, on se croit général d’armée. Un capitaine de vaisseau ne se promenait pas plus fièrement sur sa dunette, que moi sur le banc qui me servait à la fois de gaillard d’arrière, de chambre à coucher et de banc de quart dans les circonstances solennelles.

Un jour avant la prise de la patache des douanes, le commandant de la station m’avait donné l’ordre d’escorter jusqu’à l’île de Bréhat trois ou quatre caboteurs chargés d’objets du gouvernement. Dieu sait, à la tête de ce convoi composé de trois ou quatre barques, les signaux que je faisais à mon bord; car j’avais toute une série de pavillons pour transmettre mes ordres aux divers bâtimens placés sous ma protection. Un amiral commandant une escadre aurait envié les évolutions que j’exécutais, et à coup sûr il ne se serait pas donné plus de soins pour conduire une armée alignée sur trois colonnes, que moi pour mener mes trois bateaux à bon port.

Dès que mon importante mission fut remplie et que j’eus vu défiler devant moi les navires de mon convoi pour aller mouiller à leur destination, je tirai un coup d’obusier en hissant et rehissant trois fois mon pavillon à tête de mât, pour faire mes adieux aux capitaines marchands que j’allais quitter. Les capitaines de mon escadre répondirent à ce galant signal en m’exprimant leurs remercimens et leur satisfaction. Ils hissèrent et rehissèrent par trois fois aussi leur pavillon national, et je me séparai d’eux pour retourner à Perros.

J’insiste un peu sur ces détails puérils, parce qu’ils ont encore pour moi tout l’attrait et toute la fraîcheur des souvenirs d’un âge que l’on ne se console d’avoir passé qu’en se le rappelant sans cesse. Tous les marins, j’en suis bien sûr, me sauront gré de raconter longuement ces petites scènes qui sont celles que les hommes de mer se rappellent avec le plus de plaisir et d’attendrissement. Les critiques seuls pourront me reprocher mon verbiage. Je sais bien que dans tout cela il y a peu de mérite sous le rapport de l’art et du goût littéraire; mais chez moi les douces impressions et la vérité passent avant l’art: mes plus chers souvenirs d’abord, et le travail d’artiste après, s’il se peut, telle est ma devise de raconteur.

Le jour tombait déjà quand je me mis en devoir de revenir à la station. Mais ce jour tombait comme tombe un beau jour d’été. La mer était calme, le ciel tranquille, et l’air tiède que l’on respirait semblait s’être imprégné en caressant les flots, de ces parfums de l’Océan, que les marins préfèrent à l’ambre le plus exquis et aux essences les plus précieuses. La lune se dégageait, à l’horizon, du cercle noirâtre que les effets de lumière formaient au loin autour de nous, et sa clarté si vive et à la fois si douce paraissait couvrir d’une nappe d’argent la houle que nous fendions à grands coups de rames. Il nous avait fallu en effet border nos avirons: le vent avait cessé, comme pour ne pas interrompre le calme harmonieux de la nature. A terre, au sein des forêts ombreuses et des plaines désertes, le silence des nuits a sans doute quelque chose de bien religieux; mais à la mer combien le repos de tous les élémens est noble et sublime! L’homme qui ne s’est pas oublié des heures entières au milieu de l’Océan pendant une belle nuit d’été, n’a pas éprouvé ce qu’il y a de mieux fait pour nous élever aux idées les plus nobles et les plus consolantes.

Revenons un peu aux choses terrestres. A droite de ma péniche je voyais l’immense mer se gonfler majestueusement sous les rayons de la lune: à ma gauche et du côté de la terre, défilaient une multitude de rochers auxquels la nuit et la clarté de l’astre qui nous guidait donnaient les formes les plus bizarres et l’apparence la plus fantastique. Le calme de ce beau spectacle n’était interrompu, que par le bruit régulier de nos avirons ou par la voix retentissante de mes matelots, et quelquefois par le mugissement lointain de la houle paresseuse qui allait s’engouffrer dans les cavités des rochers ou les grottes du rivage. Jamais je n’ai passé d’heures plus douces que celles de cette nuit, pendant laquelle, tout jeune que j’étais, mes petites facultés méditatives allaient grand train.

Un canonnier de marine que j’avais à bord ne me permit pas de rester long-temps plongé dans mes délicieuses rêveries. Ce canonnier était un de ces clowns d’équipage, de ces agréables de bord qui ont le privilège de faire rire leurs camarades en toute occasion, et d’égayer pour ainsi dire la pénible vie du matelot. Mon clown à moi se nommait Fournerat: c’était un joyeux et joli garçon, aimé de tout son monde, et qui, chose rare, était aussi bon homme de bord qu’il était bon farceur. Mes gens étaient-ils fatigués, harassés, mouillés jusqu’aux os? Fournerat laissait échapper une saillie, et le plus mécontent riait et se remettait à l’ouvrage; Étions-nous obligés de nager pendant une demi-journée? Quand l’ardeur des rameurs mollissait, Fournerat improvisait une chanson, et le courage revenait au plus maussade. Les quarts-de vin de ses camarades, les doubles rations que je lui donnais en supplément, pleuvaient sur lui; mais jamais il ne se grisait, et je l’aimais comme l’homme le plus utile, le plus rangé et le plus soumis de mon petit équipage.

Mes gens, avaient les avirons sur les bras depuis trois ou quatre heures. L’air chaud de la nuit semblait leur inspirer la mollesse dont ils étaient remplis. Quelques-uns des nageurs se plaignaient déjà de la fatigue, mais se plaignaient comme font souvent les matelots, en exhalant leur mauvaise humeur en bons mots contre les objets, qu’ils pouvaient accuser sans craindre d’être réprimandés. «Savez-vous bien, disait l’un à ses camarades, que la lettre que nous avons à écrire avec ces plumes de dix pieds (les avirons) est bigrement longue!—Oui, répondait un autre, et j’ai envie de mettre de suite ma signature au bas, pour en avoir plus tôt fait.

—Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire? s’écria Fournerat; vous voulez finir déjà votre lettre par paresse d’écrire? Eh bien! moi, je vais en commencer une. Prêtez-moi une de vos plumes de bois, et vous allez voir comment je vas styler la lettre d’un mauvais fils à son cher père.»

Fournerat, en prononçant ces mots avec un ton qui n’était qu’à lui, saisit l’aviron d’un des mécontens. Chacun se dispose à entendre le farceur dicter la lettre qu’il va adresser à son père. Le courage revient à tout le monde, et mon canonnier, tout en hallant un grand coup sur son long aviron, commence ainsi:

«La mer est mon papier, la péniche l’Active mon écritoire, et mon aviron ma plume. La bouteille à l’eau-de-vie, si le capitaine le veut bien, sera ma bouteille à l’encre.

—J’y consens, m’empressai-je de dire, en devinant l’intention du drôle.

—C’est bon, mon capitaine, vous souscrivez, et moi j’écris.

Lettre d’un mauvais fils à monsieur son père.

«Mon cher père, et bigrement trop cher, puisque vous avez donné le jour à un garnement de mon espèce,

«Je profite de l’occasion de la poste aux lettres pour vous adresser celle-ci. Quant à la mienne, elle est fort bonne, et je souhaite que la présente vous trouve de même, et dans la situation où j’ai l’honneur d’être. Il me reste encore, à ce que je crois, deux frères et une soeur que ma chère mère vous a donnés à nourrir et à éduquer; la présente est pour vous dire et vous assurer, en bon fils, que je donnerais bien mes deux frères pour ne plus avoir de soeur, sachant bien que cela ferait plaisir à votre coeur paternel. Je suis bien aise de vous apprendre que j’ai profité des bons principes que vous m’avez fait sucer chez vous quand vous ne me donniez pas de pain à manger. J’irai loin, si je suis votre exemple, et déjà je suis en route pour Toulon, où je serai nourri, habillé et chauffé aux frais du gouvernement.

«Quand vous aurez l’occasion de battre ma chère mère et qu’elle aura le malheur de vous taper conjugalement, tâchez de vous assommer l’un et l’autre, en souvenir de moi, persuadés que je vous le rendrai à tous deux aussitôt que le ciel voudra bien me le permettre.

«Adieu, mes chers parens, je vous embrasse aussi parfaitement que je vous aime, et suis votre infectionné fils,

«LACARCAILLE.

«Posse-cripthomme. J’oubliais de vous dire, si ça peut vous intéresser, que je viens d’être condamné à cinq ans de galères innocemment au bagne de Toulon. C’est une bien jolie ville, où vous pourrez m’envoyer de l’argent si vous avez le hasard d’en voler à quelques amis. Je n’ai pas voulu vous laisser apprendre cette nouvelle par un autre. Mais soyez persuadé qu’au bagne comme ailleurs je n’oublierai pas les principes que j’ai reçus de vous.

«Idem.»

«Bah! se prit à crier un canonnier nommé Baradin, après avoir entendu la lettre de son confrère, ce bavacheur de Fournerat ne nous parle jamais que de ses galères! C’est toujours le bagne de Brest ou de Toulon avec lui. Change ta barre, conteur d’histoires de chaînes et de forçats; le bagne ne rend plus!

—Tiens, comme il est mal bordé cette nuit le prince Baradin premier, l’empereur des mouches tuées au vol, vice-roi des gamelles vides, protecteur de la confédération sale!

—Pourquoi m’appelles-tu prince, espèce de va-de-la-langue? Encore une autre bêtise, n’est-ce pas? et tu restes là la bouche ouverte, comme un sac quand il n’y a rien dedans!

—Ah! tu me demandes pourquoi je t’appelle prince? Je vas te le dire, mais dans une petite chanson, composée par ton serviteur, dans les cinq minutes qui vont venir.

—Silence, les enfans! s’écria un des maîtres à tous ceux qui riaient de la dispute survenue entre les deux canonniers; Fournerat va faire et chanter une chanson sur Baradin: taisons nos langues et ouvrons nos oreilles; c’est l’ordre.

—Mes amis, c’est sur l’air de Oui, noir, mais pas si diable, que je vais vous déchanter la Baradine, romance de circonstance, cadrant avec le sujet, et un bien vilain sujet, voyez plutôt. Mais il ne faut pas que la musique vous empêche de haller dur et long-temps sur vos avirons. Chantons mal, mais nageons bien. Je tousse trois fois, je me mouche deux: c’est vous dire que je vais commencer.

Je rappelle ici cette improvisation, toute grossière qu’elle est, pour faire connaître l’humeur et l’esprit des matelots. Qu’on me pardonne de la reproduire: ce fut, hélas! le chant du cygne, du pauvre Tyrtée de mon équipage!

La marée avait cessé de pousser favorablement la péniche vers sa destination. Mes hommes étaient las de toujours tirer sur leurs avirons. Le vent ne s’élevait pas et le jour allait se faire. Je pris le parti d’aborder l’île de Tomé qui se trouvait sur ma route, et d’attendre là que la marée suivante me permît de regagner Perros sans trop de peine. «Gouvernez sur Tomé, dis-je à mon patron. Nous mouillerons le grappin derrière en abordant.»

En accostant l’île, entre trois grands rochers qui formaient une espèce de petit port, mes hommes levèrent leurs rames. Le silence était parfait autour de nous, et ma voix seule et celle de mes gens allaient, au terme de la plus calme des nuits, réveiller les tranquilles échos du rivage. La mer gémissait à peine sur le bord, humide déjà de la rosée du matin. La clarté de la lune, qui allait bientôt faire place à celle du soleil, argentait encore le sommet de l’île et le côté opposé à celui sur lequel nous nous disposions à débarquer. Mais autour de nous l’obscurité prêtait à tous les objets des formes gigantesques et fantastiques. Un aviron tombant à la mer, le bruit du grappin que l’on mouillait derrière la péniche, la confusion même des voix de mes matelots, donnaient à cette scène si simple un charme inexprimable, du moins pour moi.

Je me plais ici à décrire un peu longuement ces choses, parce que ce sont des souvenirs que ma mémoire me rappelle avec ravissement au bout de vingt ans, et que je pense que l’on doit bien raconter et bien exprimer pour les autres ce que l’on se rappelle soi-même avec charme. L’art d’émouvoir et d’intéresser peut-il être autre chose que celui de peindre naïvement ce que l’on a senti le mieux?

En abordant à Tomé je recommandai à ceux de mes gens qui les premiers étaient sautés à terre, de ne pas trop s’éloigner, et de ne pas perdre de vue la péniche, non loin de laquelle moi-même je jugeai prudent de rester. Un coup de fusil, au reste, devait être le signal de ralliement. La marée devant bientôt nous permettre de continuer avec le jour notre route sur Perros, je ne pensai pas devoir passer plus d’une heure ou une heure et demie dans l’île.

Malgré la sévérité de mes ordres, quelques-uns de mes hommes s’écartèrent un peu plus que je ne leur avais permis. Ils voulaient chasser, disaient-ils, quelques lapins à coups de manche de gaffe. Après l’événement que je vais raconter et que j’étais loin de prévoir, je n’eus pas la force d’en vouloir à ces maraudeurs: ils nous sauvèrent.

Pendant que mes matelots rôdaient ça et là autour de moi, je m’assis sur un rocher près du rivage. J’aurais volontiers cédé dans ce moment d’inaction au sommeil que deux nuits blanches m’avaient rendu nécessaire, sans l’intérêt que m’inspirait une conversation qui s’était établie, à dix ou douze pas de ma place, entre Fournerat, mon brave canonnier, et le matelot Tasset, l’un de ses amis. Il s’agissait d’amour, de mariage et de projet de retraite: je prêtai attentivement l’oreille.

Les deux interlocuteurs s’étaient alongés nonchalamment sur un tertre de bruyère: c’était la pelouse du pays. Fournerat avait la parole.

«Jamais, disait il à son camarade, je ne me suis senti autant envie de retourner à Perros qu’aujourd’hui. Les deux jours que nous venons de passer dehors m’ont paru longs comme un câble sans bout ou vingt-quatre heures sans pain.

—Et pourquoi donc ça? Le temps m’a paru long à moi parce qu’il a fallu manier l’aviron toute la nuit, et que ça vous alonge joliment une soirée qui dure douze heures de temps jusqu’à la pointe du jour.

—Moi je me suis embêté, parce que, vois-tu, je m’impatientais d’attendre, et je m’impatientais parce qu’il y a quelque chose de nouveau qui m’attend à Perros.

—Quel nouveau?

—Mon congé.

—Ton congé! à toi!

—Un peu! Dix ans de service et une blessure à l’omoplate, d’un coup de canon de l’ennemi, qui m’empêche le remuement à volonté du bras avec lequel je me mouche avec ou sans mouchoir; voilà ce qui m’a fait demander mes invalides. Y es-tu?

—Mais que feras-tu avec ton congé, sans avoir un morceau de pain pour te laver la figure en dedans, quand la faim t’arrivera militairement tous les matins?

—Ce que je ferai? je me ferai des enfans tout seul, si je peux; car les enfans, comme on dit, c’est la richesse du pauvre.

—Et avec quoi encore te feras-tu des enfans?

—Avec un joli moule que je me suis choisi pour cela, va. Tu connais bien Marie Angel?

—Cette grande belle fille de la Clarté, l’aînée au père Angel?

—Indubitablement!

—C’est une belle criature!

—Je ne taille jamais que dans le beau.

—Qui vous a un bel estomac, au moins!

—Le plus bel estomac du département des Côtes-du-Nord, à ce que m’ont dit les connaisseurs.

—Et un bon caractère de fille, toujours de belle humeur, été comme hiver.

—Ah! ça doit être encore plus facile à manier, il n’y a pas de doute, qu’une pièce de quatre pour un ancien canonnier comme moi.

—Et tu veux l’épouser?

—Oui, et par le côté le plus pressé encore. Elle n’a pas grand’chose, mais elle a ce qui me plaît, et ça vous donne tant de force pour gagner sa vie, une femme qui vous chausse un peu proprement! Le père Angel, dont je vais devenir le respectable gendre, gagne quarante à cinquante sous par jour à faire des filets de pèche. C’est le plus grand fabricant du pays en filets à la brasse: le brave homme ne peut pas aller loin avec la goutte qu’il a par en bas, et celle qu’il prend à chaque instant par en haut. Une fois mort de rhumatisme et d’eau-de-vie, il me cédera son fonds, c’est-à-dire sa navette; et comme je me suis exercé, en faisant la cour à sa fille Marie, à passer assez gentiment une maille ou deux dans les filets du beau-père futur, je me trouverai établi tout naturellement avec ma petite femme, dans le domicile et l’état du pauvre défunt.

—Allons, je te vois bientôt négociant en filets de pèche, avec une femme sur les bras et un cabillot entre les quatre doigts et le pouce.

—Et le pouce! Oui, je le pousserai mon commerce. Tiens, vois-tu, la navigation me scie depuis long-temps le tempérament. On ne risque qu’à se faire casser les reins dans notre métier, et ce n’est pas un assez grand avantage pour qu’on se donne tant de mal pour l’État. Au lieu qu’avec une belle petite gaillarde qui vous tricotte une paire de bas en vous chantant la petite chanson, et en vous faisant une bonne soupe aux choux, on est plus heureux et plus tranquille qu’un roi. Hein! Qu’en dis-tu, espèce de célibataire?»

A ce moment de l’entretien, j’entendis courir vers moi deux des matelots qui s’étaient éloignés pour parcourir l’île. Ces hommes paraissaient s’être hâtés pour venir m’annoncer qu’ils avaient aperçu sur une hauteur voisine plusieurs douaniers…. Le jour s’était fait, et à la clarté de ses premiers rayons, et avec le secours d’une petite longue-vue que je portais sur moi, je distinguai, en effet, quelques hommes qui s’avançaient vers nous. A la forme de leurs schakos et à la couleur de leurs habits, je reconnus des douaniers. «Nul doute, me dis-je, qu’une des pataches des postes voisins aura abordé l’île comme moi, et dans une autre partie….» Mais pour plus de précaution et avant de pousser une reconnaissance, j’ordonnai à tout mon monde de rembarquer dans la péniche. Le canonnier Fournerat et son camarade, trop occupés encore, peut-être, de la conversation qu’ils avaient entamée, ne se disposaient pas à exécuter mon ordre, soit qu’ils l’eussent mal entendu ou qu’ils ne jugeassent pas nécessaire de se hâter. A peine, cependant, avais-je prononcé quelques mots d’impatience contre leur lenteur, que mes faux douaniers, qui s’avançaient toujours, nous couchèrent en joue et nous envoyèrent une grêle de coups de fusil. Cette décharge si inattendue produisit plus d’effet que mon commandement. Tous mes gens se jettent dans la péniche: on saute sur les armes et les avirons. Je fais pousser l’embarcation au large: nous lâchons précipitamment quelques coups de feu sur les douaniers qui continuent à tirer sur nous. La péniche enfin s’éloigne du rivage avec tout son équipage, à l’exception cependant du pauvre Fournerat. Une balle venait de l’étendre mort auprès de son camarade Tasset, qui, plus heureux que lui, avait réussi, à la première décharge, à regagner le bord.

Ma péniche fuit en désordre. Une fois un peu au large et hors de danger, nous cherchons à nous expliquer cette attaque imprévue. Comment nos assaillans, si réellement ils avaient été des douaniers français, auraient-ils pu nous prendre pour des Anglais, quand le pavillon tricolore flottait dès le matin au haut du mât de tappe-cul de la péniche? «Ce sont des Anglais déguisés en préposés de douane, me répondait mon patron….—Mais pourquoi des Anglais auraient-ils eu recours à ce stratagème, lorsque, sans changer de costume, ils auraient pu nous approcher aussi bien qu’ils l’ont fait au moyen de ce déguisement?—Par farce, peut-être, me répondait encore mon patron, ou sans doute, parce qu’ils croyaient, en s’habillant en préposés, pouvoir nous accoster impunément de plus prés et à bout portant, comme ils l’ont fait.»

J’ordonnai de gouverner de manière à contourner la queue de l’île, et à nous rendre le plus tôt possible à Perros.

Mais à peine avions-nous atteint la pointe sud de Tomé, que nous vîmes déborder par l’autre côté et de la partie du nord trois légers canots qui nageaient sur nous à grands coups d’avirons. C’étaient encore les Anglais qui venaient nous attaquer. Ma péniche ne marchait que très-médiocrement à l’aviron, comme je l’ai déjà dit, et je prévoyais bien que j’allais avoir affaire à force partie, quoique les canots ennemis fussent assez grêles. Il fallut se disposer à résister au nombre. Mes gens, un peu honteux de s’être laissés surprendre par l’attaque vigoureuse à laquelle nous avions été obligés de céder, ne demandaient pas mieux que de prendre leur revanche.

Dès que la plus agile des trois embarcations ennemies fut rendue assez près de moi pour me lancer quelques coups de fusil, je fis tonner sur elle l’obusier de 12, dont l’arrière de ma péniche était armé. Ce coup chargé à mitraille produisit merveille, et les balles que mon unique pièce d’artillerie fit pleuvoir autour de mes plus hardis assaillans, semblèrent les déconcerter un peu. La fusillade s’engagea bientôt entre eux et nous, et sans interrompre le service des avirons, nous tînmes tête à l’ennemi, qui nous gagnait toujours de vitesse. La brise, pendant ce petit combat à la course, vint à s’élever; mais elle nous était contraire, et rendait inutile l’emploi de nos voiles. Les Anglais, malgré la supériorité de leur marche, n’osaient cependant pas nous aborder, car ils paraissaient surtout redouter la brutalité de notre obusier. Dans la confusion de ce petit engagement, j’eus à peine le loisir de remarquer que la canonnière de la station, favorisée par la brise qui nous contrariait, venait d’appareiller du fond de la rade, et se trouvait déjà à portée de canon du champ de bataille.

Il était temps pour nous que son gros calibre ronflât sur les péniches anglaises! Ma pauvre embarcation, ébranlée et fatiguée par la fréquence des chocs que lui faisait éprouver la détonnation de mon obusier, se remplissait d’eau, et si l’engagement s’était prolongé, peut-être aurions-nous fini par couler, non pas sous le feu de l’ennemi, mais par l’effet du propre feu que nous faisions sur lui.

Une gloire aussi négative ne nous était pas réservée.

A l’approche de la canonnière s’avançant couverte de toile et à force de rames, et faisant déjà gronder ses gros canons de devant, les péniches anglaises abandonnèrent la chasse qu’elles m’appuyaient avec acharnement. Elles s’éloignent, s’arrêtent un instant, rentrent leurs avirons, et bientôt nous les voyons livrer au vent, qui favorise leur fuite, les petites voiles blanches qu’elles hissent, avec la rapidité de l’éclair, au haut des mâts qu’elles ont établis dans un clin d’oeil. Des mauves agiles ne glissent pas plus légèrement sur les flots qu’elles effleurent du bout de l’aile, que ces trois embarcations, livrant aussi leurs ailes blanches, au souffle de la risée. D’assailli que j’étais, je veux devenir assaillant, et me voilà, dans ma lourde péniche, poursuivant à mon tour mes ennemis, avec le secours imposant de la canonnière. Mais tous mes efforts furent vains. Les Anglais gagnèrent le large avant que nous pussions les approcher, et nous restâmes maîtres absolus du champ de bataille, sans avoir à nous enorgueillir beaucoup de cet avantage. Quelques trous de balles dans ma mâture et dans les chapeaux de deux ou trois de mes gens, furent les résultats les plus remarquables de ce petit combat.

J’appris en quelques mots au commandant de la canonnière mon aventure à Tomé, et le piège dans lequel, à la faveur de leur travestissement de douaniers, les Anglais avaient voulu m’attirer. «Pardieu-! me dit mon commandant, ces gaillards-là n’ont pas payé cher les frais du nouveau costume sous lequel ils ont cherché à vous abuser. Il y a trois jours qu’une frégate anglaise s’est emparée d’une de nos pataches de douane; et les habits des prisonniers auront servi à métamorphoser en préposés, les gaillards dont vous vous serez laissé approcher sans assez de défiance.»

Le mystère que jusque là nous avait caché le costume de douanier, venait de nous être expliqué. Les Anglais nous avaient joué une petite comédie de travestissement, une espèce de pièce à tiroir.

Pour plus de prudence, la canonnière commandante voulut faire le tour de l’île de Tomé, quoiqu’il n’y eût plus aucun espoir d’y surprendre des Anglais.

Le vent, qui depuis quelque temps s’était élevé de l’ouest, devint plus fort; et comme il était contraire pour rentrer, la canonnière et ma péniche louvoyèrent avec l’avantage de la marée afin de regagner le mouillage en dedans de ce qu’on nomme le lanquin de Perros.

Le soir, ou ne s’entretenait dans tout le pays que de l’événement de Tomé, de la mort du pauvre Fournerat, et du mauvais tour enfin qu’avaient voulu me jouer les Anglais.

Ce ne fut que le surlendemain de mon aventure que le temps devint assez beau pour me permettre de retourner dans la petite île, théâtre de ma récente aventure.

Je me, disposais à faire ce petit voyage en ordonnant à tout mon monde de s’embarquer dans la péniche, lorsqu’une jeune fille s’avança vers moi les yeux en pleurs.

«Monsieur, me dit-elle, j’ai une grâce à vous demander?

—Et quelle grâce, mademoiselle?

—Celle de me permettre d’aller à Tomé avec vous.

—Et quel besoin avez-vous d’aller à Tomé?

—Quel besoin? Ah! monsieur, si vous saviez….» Et la jeune fille à ces mots fondit en larmes.

«Quel est votre nom? êtes-vous de Perros?

—Monsieur, je suis du village de la Clarté, je me nomme Marie Angel.»

A ce nom, dont je fus frappé comme d’un coup de foudre, je me rappelai avec une vive et poignante douleur la conversation de l’avant-veille entre Fournerat et son ami…. Pauvre Fournerat!

«Mais, mademoiselle, je ne sais trop si, pour vous-même, je dois vous permettre de venir à Tomé. Je crois devoir vous épargner le spectacle douloureux que vous venez chercher peut-être à l’insu de votre père, de votre famille.

—Oh! je vous le demande en grâce, monsieur: ne me refusez pas. Je ne pleurerai pas, je vous le jure, et je tiendrai si peu de place dans votre embarcation….

—Allons, venez, puisque vous le voulez. Je crains également de vous recevoir dans ma péniche, et de vous désobliger en vous refusant….. Embarquez-vous.»

La jeune fille s’embarque. Je donne ordre à mes hommes de pousser au large, et nous voilà naviguant vers Tomé.

Tous mes matelots connaissaient la pauvre Marie Angel. Ils la regardaient en silence et d’un air qui voulait lui dire combien ils respectaient sa douleur et les larmes qu’elle s’efforçait de ne pas répandre devant eux et surtout devant moi, à qui elle avait promis de ne pas pleurer.

Placée derrière, près du patron de l’embarcation, elle tenait ses yeux humides fixés sur les flots que nous fendions à force de rames. En approchant de Tomé, je remarquai que son sein battait avec plus de force, et que ses joues pâlissaient. Mais elle m’avait promis de ne pas pleurer, et elle ne pleurait pas, de peur peut-être de m’importuner…. Je commande au patron d’aborder l’île dans un autre endroit que celui où nous aurions retrouvé le corps de notre infortuné canonnier.

A peine sommes-nous rendus à terre, que Marie Angel se dirige vers le lieu que je voulais lui cacher: soit qu’elle connût déjà l’île, ou qu’un instinct trop naturel la guidât, elle gagne avec rapidité et avant nous, la partie du rivage que nous avions abordée l’avant-veille…. Nous ne pouvons que la suivre; et bientôt nous la voyons s’arrêter, se coucher et se jeter sur le corps défiguré de son amant.

La pluie et le vent avaient passé pendant deux jours sur ce corps livide et sur ces tristes restes que les Anglais n’avaient eu le temps ni d’enlever ni d’enterrer.

Tous nos efforts furent vains pour arracher la pauvre Marie à cet affreux spectacle. Nous ne parvînmes à transporter le cadavre vers la péniche, qu’en consentant à laisser Marie soutenir, dans ce pénible trajet, la tête inanimée de son amant, comme si cette tête, à la bouche béante, aux yeux vitrés et fixes, vivait encore!

«C’est au coeur, s’écriait la malheureuse fille, c’est au coeur qu’ils l’ont tué!»

Le cadavre fut reçu, avec précaution et recueillement, par les hommes qui se trouvaient dans la péniche: on le plaça sur le banc de l’arrière, et une voile recouvrit en entier le corps du défunt.

Nous repartîmes aussitôt pour Perros.

Marie, agenouillée aux pieds du cadavre de son amant, laissait tomber sa tête sur sa poitrine affaissée; elle priait à voix basse, pendant que nous nous éloignions de l’île. Personne ne causait à bord: c’est à peine si quelquefois je prenais la parole pour donner à mes hommes les ordres nécessaires à la manoeuvre. Jamais traversée plus courte ne me parut plus pénible. Le bruit des rames, frappant à coups réguliers les flots tranquilles, semblait ajouter quelque chose de sinistre à cette scène lugubre. On aurait dit une marche funèbre, battue par les avirons des nageurs sur la mer immobile. Il y avait du deuil jusque dans les plis de notre petit pavillon que j’avais fait amener à demi-mât, et qui, abandonné par le vent qui s’était tu, tombait le long de sa drisse, comme un long crêpe ou comme un lambeau de linceul.

Nous arrivâmes enfin à Perros.

La multitude nous attendait sur le rivage où nous devions aborder.

Des artilleurs de la station se disputèrent l’honneur de porter le cadavre de leur camarade Fournerat. Quant à Marie, elle ne pleura pas. Elle voulut que le corps fût conduit chez elle, en attendant l’inhumation, et en suivant la marche de ceux qui le portaient, elle priait toujours, mais sans laisser échapper une larme. On aurait dit que, moins malheureuse que quelques heures auparavant, elle venait de retrouver quelque chose de consolant, et que la mort ne lui avait pas encore tout ôté, en lui ravissant celui seul qu’elle aimait. Triste illusion de la douleur, qui fait retrouver une consolation dans la vue des objets qui devraient le plus augmenter notre désespoir!

Le lendemain, on enterra Fournerat dans le modeste cimetière du village de la Clarté. Tous les marins de la station l’accompagnèrent jusqu’au champ de l’éternel repos…. Marie jeta la première poignée de terre sur sa fosse, et puis, quand cette fosse fut comblée, elle sema des fleurs sur la tombe qui venait de recouvrir pour toujours les restes de celui qui aurait été son époux.

Quelques jours après cet enterrement, qui avait produit sur moi la plus pénible impression, je revins visiter, conduit par quelque chose de rêveur et peut-être aussi par un instinct de curiosité, le petit cimetière de la Clarté.

Mes regards cherchèrent d’abord la tombe de Fournerat: c’était la seule chose que je voulusse voir autour de moi. Je remarquai que sur cette tombe, déjà un peu affaissée, une main, que je devinai sans peine, avait déposé des fleurs toutes fraîches. Une croix, sur laquelle se trouvaient tracés le nom, l’âge et la profession du mort, avait été plantée depuis peu: au haut de la fosse et sur la tête de cette croix pendait une petite couronne de marguerites touffues, qu’il avait fallu bien du temps pour composer. «Peut-être, me dis-je, ces fleurs nouvelles sont-elles encore mouillées des larmes de la pauvre Marie!… Quel secret avait donc ce malheureux Fournerat pour se faire aimer ainsi d’une jeune fille de village, ou plutôt, que de sensibilité avait-il rencontrée chez cette jeune fille si naïve et si touchante dans sa douleur!…» Et je pensai long-temps à Marie sur la tombe de son amant!…

Les impressions les plus profondes s’effacent bien vite dans le coeur des marins: ils voient tant de choses en si peu de temps! J’oubliai bientôt et Fournerat et sa maîtresse, et le cimetière de la Clarté et le petit port de Perros, que je quittai pour aller courir les mers pendant plusieurs années sur une demi-douzaine de navires différens.

Les petits événemens que je viens de raconter avaient presque disparu de ma mémoire, lorsqu’un jour en visitant, pendant une de mes relâches au Sénégal, le cimetière de Saint-Louis, il me prit envie de lire les inscriptions que l’on pouvait encore déchiffrer sur quelques croix funéraires, battues depuis long-temps par le vent, ou couchées pour la plupart sur le sable qui recouvrait les ossemens des infortunés moissonnés par les maladies de ce pays terrible. Il m’était souvent arrivé, dans les colonies, de parcourir les lieux où l’on entasse les cadavres des pauvres Européens, pour avoir des nouvelles de ceux de mes amis dont je n’avais entendu parler depuis long-temps; et souvent aussi j’avais appris leur sort, en voyant leur nom écrit sur la fosse qui les avait pour toujours séparés du monde. Une sorte de pressentiment m’avait dit qu’en faisant une visite dans le cimetière de Saint-Louis, je rencontrerais là quelques morts de ma connaissance. Je me laissai aller à cette idée tant soit peu triste, et mon sombre pressentiment ne tarda pas à être justifié.

A peine, en effet, avais-je fait quelques pas sur le sable dans lequel on creuse les tombeaux que la fièvre jaune ou le ténesme se chargent de combler dans ce climat inexorable, que je m’arrêtai, presque involontairement, devant une croix blanche sur laquelle on avait tracé une inscription en lettres noires, encore toutes fraîches peintes. La première chose que je vis dans cette inscription, ce fut l’âge de la personne qu’on venait d’inhumer depuis peu, à en juger par l’état dans lequel se trouvait encore la terre: AGÉE DE VINGT-TROIS ANS! «Vingt-trois ans! me dis-je…. Mourir à cet âge, et encore au Sénégal! Mais quelle peut être la pauvre femme que la mort a si tôt enlevée?» Je lus, ou plutôt, sans avoir le temps de bien lire, je fus frappé comme d’un coup électrique, en croyant avoir vu sur la croix qui était devant moi, ces mots:… «Marie Angel, dite soeur Sainte-Marie….»

Il me fallut m’asseoir sur une tombe voisine, et me remettre un peu du malaise que j’éprouvais, avant de pouvoir arrêter de nouveau mes yeux sur cette fatale inscription.

Au bout de quelques minutes d’efforts faits sur moi-même, je voulus relire les mots qui m’avaient si fort troublé…. Je n’avais déjà que trop bien lu.

«Ci-gît Marie Angel, dite soeur Sainte-Marie, née à Perros, département des Côtes-du-Nord, le 1^er mai 1801, morte à l’hospice de Saint-Louis, âgée de vingt-trois ans. Priez Dieu pour le repos de son âme!»

C’est alors que le souvenir de l’infortuné Fournerat et de toutes les circonstances que j’avais depuis long-temps oubliées, vint de nouveau assaillir toute mon âme. Avec quelle vivacité se présentèrent à mon esprit, et le petit cimetière de la Clarté, et les traits de la pauvre Marie me demandant à venir à Tomé dans ma péniche! Que d’événemens, de lieux et d’époques venaient en ce moment se rapprocher, se confondre dans mon imagination, à la vue de cette croix où le sort de la pauvre Marie m’était révélé!… Quelle immense distance entre la tombe de son amant et la sienne! Lui en France, elle au Sénégal!… Ensevelis tous deux pour jamais, et si loin l’un de l’autre!…

Hélas, il n’était que trop vrai! Le soir, en revenant accablé de tristesse vers l’hospice de Saint-Louis, j’appris de la bouche même des compagnes de soeur Sainte-Marie, que la pauvre Marie, attachée depuis cinq ans, par des voeux indissolubles, à l’ordre des Soeurs de la Charité, avait terminé au Sénégal des jours remplis pour elle d’une longue et cruelle amertume!

Cinq ans! c’était juste le temps qui s’était écoulé depuis la mort du malheureux Fournerat!

J’ai cherché bien long-temps depuis dans le monde un pareil exemple de constance et d’amour: je ne l’ai pas encore trouvé. Peut-être est-ce pour cela que je me suis rappelé si bien, comme la chose la plus rare, tant de fidélité et de tendresse. Je chercherai long-temps encore sans doute!

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A note from Boathouse:

It’s going to be a long winter and winter for most is a season to research and plan upcoming trips,  day dream about boating  and also read about boating.  Presented here a chapter  of  ‘The Riddle of the sands’  an excellent  pre WWI sailing adventure.  Every week Boathouse will present a chapter or two of  this public domain work and hopefully this will ease the passage of winter for our readers. If you are inpatient and can’t wait for each weeks installment you can read the entire book  at gutenburg.org If you would rather listen to the book here is a link to an audio version:  Chapter 3 & Chapter 4

If you would like to be notified when posts are added to this blog please send an email to  blogadmin@boathouse.ca   with the words ‘Subscribe to blog’ as the subject.

Have fun!  Post a comment, let  us know what you think.

Boathouse

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III.

Davies

I DOZED but fitfully, with a fretful sense of sore elbows and neck and many a draughty hiatus among the blankets. It was broad daylight before I had reached the stage of torpor in which such slumber merges. That was finally broken by the descent through the skylight of a torrent of water. I started up, bumped my head hard against the decks, and blinked leaden-eyed upwards.

‘Sorry! I’m scrubbing decks. Come up and bathe. Slept well?’ I heard a voice saying from aloft.

‘Fairly well,’ I growled, stepping out into a pool of water on the oilcloth. Thence I stumbled up the ladder, dived overboard, and buried bad dreams, stiffness, frowsiness, and tormented nerves in the loveliest fiord of the lovely Baltic. A short and furious swim and I was back again, searching for a means of ascent up the smooth black side, which, low as it was, was slippery and unsympathetic. Davies, in a loose canvas shirt, with the sleeves tucked up, and flannels rolled up to the knee, hung over me with a rope’s end, and chatted unconcernedly about the easiness of the job when you know how, adjuring me to mind the paint, and talking about an accommodation ladder he had once had, but had thrown overboard because it was so horribly in the way. When I arrived, my knees and elbows were picked out in black paint, to his consternation. Nevertheless, as I plied the towel, I knew that I had left in those limpid depths yet another crust of discontent and self-conceit.

As I dressed into flannels and blazer, I looked round the deck, and with an unskilled and doubtful eye took in all that the darkness had hitherto hidden. She seemed very small (in point of fact she was seven tons), something over thirty feet in length and nine in beam, a size very suitable to week-ends in the Solent, for such as liked that sort of thing; but that she should have come from Dover to the Baltic suggested a world of physical endeavour of which I had never dreamed. I passed to the aesthetic side. Smartness and beauty were essential to yachts, in my mind, but with the best resolves to be pleased I found little encouragement here. The hull seemed too low, and the mainmast too high; the cabin roof looked clumsy, and the skylights saddened the eye with dull iron and plebeian graining. What brass there was, on the tiller-head and elsewhere, was tarnished with sickly green. The decks had none of that creamy purity which Cowes expects, but were rough and grey, and showed tarry exhalations round the seams and rusty stains near the bows. The ropes and rigging were in mourning when contrasted with the delicate buff manilla so satisfying to the artistic eye as seen against the blue of a June sky at Southsea. Nor was the whole effect bettered by many signs of recent refitting. An impression of paint, varnish, and carpentry was in the air; a gaudy new burgee fluttered aloft; there seemed to be a new rope or two, especially round the diminutive mizzen-mast, which itself looked altogether new. But all this only emphasized the general plainness, reminding one of a respectable woman of the working-classes trying to dress above her station, and soon likely to give it up.

That the ensemble was businesslike and solid even my untrained eye could see. Many of the deck fittings seemed disproportionately substantial. The anchor-chain looked contemptuous of its charge; the binnacle with its compass was of a size and prominence almost comically impressive, and was, moreover the only piece of brass which was burnished and showed traces of reverent care. Two huge coils of stout and dingy warp lay just abaft the mainmast, and summed up the weather-beaten aspect of the little ship. I should add here that in the distant past she had been a lifeboat, and had been clumsily converted into a yacht by the addition of a counter, deck, and the necessary spars. She was built, as all lifeboats are, diagonally, of two skins of teak, and thus had immense strength, though, in the matter of looks, all a hybrid’s failings.

Hunger and ‘Tea’s made!’ from below brought me down to the cabin, where I found breakfast laid out on the table over the centre-board case, with Davies earnestly presiding, rather flushed as to the face, and sooty as to the fingers. There was a slight shortage of plate and crockery, but I praised the bacon and could do so truthfully, for its crisp and steaming shavings would have put to shame the efforts of my London cook. Indeed, I should have enjoyed the meal heartily were it not for the lowness of the sofa and table, causing a curvature of the body which made swallowing a more lengthy process than usual, and induced a periodical yearning to get up and stretch—a relief which spelt disaster to the skull. I noticed, too, that Davies spoke with a zest, sinister to me, of the delights of white bread and fresh milk, which he seemed to consider unusual luxuries, though suitable to an inaugural banquet in honour of a fastidious stranger. ‘One can’t be always going on shore,’ he said, when I showed a discreet interest in these things. ‘I lived for ten days on a big rye loaf over in the Frisian Islands.’

‘And it died hard, I suppose?’

‘Very hard, but’ (gravely) ‘quite good. After that I taught myself to make rolls; had no baking powder at first, so used Eno’s fruit salt, but they wouldn’t rise much with that. As for milk, condensed is—I hope you don’t mind it?’

I changed the subject, and asked about his plans.

‘Let’s get under way at once,’ he said, ‘and sail down the fiord.’ I tried for something more specific, but he was gone, and his voice drowned in the fo’c’sle by the clatter and swish of washing up. Thenceforward events moved with bewildering rapidity. Humbly desirous of being useful I joined him on deck, only to find that he scarcely noticed me, save as a new and unexpected obstacle in his round of activity. He was everywhere at once—heaving in chain, hooking on halyards, hauling ropes; while my part became that of the clown who does things after they are already done, for my knowledge of a yacht was of that floating and inaccurate kind which is useless in practice. Soon the anchor was up (a great rusty monster it was!), the sails set, and Davies was darting swiftly to and fro between the tiller and jib-sheets, while the Dulcibella bowed a lingering farewell to the shore and headed for the open fiord. Erratic puffs from the high land behind made her progress timorous at first, but soon the fairway was reached and a true breeze from Flensburg and the west took her in its friendly grip. Steadily she rustled down the calm blue highway whose soft beauty was the introduction to a passage in my life, short, but pregnant with moulding force, through stress and strain, for me and others.

Davies was gradually resuming his natural self, with abstracted intervals, in which he lashed the helm to finger a distant rope, with such speed that the movements seemed simultaneous. Once he vanished, only to reappear in an instant with a chart, which he studied, while steering, with a success that its reluctant folds seemed to render impossible. Waiting respectfully for his revival I had full time to look about. The fiord here was about a mile broad. From the shore we had left the hills rose steeply, but with no rugged grandeur; the outlines were soft; there were green spaces and rich woods on the lower slopes; a little white town was opening up in one place, and scattered farms dotted the prospect. The other shore, which I could just see, framed between the gunwale and the mainsail, as I sat leaning against the hatchway, and sadly missing a deck-chair, was lower and lonelier, though prosperous and pleasing to the eye. Spacious pastures led up by slow degrees to ordered clusters of wood, which hinted at the presence of some great manor house. Behind us, Flensburg was settling into haze. Ahead, the scene was shut in by the contours of hills, some clear, some dreamy and distant. Lastly, a single glimpse of water shining between the folds of hill far away hinted at spaces of distant sea of which this was but a secluded inlet. Everywhere was that peculiar charm engendered by the association of quiet pastoral country and a homely human atmosphere with a branch of the great ocean that bathes all the shores of our globe.

There was another charm in the scene, due to the way in which I was viewing it—not as a pampered passenger on a ‘fine steam yacht’, or even on ‘a powerful modern schooner’, as the yacht agents advertise, but from the deck of a scrubby little craft of doubtful build and distressing plainness, which yet had smelt her persistent way to this distant fiord through I knew not what of difficulty and danger, with no apparent motive in her single occupant, who talked as vaguely and unconcernedly about his adventurous cruise as though it were all a protracted afternoon on Southampton Water.

I glanced round at Davies. He had dropped the chart and was sitting, or rather half lying, on the deck with one bronzed arm over the tiller, gazing fixedly ahead, with just an occasional glance around and aloft. He still seemed absorbed in himself, and for a moment or two I studied his face with an attention I had never, since I had known him, given it. I had always thought it commonplace, as I had thought him commonplace, so far as I had thought at all about either. It had always rather irritated me by an excess of candour and boyishness. These qualities it had kept, but the scales were falling from my eyes, and I saw others. I saw strength to obstinacy and courage to recklessness, in the firm lines of the chin; an older and deeper look in the eyes. Those odd transitions from bright mobility to detached earnestness, which had partly amused and chiefly annoyed me hitherto, seemed now to be lost in a sensitive reserve, not cold or egotistic, but strangely winning from its paradoxical frankness. Sincerity was stamped on every lineament. A deep misgiving stirred me that, clever as I thought myself, nicely perceptive of the right and congenial men to know, I had made some big mistakes—how many, I wondered? A relief, scarcely less deep because it was unconfessed, stole in on me with the suspicion that, little as I deserved it, the patient fates were offering me a golden chance of repairing at least one. And yet, I mused, the patient fates have crooked methods, besides a certain mischievous humour, for it was Davies who had asked me out—though now he scarcely seemed to need me—almost tricked me into coming out, for he might have known I was not suited to such a life; yet trickery and Davies sounded an odd conjuncture.

Probably it was the growing discomfort of my attitude which produced this backsliding. My night’s rest and the ‘ascent from the bath’ had, in fact, done little to prepare me for contact with sharp edges and hard surfaces. But Davies had suddenly come to himself, and with an ‘I say, are you comfortable? Have something to sit on?’ jerked the helm a little to windward, felt it like a pulse for a moment, with a rapid look to windward, and dived below, whence he returned with a couple of cushions, which he threw to me. I felt perversely resentful of these luxuries, and asked:

‘Can’t I be of any use?’

‘Oh, don’t you bother,’ he answered. ‘I expect you’re tired. Aren’t we having a splendid sail? That must be Ekken on the port bow,’ peering under the sail, ‘where the trees run in. I say, do you mind looking at the chart?’ He tossed it over to me. I spread it out painfully, for it curled up like a watch-spring at the least slackening of pressure. I was not familiar with charts, and this sudden trust reposed in me, after a good deal of neglect, made me nervous.

‘You see Flensburg, don’t you?’ he said. ‘That’s where we are,’ dabbing with a long reach at an indefinite space on the crowded sheet. ‘Now which side of that buoy off the point do we pass?’

I had scarcely taken in which was land and which was water, much less the significance of the buoy, when he resumed:

‘Never mind; I’m pretty sure it’s all deep water about here. I expect that marks the fairway for steamers.

In a minute or two we were passing the buoy in question, on the wrong side I am pretty certain, for weeds and sand came suddenly into view below us with uncomfortable distinctness. But all Davies said was:

‘There’s never any sea here, and the plate’s not down,’ a dark utterance which I pondered doubtfully. ‘The best of these Schleswig waters,’ he went on, ‘is that a boat of this size can go almost anywhere. There’s no navigation required. Why—’At this moment a faint scraping was felt, rather than heard, beneath us.

‘Aren’t we aground?’ I asked with great calmness.

‘Oh, she’ll blow over,’ he replied, wincing a little.

She ‘blew over’, but the episode caused a little naive vexation in Davies. I relate it as a good instance of one of his minor peculiarities. He was utterly without that didactic pedantry which yachting has a fatal tendency to engender in men who profess it. He had tossed me the chart without a thought that I was an ignoramus, to whom it would be Greek, and who would provide him with an admirable subject to drill and lecture, just as his neglect of me throughout the morning had been merely habitual and unconscious independence. In the second place, master of his métier, as I knew him afterwards to be, resourceful, skilful, and alert, he was liable to lapse into a certain amateurish vagueness, half irritating and half amusing. I think truly that both these peculiarities came from the same source, a hatred of any sort of affectation. To the same source I traced the fact that he and his yacht observed none of the superficial etiquette of yachts and yachtsmen, that she never, for instance, flew a national ensign, and he never wore a ‘yachting suit’.

We rounded a low green point which I had scarcely noticed before.

‘We must jibe,’ said Davies: ‘just take the helm, will you?’ and, without waiting for my co-operation, he began hauling in the mainsheet with great vigour. I had rude notions of steering, but jibing is a delicate operation. No yachtsman will be surprised to hear that the boom saw its opportunity and swung over with a mighty crash, with the mainsheet entangled round me and the tiller.

‘Jibed all standing,’ was his sorrowful comment. ‘You’re not used to her yet. She’s very quick on the helm.’

‘Where am I to steer for?’ I asked, wildly.

‘Oh, don’t trouble, I’ll take her now,’ he replied.

I felt it was time to make my position clear. ‘I’m an utter duffer at sailing,’ I began. ‘You’ll have a lot to teach me, or one of these days I shall be wrecking you. You see, there’s always been a crew’—’Crew!’—with sovereign contempt—’why, the whole fun of the thing is to do everything oneself.’

‘Well, I’ve felt in the way the whole morning.’

‘I’m awfully sorry!’ His dismay and repentance were comical. ‘Why, it’s just the other way; you may be all the use in the world.’ He became absent.

We were following the inward trend of a small bay towards a cleft in the low shore.

‘That’s Ekken Sound,’ said Davies; ‘let’s look into it,’ and a minute or two later we were drifting through a dainty little strait, with a peep of open water at the end of it. Cottages bordered either side, some overhanging the very water, some connecting with it by a rickety wooden staircase or a miniature landing-stage. Creepers and roses rioted over the walls and tiny porches. For a space on one side, a rude quay, with small smacks floating off it, spoke of some minute commercial interests; a very small tea-garden, with neglected-looking bowers and leaf-strewn tables, hinted at some equally minute tripping interest. A pervading hue of mingled bronze and rose came partly from the weather-mellowed woodwork of the cottages and stages, and partly from the creepers and the trees behind, where autumn’s subtle fingers were already at work. Down this exquisite sea-lane we glided till it ended in a broad mere, where our sails, which had been shivering and complaining, filled into contented silence.

‘Ready about!’ said Davies, callously. ‘We must get out of this again.’ And round we swung.

‘Why not anchor and stop here?’ I protested; for a view of tantalizing loveliness was unfolding itself.

‘Oh, we’ve seen all there is to be seen, and we must take this breeze while we’ve got it.’ It was always torture to Davies to feel a good breeze running to waste while he was inactive at anchor or on shore. The ‘shore’ to him was an inferior element, merely serving as a useful annexe to the water—a source of necessary supplies.

‘Let’s have lunch,’ he pursued, as we resumed our way down the fiord. A vision of iced drinks, tempting salads, white napery, and an attentive steward mocked me with past recollections.

‘You’ll find a tongue,’ said the voice of doom, ‘in the starboard sofa-locker; beer under the floor in the bilge. I’ll see her round that buoy, if you wouldn’t mind beginning.’ I obeyed with a bad grace, but the close air and cramped posture must have benumbed my faculties, for I opened the port-side locker, reached down, and grasped a sticky body, which turned out to be a pot of varnish. Recoiling wretchedly, I tried the opposite one, combating the embarrassing heel of the boat and the obstructive edges of the centre-board case. A medley of damp tins of varied sizes showed in the gloom, exuding a mouldy odour. Faded legends on dissolving paper, like the remnants of old posters on a disused hoarding, spoke of soups, curries, beefs, potted meats, and other hidden delicacies. I picked out a tongue, re-imprisoned the odour, and explored for beer. It was true, I supposed, that bilge didn’t hurt it, as I tugged at the plank on my hands and knees, but I should have myself preferred a more accessible and less humid wine-cellar than the cavities among slimy ballast from which I dug the bottles. I regarded my hard-won and ill-favoured pledges of a meal with giddiness and discouragement.

‘How are you getting on?’ shouted Davies; ‘the tin-opener’s hanging up on the bulkhead; the plates and knives are in the cupboard.’

I doggedly pursued my functions. The plates and knives met me half-way, for, being on the weather side, and thus having a downward slant, its contents, when I slipped the latch, slid affectionately into my bosom, and overflowed with a clatter and jingle on to the floor.

‘That often happens,’ I heard from above. ‘Never mind! There are no breakables. I’m coming down to help.’ And down he came, leaving the Dulcibella to her own devices.

‘I think I’ll go on deck,’ I said. ‘Why in the world couldn’t you lunch comfortably at Ekken and save this infernal pandemonium of a picnic? Where’s the yacht going to meanwhile? And how are we to lunch on that slanting table? I’m covered with varnish and mud, and ankle-deep in crockery. There goes the beer!’

‘You shouldn’t have stood it on the table with this list on,’ said Davies, with intense composure, ‘but it won’t do any harm; it’ll drain into the bilge’ (ashes to ashes, dust to dust, I thought). ‘You go on deck now, and I’ll finish getting ready.’ I regretted my explosion, though wrung from me under great provocation.

‘Keep her straight on as she’s going,’ said Davies, as I clambered up out of the chaos, brushing the dust off my trousers and varnishing the ladder with my hands. I unlashed the helm and kept her as she was going.

We had rounded a sharp bend in the fiord, and were sailing up a broad and straight reach which every moment disclosed new beauties, sights fair enough to be balm to the angriest spirit. A red-roofed hamlet was on our left, on the right an ivied ruin, close to the water, where some contemplative cattle stood knee-deep. The view ahead was a white strand which fringed both shores, and to it fell wooded slopes, interrupted here and there by low sandstone cliffs of warm red colouring, and now and again by a dingle with cracks of greensward.

I forgot petty squalors and enjoyed things—the coy tremble of the tiller and the backwash of air from the dingy mainsail, and, with a somewhat chastened rapture, the lunch which Davies brought up to me and solicitously watched me eat.

Later, as the wind sank to lazy airs, he became busy with a larger topsail and jib; but I was content to doze away the afternoon, drenching brain and body in the sweet and novel foreign atmosphere, and dreamily watching the fringe of glen cliff and cool white sand as they passed ever more slowly by.

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 6th 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.’

‘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 sand-banks 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.’

‘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!’

Note from Boathouse:

It’s going to be a long winter and winter for most is a season to research and plan upcoming trips,  day dream about boating  and also read about boating.  Presented here a chapter  of  ‘The Riddle of the sands’  an excellent  pre WWI sailing adventure.  Every week Boathouse will present a chapter or two of  this public domain work and hopefully this will ease the passage of winter for our readers. If you are inpatient and can’t wait for each weeks installment you can read the entire book  at gutenburg.org If you would rather listen to the book here is a link to an audio version:  Chapter 2

If you would like to be notified when posts are added to this blog please send an email to  blogadmin@boathouse.ca   with the words ‘Subscribe to blog’ as the subject.

Have fun!  Post a comment, let  us know what you think.

Boathouse

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II.

The Dulcibella

THAT two days later I should be found pacing the deck of the Flushing steamer with a ticket for Hamburg in my pocket may seem a strange result, yet not so strange if you have divined my state of mind. You will guess, at any rate, that I was armed with the conviction that I was doing an act of obscure penance, rumours of which might call attention to my lot and perhaps awaken remorse in the right quarter, while it left me free to enjoy myself unobtrusively in the remote event of enjoyment being possible.

The fact was that, at breakfast on the morning after the arrival of the letter, I had still found that inexplicable lightening which I mentioned before, and strong enough to warrant a revival of the pros and cons. An important pro which I had not thought of before was that after all it was a good-natured piece of unselfishness to join Davies; for he had spoken of the want of a pal, and seemed honestly to be in need of me. I almost clutched at this consideration. It was an admirable excuse, when I reached my office that day, for a resigned study of the Continental Bradshaw, and an order to Carter to unroll a great creaking wall-map of Germany and find me Flensburg. The latter labour I might have saved him, but it was good for Carter to have something to do; and his patient ignorance was amusing. With most of the map and what it suggested I was tolerably familiar, for I had not wasted my year in Germany, whatever I had done or not done since. Its people, history, progress, and future had interested me intensely, and I had still friends in Dresden and Berlin. Flensburg recalled the Danish war of ’64, and by the time Carter’s researches had ended in success I had forgotten the task set him, and was wondering whether the prospect of seeing something of that lovely region of Schleswig-Holstein, [See Map A] as I knew from hearsay that it was, was at all to be set against such an uncomfortable way of seeing it, with the season so late, the company so unattractive, and all the other drawbacks which I counted and treasured as proofs of my desperate condition, if I were to go. It needed little to decide me, and I think K—’s arrival from Switzerland, offensively sunburnt, was the finishing touch. His greeting was ‘Hullo, Carruthers, you here? Thought you had got away long ago. Lucky devil, though, to be going now, just in time for the best driving and the early pheasants. The heat’s been shocking out there. Carter, bring me a Bradshaw’—(an extraordinary book, Bradshaw, turned to from habit, even when least wanted, as men fondle guns and rods in the close season).

By lunch-time the weight of indecision had been removed, and I found myself entrusting Carter with a telegram to Davies, P.O., Flensburg. ‘Thanks; expect me 9.34 p.m. 26th’; which produced, three hours later, a reply: ‘Delighted; please bring a No. 3 Rippingille stove’—a perplexing and ominous direction, which somehow chilled me in spite of its subject matter.

Indeed, my resolution was continually faltering. It faltered when I turned out my gun in the evening and thought of the grouse it ought to have accounted for. It faltered again when I contemplated the miscellaneous list of commissions, sown broadcast through Davies’s letter, to fulfil which seemed to make me a willing tool where my chosen rôle was that of an embittered exile, or at least a condescending ally. However, I faced the commissions manfully, after leaving the office.

At Lancaster’s I inquired for his gun, was received coolly, and had to pay a heavy bill, which it seemed to have incurred, before it was handed over. Having ordered the gun and No. 4’s to be sent to my chambers, I bought the Raven mixture with that peculiar sense of injury which the prospect of smuggling in another’s behalf always entails; and wondered where in the world Carey and Neilson’s was, a firm which Davies spoke of as though it were as well known as the Bank of England or the Stores, instead of specializing in ‘rigging-screws’, whatever they might be. They sounded important, though, and it would be only polite to unearth them. I connected them with the ‘few repairs,’ and awoke new misgivings. At the Stores I asked for a No. 3 Rippingille stove, and was confronted with a formidable and hideous piece of ironmongery, which burned petroleum in two capacious tanks, horribly prophetic of a smell of warm oil. I paid for this miserably, convinced of its grim efficiency, but speculating as to the domestic conditions which caused it to be sent for as an afterthought by telegram. I also asked about rigging-screws in the yachting department, but learnt that they were not kept in stock; that Carey and Neilson’s would certainly have them, and that their shop was in the Minories, in the far east, meaning a journey nearly as long as to Flensburg, and twice as tiresome. They would be shut by the time I got there, so after this exhausting round of duty I went home in a cab, omitted dressing for dinner (an epoch in itself), ordered a chop up from the basement kitchen, and spent the rest of the evening packing and writing, with the methodical gloom of a man setting his affairs in order for the last time.

The last of those airless nights passed. The astonished Withers saw me breakfasting at eight, and at 9.30 I was vacantly examining rigging-screws with what wits were left me after a sulphurous ride in the Underground to Aldgate. I laid great stress on the 3/8’s, and the galvanism, and took them on trust, ignorant as to their functions. For the eleven-shilling oilskins I was referred to a villainous den in a back street, which the shopman said they always recommended, and where a dirty and bejewelled Hebrew chaffered with me (beginning at 18s.) over two reeking orange slabs distantly resembling moieties of the human figure. Their odour made me close prematurely for 14s., and I hurried back (for I was due there at eleven) to my office with my two disreputable brown-paper parcels, one of which made itself so noticeable in the close official air that Carter attentively asked if I would like to have it sent to my chambers, and K— was inquisitive to bluntness about it and my movements. But I did not care to enlighten K—, whose comments I knew would be provokingly envious or wounding to my pride in some way.

I remembered, later on, the prismatic compass, and wired to the Minories to have one sent at once, feeling rather relieved that I was not present there to be cross-examined as to size and make.

The reply was, ‘Not stocked; try surveying-instrument maker’—a reply both puzzling and reassuring, for Davies’s request for a compass had given me more uneasiness than anything, while, to find that what he wanted turned out to be a surveying-instrument, was a no less perplexing discovery. That day I made my last précis and handed over my schedules—Procrustean beds, where unwilling facts were stretched and tortured—and said good-bye to my temporary chief, genial and lenient M—, who wished me a jolly holiday with all sincerity.

At seven I was watching a cab packed with my personal luggage and the collection of unwieldy and incongruous packages that my shopping had drawn down on me. Two deviations after that wretched prismatic compass—which I obtained in the end secondhand, faute de mieux, near Victoria, at one of those showy shops which look like jewellers’ and are really pawnbrokers’—nearly caused me to miss my train. But at 8.30 I had shaken off the dust of London from my feet, and at 10.30 I was, as I have announced, pacing the deck of a Flushing steamer, adrift on this fatuous holiday in the far Baltic.

An air from the west, cooled by a midday thunderstorm, followed the steamer as she slid through the calm channels of the Thames estuary, passed the cordon of scintillating lightships that watch over the sea-roads to the imperial city like pickets round a sleeping army, and slipped out into the dark spaces of the North Sea. Stars were bright, summer scents from the Kent cliffs mingled coyly with vulgar steamer-smells; the summer weather held immutably. Nature, for her part, seemed resolved to be no party to my penance, but to be imperturbably bent on shedding mild ridicule over my wrongs. An irresistible sense of peace and detachment, combined with that delicious physical awakening that pulses through the nerve-sick townsman when city airs and bald routine are left behind him, combined to provide me, however thankless a subject, with a solid background of resignation. Stowing this safely away, I could calculate my intentions with cold egotism. If the weather held I might pass a not intolerable fortnight with Davies. When it broke up, as it was sure to, I could easily excuse myself from the pursuit of the problematical ducks; the wintry logic of facts would, in any case, decide him to lay up his yacht, for he could scarcely think of sailing home at such a season. I could then take a chance lying ready of spending a few weeks in Dresden or elsewhere. I settled this programme comfortably and then turned in.

From Flushing eastward to Hamburg, then northward to Flensburg, I cut short the next day’s sultry story. Past dyke and windmill and still canals, on to blazing stubbles and roaring towns; at the last, after dusk, through a quiet level region where the train pottered from one lazy little station to another, and at ten o’clock I found myself, stiff and stuffy, on the platform at Flensburg, exchanging greetings with Davies.

‘It’s awfully good of you to come.’

‘Not at all; it’s very good of you to ask me.’

We were both of us ill at ease. Even in the dim gaslight he clashed on my notions of a yachtsman—no cool white ducks or neat blue serge; and where was the snowy crowned yachting cap, that precious charm that so easily converts a landsman into a dashing mariner? Conscious that this impressive uniform, in high perfection, was lying ready in my portmanteau, I felt oddly guilty. He wore an old Norfolk jacket, muddy brown shoes, grey flannel trousers (or had they been white?), and an ordinary tweed cap. The hand he gave me was horny, and appeared to be stained with paint; the other one, which carried a parcel, had a bandage on it which would have borne renewal. There was an instant of mutual inspection. I thought he gave me a shy, hurried scrutiny as though to test past conjectures, with something of anxiety in it, and perhaps (save the mark!) a tinge of admiration. The face was familiar, and yet not familiar; the pleasant blue eyes, open, clean-cut features, unintellectual forehead were the same; so were the brisk and impulsive movements; there was some change; but the moment of awkward hesitation was over and the light was bad; and, while strolling down the platform for my luggage, we chatted with constraint about trivial things.

‘By the way,’ he suddenly said, laughing, ‘I’m afraid I’m not fit to be seen; but it’s so late it doesn’t matter. I’ve been painting hard all day, and just got it finished. I only hope we shall have some wind to-morrow—it’s been hopelessly calm lately. I say, you’ve brought a good deal of stuff,’ he concluded, as my belongings began to collect.

Here was a reward for my submissive exertions in the far east!

‘You gave me a good many commissions!’

‘Oh, I didn’t mean those things,’ he said, absently. ‘Thanks for bringing them, by the way. That’s the stove, I suppose; cartridges, this one, by the weight. You got the rigging-screws all right, I hope? They’re not really necessary, of course’ (I nodded vacantly, and felt a little hurt); ‘but they’re simpler than lanyards, and you can’t get them here. It’s that portmanteau,’ he said, slowly, measuring it with a doubtful eye. ‘Never mind! we’ll try. You couldn’t do with the Gladstone only, I suppose? You see, the dinghy—h’m, and there’s the hatchway, too’—he was lost in thought. ‘Anyhow, we’ll try. I’m afraid there are no cabs; but it’s quite near, and the porter’ll help.’

Sickening forebodings crept over me, while Davies shouldered my Gladstone and clutched at the parcels.

‘Aren’t your men here?’ I asked, faintly.

‘Men?’ He looked confused. ‘Oh, perhaps I ought to have told you, I never have any paid hands; it’s quite a small boat, you know—I hope you didn’t expect luxury. I’ve managed her single-handed for some time. A man would be no use, and a horrible nuisance.’ He revealed these appalling truths with a cheerful assurance, which did nothing to hide a naive apprehension of their effect on me. There was a check in our mobilization.

‘It’s rather late to go on board, isn’t it?’ I said, in a wooden voice. Someone was turning out the gaslights, and the porter yawned ostentatiously. ‘I think I’d rather sleep at an hotel to-night.’ A strained pause.

‘Oh, of course you can do that, if you like,’ said Davies, in transparent distress of mind. ‘But it seems hardly worth while to cart this stuff all the way to an hotel (I believe they’re all on the other side of the harbour), and back again to the boat to-morrow. She’s quite comfortable, and you’re sure to sleep well, as you’re tired.’

‘We can leave the things here,’ I argued feebly, ‘and walk over with my bag.’

‘Oh, I shall have to go aboard anyhow,’ he rejoined; ‘I never sleep on shore.’

He seemed to be clinging timidly, but desperately, to some diplomatic end. A stony despair was invading me and paralysing resistance. Better face the worst and be done with it.

‘Come on,’ I said, grimly.

Heavily loaded, we stumbled over railway lines and rubble heaps, and came on the harbour. Davies led the way to a stairway, whose weedy steps disappeared below in gloom.

‘If you’ll get into the dinghy,’ he said, all briskness now, ‘I’ll pass the things down.’

I descended gingerly, holding as a guide a sodden painter which ended in a small boat, and conscious that I was collecting slime on cuffs and trousers.

‘Hold up!’ shouted Davies, cheerfully, as I sat down suddenly near the bottom, with one foot in the water.

I climbed wretchedly into the dinghy and awaited events.

‘Now float her up close under the quay wall, and make fast to the ring down there,’ came down from above, followed by the slack of the sodden painter, which knocked my cap off as it fell. ‘All fast? Any knot’ll do,’ I heard, as I grappled with this loathsome task, and then a big, dark object loomed overhead and was lowered into the dinghy. It was my portmanteau, and, placed athwart, exactly filled all the space amidships. ‘Does it fit?’ was the anxious inquiry from aloft.

‘Beautifully.’

‘Capital!’

Scratching at the greasy wall to keep the dinghy close to it, I received in succession our stores, and stowed the cargo as best I could, while the dinghy sank lower and lower in the water, and its precarious superstructure grew higher.

‘Catch!’ was the final direction from above, and a damp soft parcel hit me in the chest. ‘Be careful of that, it’s meat. Now back to the stairs!’

I painfully acquiesced, and Davies appeared.

‘It’s a bit of a load, and she’s rather deep; but I think we shall manage,’ he reflected. ‘You sit right aft, and I’ll row.’

I was too far gone for curiosity as to how this monstrous pyramid was to be rowed, or even for surmises as to its foundering by the way. I crawled to my appointed seat, and Davies extricated the buried sculls by a series of tugs, which shook the whole structure, and made us roll alarmingly. How he stowed himself into rowing posture I have not the least idea, but eventually we were moving sluggishly out into the open water, his head just visible in the bows. We had started from what appeared to be the head of a narrow loch, and were leaving behind us the lights of a big town. A long frontage of lamp-lit quays was on our left, with here and there the vague hull of a steamer alongside. We passed the last of the lights and came out into a broader stretch of water, when a light breeze was blowing and dark hills could be seen on either shore.

‘I’m lying a little way down the fiord, you see,’ said Davies. ‘I hate to be too near a town, and I found a carpenter handy here—There she is! I wonder how you’ll like her!’

I roused myself. We were entering a little cove encircled by trees, and approaching a light which flickered in the rigging of a small vessel, whose outline gradually defined itself.

‘Keep her off,’ said Davies, as we drew alongside.

In a moment he had jumped on deck, tied the painter, and was round at my end.

‘You hand them up,’ he ordered, ‘and I’ll take them.’

It was a laborious task, with the one relief that it was not far to hand them—a doubtful compensation, for other reasons distantly shaping themselves. When the stack was transferred to the deck I followed it, tripping over the flabby meat parcel, which was already showing ghastly signs of disintegration under the dew. Hazily there floated through my mind my last embarkation on a yacht; my faultless attire, the trim gig and obsequious sailors, the accommodation ladder flashing with varnish and brass in the August sun; the orderly, snowy decks and basket chairs under the awning aft. What a contrast with this sordid midnight scramble, over damp meat and littered packing-cases! The bitterest touch of all was a growing sense of inferiority and ignorance which I had never before been allowed to feel in my experience of yachts.

Davies awoke from another reverie over my portmanteau to say, cheerily: ‘I’ll just show you round down below first, and then we’ll stow things away and get to bed.’

He dived down a companion ladder, and I followed cautiously. A complex odour of paraffin, past cookery, tobacco, and tar saluted my nostrils.

‘Mind your head,’ said Davies, striking a match and lighting a candle, while I groped into the cabin. ‘You’d better sit down; it’s easier to look round.’

There might well have been sarcasm in this piece of advice, for I must have cut a ridiculous figure, peering awkwardly and suspiciously round, with shoulders and head bent to avoid the ceiling, which seemed in the half-light to be even nearer the floor than it was.

‘You see,’ were Davies’s reassuring words, ‘there’s plenty of room to sit upright’ (which was strictly true; but I am not very tall, and he is short). ‘Some people make a point of head-room, but I never mind much about it. That’s the centre-board case,’ he explained, as, in stretching my legs out, my knee came into contact with a sharp edge.

I had not seen this devilish obstruction, as it was hidden beneath the table, which indeed rested on it at one end. It appeared to be a long, low triangle, running lengthways with the boat and dividing the naturally limited space into two.

‘You see, she’s a flat-bottomed boat, drawing very little water without the plate; that’s why there’s so little headroom. For deep water you lower the plate; so, in one way or another, you can go practically anywhere.’

I was not nautical enough to draw any very definite conclusions from this, but what I did draw were not promising. The latter sentences were spoken from the forecastle, whither Davies had crept through a low sliding door, like that of a rabbit-hutch, and was already busy with a kettle over a stove which I made out to be a battered and disreputable twin brother of the No. 3 Rippingille.

‘It’ll be boiling soon,’ he remarked, ‘and we’ll have some grog.’

My eyes were used to the light now, and I took in the rest of my surroundings, which may be very simply described. Two long cushion-covered seats flanked the cabin, bounded at the after end by cupboards, one of which was cut low to form a sort of miniature sideboard, with glasses hung in a rack above it. The deck overhead was very low at each side but rose shoulder high for a space in the middle, where a ‘coach-house roof’ with a skylight gave additional cabin space. Just outside the door was a fold-up washing-stand. On either wall were long net-racks holding a medley of flags, charts, caps, cigar-boxes, hanks of yarn, and such like. Across the forward bulkhead was a bookshelf crammed to overflowing with volumes of all sizes, many upside down and some coverless. Below this were a pipe-rack, an aneroid, and a clock with a hearty tick. All the woodwork was painted white, and to a less jaundiced eye than mine the interior might have had an enticing look of snugness. Some Kodak prints were nailed roughly on the after bulkhead, and just over the doorway was the photograph of a young girl.

‘That’s my sister,’ said Davies, who had emerged and saw me looking at it. ‘Now, let’s get the stuff down.’ He ran up the ladder, and soon my portmanteau blackened the hatchway, and a great straining and squeezing began. ‘I was afraid it was too big,’ came down; ‘I’m sorry, but you’ll have to unpack on deck—we may be able to squash it down when it’s empty.’

Then the wearisome tail of packages began to form a fresh stack in the cramped space at my feet, and my back ached with stooping and moiling in unfamiliar places. Davies came down, and with unconcealed pride introduced me to the sleeping cabin (he called the other one ‘the saloon’). Another candle was lit and showed two short and narrow berths with blankets, but no sign of sheets; beneath these were drawers, one set of which Davies made me master of, evidently thinking them a princely allowance of space for my wardrobe.

‘You can chuck your things down the skylight on to your berth as you unpack them,’ he remarked. ‘By the way, I doubt if there’s room for all you’ve got. I suppose you couldn’t manage—’

‘No, I couldn’t,’ I said shortly.

The absurdity of argument struck me; two men, doubled up like monkeys, cannot argue.

‘If you’ll go out I shall be able to get out too,’ I added. He seemed miserable at this ghost of an altercation, but I pushed past, mounted the ladder, and in the expiring moonlight unstrapped that accursed portmanteau and, brimming over with irritation, groped among its contents, sorting some into the skylight with the same feeling that nothing mattered much now, and it was best to be done with it; repacking the rest with guilty stealth ere Davies should discover their character, and strapping up the whole again. Then I sat down upon my white elephant and shivered, for the chill of autumn was in the air. It suddenly struck me that if it had been raining things might have been worse still. The notion made me look round. The little cove was still as glass; stars above and stars below; a few white cottages glimmering at one point on the shore; in the west the lights of Flensburg; to the east the fiord broadening into unknown gloom. From Davies toiling below there were muffled sounds of wrenching, pushing, and hammering, punctuated occasionally by a heavy splash as something shot up from the hatchway and fell into the water.

How it came about I do not know. Whether it was something pathetic in the look I had last seen on his face—a look which I associated for no reason whatever with his bandaged hand; whether it was one of those instants of clear vision in which our separate selves are seen divided, the baser from the better, and I saw my silly egotism in contrast with a simple generous nature; whether it was an impalpable air of mystery which pervaded the whole enterprise and refused to be dissipated by its most mortifying and vulgarizing incidents—a mystery dimly connected with my companion’s obvious consciousness of having misled me into joining him; whether it was only the stars and the cool air rousing atrophied instincts of youth and spirits; probably, indeed, it was all these influences, cemented into strength by a ruthless sense of humour which whispered that I was in danger of making a mere commonplace fool of myself in spite of all my laboured calculations; but whatever it was, in a flash my mood changed. The crown of martyrdom disappeared, the wounded vanity healed; that precious fund of fictitious resignation drained away, but left no void. There was left a fashionable and dishevelled young man sitting in the dew and in the dark on a ridiculous portmanteau which dwarfed the yacht that was to carry it; a youth acutely sensible of ignorance in a strange and strenuous atmosphere; still feeling sore and victimized; but withal sanely ashamed and sanely resolved to enjoy himself. I anticipate; for though the change was radical its full growth was slow. But in any case it was here and now that it took its birth.

‘Grog’s ready!’ came from below. Bunching myself for the descent I found to my astonishment that all trace of litter had miraculously vanished, and a cosy neatness reigned. Glasses and lemons were on the table, and a fragrant smell of punch had deadened previous odours. I showed little emotion at these amenities, but enough to give intense relief to Davies, who delightedly showed me his devices for storage, praising the ‘roominess’ of his floating den. ‘There’s your stove, you see,’ he ended; ‘I’ve chucked the old one overboard.’ It was a weakness of his, I should say here, to rejoice in throwing things overboard on the flimsiest pretexts. I afterwards suspected that the new stove had not been ‘really necessary’ any more than the rigging-screws, but was an excuse for gratifying this curious taste.

We smoked and chatted for a little, and then came the problem of going to bed. After much bumping of knuckles and head, and many giddy writhings, I mastered it, and lay between the rough blankets. Davies, moving swiftly and deftly, was soon in his.

‘It’s quite comfortable, isn’t it?’ he said, as he blew out the light from where he lay, with an accuracy which must have been the fruit of long practice.

I felt prickly all over, and there was a damp patch on the pillow, which was soon explained by a heavy drop of moisture falling on my forehead.

‘I suppose the deck’s not leaking?’ I said, as mildly as I could. ‘I’m awfully sorry,’ said Davies, earnestly, tumbling out of his bunk. ‘It must be the heavy dew. I did a lot of caulking yesterday, but I suppose I missed that place. I’ll run up and square it with an oilskin.’

‘What’s wrong with your hand?’ I asked, sleepily, on his return, for gratitude reminded me of that bandage.

‘Nothing much; I strained it the other day,’ was the reply; and then the seemingly inconsequent remark: ‘I’m glad you brought that prismatic compass. It’s not really necessary, of course; but’ (muffled by blankets) ‘it may come in useful.’

Note from Boathouse:

It’s going to be a long winter and winter for most is a season to research and plan upcoming trips,  day dream about boating  and also read about boating.  Presented here is chapter one of  ‘The Riddle of the sands’  an excellent  pre WWI sailing adventure.  Every week Boathouse will present a chapter or two of  this public domain work and hopefully this will ease the passage of winter for our readers. If you are inpatient and can’t wait for each weeks installment you can read the entire book  at gutenburg.org If you would rather listen to the book here is a link to an audio version: Preface,    Chapter 1

If you would like to be notified when posts are added to this blog please send an email to  blogadmin@boathouse.ca   with the words ‘Subscribe to blog’ as the subject.

Have fun!  Post a comment, let  us know what you think.

Boathouse

Preface

A WORD about the origin and authorship of this book.

In October last (1902), my friend ‘Carruthers’ visited me in my chambers, and, under a provisional pledge of secrecy, told me frankly the whole of the adventure described in these pages. Till then I had only known as much as the rest of his friends, namely, that he had recently undergone experiences during a yachting cruise with a certain Mr ‘Davies’ which had left a deep mark on his character and habits.

At the end of his narrative—which, from its bearing on studies and speculations of my own, as well as from its intrinsic interest and racy delivery, made a very deep impression on me—he added that the important facts discovered in the course of the cruise had, without a moment’s delay, been communicated to the proper authorities, who, after some dignified incredulity, due in part, perhaps, to the pitiful inadequacy of their own secret service, had, he believed, made use of them, to avert a great national danger. I say ‘he believed’, for though it was beyond question that the danger was averted for the time, it was doubtful whether they had stirred a foot to combat it, the secret discovered being of such a nature that mere suspicion of it on this side was likely to destroy its efficacy.

There, however that may be, the matter rested for a while, as, for personal reasons which will be manifest to the reader, he and Mr ‘Davies’ expressly wished it to rest.

But events were driving them to reconsider their decision. These seemed to show that the information wrung with such peril and labour from the German Government, and transmitted so promptly to our own, had had none but the most transitory influence on our policy. Forced to the conclusion that the national security was really being neglected, the two friends now had a mind to make their story public; and it was about this that ‘Carruthers’ wished for my advice. The great drawback was that an Englishman, bearing an honoured name, was disgracefully implicated, and that unless infinite delicacy were used, innocent persons, and, especially, a young lady, would suffer pain and indignity, if his identity were known. Indeed, troublesome rumours, containing a grain of truth and a mass of falsehood, were already afloat.

After weighing both sides of the question, I gave my vote emphatically for publication. The personal drawbacks could, I thought, with tact be neutralized; while, from the public point of view, nothing but good could come from submitting the case to the common sense of the country at large. Publication, therefore, was agreed upon, and the next point was the form it should take. ‘Carruthers’, with the concurrence of Mr ‘Davies’, was for a bald exposition of the essential facts, stripped of their warm human envelope. I was strongly against this course, first, because it would aggravate instead of allaying the rumours that were current; secondly, because in such a form the narrative would not carry conviction, and would thus defeat its own end. The persons and the events were indissolubly connected; to evade, abridge, suppress, would be to convey to the reader the idea of a concocted hoax. Indeed, I took bolder ground still, urging that the story should be made as explicit and circumstantial as possible, frankly and honestly for the purpose of entertaining and so of attracting a wide circle of readers. Even anonymity was undesirable. Nevertheless, certain precautions were imperatively needed.

To cut the matter short, they asked for my assistance and received it at once. It was arranged that I should edit the book; that ‘Carruthers’ should give me his diary and recount to me in fuller detail and from his own point of view all the phases of the ‘quest’, as they used to call it; that Mr ‘Davies’ should meet me with his charts and maps and do the same; and that the whole story should be written, as from the mouth of the former, with its humours and errors, its light and its dark side, just as it happened; with the following few limitations. The year it belongs to is disguised; the names of persons are throughout fictitious; and, at my instance certain slight liberties have been taken to conceal the identity of the English characters.

Remember, also that these persons are living now in the midst of us, and if you find one topic touched on with a light and hesitating pen, do not blame the Editor, who, whether they are known or not, would rather say too little than say a word that might savour of impertinence.

E. C.

March 1903

I.

The Letter

I HAVE read of men who, when forced by their calling to live for long periods in utter solitude—save for a few black faces—have made it a rule to dress regularly for dinner in order to maintain their self-respect and prevent a relapse into barbarism. It was in some such spirit, with an added touch of self-consciousness, that, at seven o’clock in the evening of 23rd September in a recent year, I was making my evening toilet in my chambers in Pall Mall. I thought the date and the place justified the parallel; to my advantage even; for the obscure Burmese administrator might well be a man of blunted sensibilities and coarse fibre, and at least he is alone with nature, while I—well, a young man of condition and fashion, who knows the right people, belongs to the right clubs, has a safe, possibly a brilliant, future in the Foreign Office—may be excused for a sense of complacent martyrdom, when, with his keen appreciation of the social calendar, he is doomed to the outer solitude of London in September. I say ‘martyrdom’, but in fact the case was infinitely worse. For to feel oneself a martyr, as everybody knows, is a pleasurable thing, and the true tragedy of my position was that I had passed that stage. I had enjoyed what sweets it had to offer in ever dwindling degree since the middle of August, when ties were still fresh and sympathy abundant. I had been conscious that I was missed at Morven Lodge party. Lady Ashleigh herself had said so in the kindest possible manner, when she wrote to acknowledge the letter in which I explained, with an effectively austere reserve of language, that circumstances compelled me to remain at my office. ‘We know how busy you must be just now’, she wrote, ‘and I do hope you won’t overwork; we shall all miss you very much.’ Friend after friend ‘got away’ to sport and fresh air, with promises to write and chaffing condolences, and as each deserted the sinking ship, I took a grim delight in my misery, positively almost enjoying the first week or two after my world had been finally dissipated to the four bracing winds of heaven.

I began to take a spurious interest in the remaining five millions, and wrote several clever letters in a vein of cheap satire, indirectly suggesting the pathos of my position, but indicating that I was broad-minded enough to find intellectual entertainment in the scenes, persons, and habits of London in the dead season. I even did rational things at the instigation of others. For, though I should have liked total isolation best, I, of course, found that there was a sediment of unfortunates like myself, who, unlike me, viewed the situation in a most prosaic light. There were river excursions, and so on, after office-hours; but I dislike the river at any time for its noisy vulgarity, and most of all at this season. So I dropped out of the fresh air brigade and declined H—’s offer to share a riverside cottage and run up to town in the mornings. I did spend one or two week-ends with the Catesbys in Kent; but I was not inconsolable when they let their house and went abroad, for I found that such partial compensations did not suit me. Neither did the taste for satirical observation last. A passing thirst, which I dare say many have shared, for adventures of the fascinating kind described in the New Arabian Nights led me on a few evenings into some shady haunts in Soho and farther eastward; but was finally quenched one sultry Saturday night after an hour’s immersion in the reeking atmosphere of a low music-hall in Ratcliffe Highway, where I sat next a portly female who suffered from the heat, and at frequent intervals refreshed herself and an infant from a bottle of tepid stout.

By the first week in September I had abandoned all palliatives, and had settled into the dismal but dignified routine of office, club, and chambers. And now came the most cruel trial, for the hideous truth dawned on me that the world I found so indispensable could after all dispense with me. It was all very well for Lady Ashleigh to assure me that I was deeply missed; but a letter from F—, who was one of the party, written ‘in haste, just starting to shoot’, and coming as a tardy reply to one of my cleverest, made me aware that the house party had suffered little from my absence, and that few sighs were wasted on me, even in the quarter which I had assumed to have been discreetly alluded to by the underlined all in Lady Ashleigh’s ‘we shall all miss you’. A thrust which smarted more, if it bit less deeply, came from my cousin Nesta, who wrote: ‘It’s horrid for you to have to be baking in London now; but, after all, it must be a great pleasure to you’ (malicious little wretch!) ‘to have such interesting and important work to do.’ Here was a nemesis for an innocent illusion I had been accustomed to foster in the minds of my relations and acquaintances, especially in the breasts of the trustful and admiring maidens whom I had taken down to dinner in the last two seasons; a fiction which I had almost reached the point of believing in myself. For the plain truth was that my work was neither interesting nor important, and consisted chiefly at present in smoking cigarettes, in saying that Mr So-and-So was away and would be back about 1st October, in being absent for lunch from twelve till two, and in my spare moments making précis of—let us say—the less confidential consular reports, and squeezing the results into cast-iron schedules. The reason of my detention was not a cloud on the international horizon—though I may say in passing that there was such a cloud—but a caprice on the part of a remote and mighty personage, the effect of which, ramifying downwards, had dislocated the carefully-laid holiday plans of the humble juniors, and in my own small case had upset the arrangement between myself and K—, who positively liked the dog-days in Whitehall.

Only one thing was needed to fill my cup of bitterness, and this it was that specially occupied me as I dressed for dinner this evening. Two days more in this dead and fermenting city and my slavery would be at an end. Yes, but—irony of ironies!—I had nowhere to go to! The Morven Lodge party was breaking up. A dreadful rumour as to an engagement which had been one of its accursed fruits tormented me with the fresh certainty that I had not been missed, and bred in me that most desolating brand of cynicism which is produced by defeat through insignificance. Invitations for a later date, which I had declined in July with a gratifying sense of being much in request, now rose up spectrally to taunt me. There was at least one which I could easily have revived, but neither in this case nor in any other had there been any renewal of pressure, and there are moments when the difference between proposing oneself and surrendering as a prize to one of several eagerly competing hostesses seems too crushing to be contemplated. My own people were at Aix for my father’s gout; to join them was a pis aller whose banality was repellent. Besides, they would be leaving soon for our home in Yorkshire, and I was not a prophet in my own country. In short, I was at the extremity of depression.

The usual preliminary scuffle on the staircase prepared me for the knock and entry of Withers. (One of the things which had for some time ceased to amuse me was the laxity of manners, proper to the season, among the servants of the big block of chambers where I lived.) Withers demurely handed me a letter bearing a German post-mark and marked ‘Urgent’. I had just finished dressing, and was collecting my money and gloves. A momentary thrill of curiosity broke in upon my depression as I sat down to open it. A corner on the reverse of the envelope bore the blotted legend: ‘Very sorry, but there’s one other thing—a pair of rigging screws from Carey and Neilson’s, size 1-3/8, galvanized.’ Here it is:

Yacht ‘Dulcibella,’

Flensburg, Schleswig-Holstein, 21st Sept.

DEAR CARRUTHERS,—I daresay you’ll be surprised at hearing from me, as it’s ages since we met. It is more than likely, too, that what I’m going to suggest won’t suit you, for I know nothing of your plans, and if you’re in town at all you’re probably just getting into harness again and can’t get away. So I merely write on the offchance to ask if you would care to come out here and join me in a little yachting, and, I hope, duck shooting. I know you’re keen on shooting, and I sort of remember that you have done some yachting too, though I rather forget about that. This part of the Baltic—the Schleswig fiords—is a splendid cruising-ground—A 1 scenery—and there ought to be plenty of duck about soon, if it gets cold enough. I came out here via Holland and the Frisian Islands, starting early in August. My pals have had to leave me, and I’m badly in want of another, as I don’t want to lay up yet for a bit. I needn’t say how glad I should be if you could come. If you can, send me a wire to the P.O. here. Flushing and on by Hamburg will be your best route, I think. I’m having a few repairs done here, and will have them ready sharp by the time your train arrives. Bring your gun and a good lot of No. 4’s; and would you mind calling at Lancaster’s and asking for mine, and bringing it too? Bring some oilskins. Better get the eleven-shilling sort, jacket and trousers—not the ‘yachting’ brand; and if you paint bring your gear. I know you speak German like a native, and that will be a great help. Forgive this hail of directions, but I’ve a sort of feeling that I’m in luck and that you’ll come. Anyway, I hope you and the F.O. both flourish. Good-bye.

Yours ever, ARTHUR H. DAVIES.

Would you mind bringing me out a prismatic compass, and a pound of Raven Mixture.

This letter marked an epoch for me; but I little suspected the fact as I crumpled it into my pocket and started languidly on the voie douloureuse which I nightly followed to the club. In Pall Mall there were no dignified greetings to be exchanged now with well-groomed acquaintances. The only people to be seen were some late stragglers from the park, with a perambulator and some hot and dusty children lagging fretfully behind; some rustic sightseers draining the last dregs of the daylight in an effort to make out from their guide-books which of these reverend piles was which; a policeman and a builder’s cart. Of course the club was a strange one, both of my own being closed for cleaning, a coincidence expressly planned by Providence for my inconvenience. The club which you are ‘permitted to make use of’ on these occasions always irritates with its strangeness and discomfort. The few occupants seem odd and oddly dressed, and you wonder how they got there. The particular weekly that you want is not taken in; the dinner is execrable, and the ventilation a farce. All these evils oppressed me to-night. And yet I was puzzled to find that somewhere within me there was a faint lightening of the spirits; causeless, as far as I could discover. It could not be Davies’s letter. Yachting in the Baltic at the end of September! The very idea made one shudder. Cowes, with a pleasant party and hotels handy, was all very well. An August cruise on a steam yacht in French waters or the Highlands was all very well; but what kind of a yacht was this? It must be of a certain size to have got so far, but I thought I remembered enough of Davies’s means to know that he had no money to waste on luxuries. That brought me to the man himself. I had known him at Oxford—not as one of my immediate set; but we were a sociable college, and I had seen a good deal of him, liking him for his physical energy combined with a certain simplicity and modesty, though, indeed, he had nothing to be conceited about; liked him, in fact, in the way that at that receptive period one likes many men whom one never keeps up with later. We had both gone down in the same year—three years ago now. I had gone to France and Germany for two years to learn the languages; he had failed for the Indian Civil, and then had gone into a solicitor’s office. I had only seen him since at rare intervals, though I admitted to myself that for his part he had clung loyally to what ties of friendship there were between us. But the truth was that we had drifted apart from the nature of things. I had passed brilliantly into my profession, and on the few occasions I had met him since I made my triumphant début in society I had found nothing left in common between us. He seemed to know none of my friends, he dressed indifferently, and I thought him dull. I had always connected him with boats and the sea, but never with yachting, in the sense that I understood it. In college days he had nearly persuaded me into sharing a squalid week in some open boat he had picked up, and was going to sail among some dreary mud-flats somewhere on the east coast. There was nothing else, and the funereal function of dinner drifted on. But I found myself remembering at the entrée that I had recently heard, at second or third hand, of something else about him—exactly what I could not recall. When I reached the savoury, I had concluded, so far as I had centred my mind on it at all, that the whole thing was a culminating irony, as, indeed, was the savoury in its way. After the wreck of my pleasant plans and the fiasco of my martyrdom, to be asked as consolation to spend October freezing in the Baltic with an eccentric nonentity who bored me! Yet, as I smoked my cigar in the ghastly splendour of the empty smoking-room, the subject came up again. Was there anything in it? There were certainly no alternatives at hand. And to bury myself in the Baltic at this unearthly time of year had at least a smack of tragic thoroughness about it.

I pulled out the letter again, and ran down its impulsive staccato sentences, affecting to ignore what a gust of fresh air, high spirits, and good fellowship this flimsy bit of paper wafted into the jaded club-room. On reperusal, it was full of evil presage— ‘A 1 scenery’—but what of equinoctial storms and October fogs? Every sane yachtsman was paying off his crew now. ‘There ought to be duck’—vague, very vague. ‘If it gets cold enough’ . . . cold and yachting seemed to be a gratuitously monstrous union. His pals had left him; why? ‘Not the “yachting” brand’; and why not? As to the size, comfort, and crew of the yacht—all cheerfully ignored; so many maddening blanks. And, by the way, why in Heaven’s name ‘a prismatic compass’? I fingered a few magazines, played a game of fifty with a friendly old fogey, too importunate to be worth the labour of resisting, and went back to my chambers to bed, ignorant that a friendly Providence had come to my rescue; and, indeed, rather resenting any clumsy attempt at such friendliness.