“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 steer4 in that direction.” He pointed5 vaguely6 at a blur7 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 Lodge8, of heather tea-parties after glorious slaughters9 of grouse10, of salmon11 leaping in amber12 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 deft13 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 prospect14 of having to “clear out”—who knows whither?—at midnight. But Davies’s sang froid was infectious, I suppose, and the little den3 below, bright-lit and soon fragrant15 with cookery, pleaded insistently16 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 mettle17 for this, his first dinner to his guest; for he produced with stealthy pride, not from the dishonoured18 grave of the beer, but from some more hallowed recess19, a bottle of German champagne20, 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 sagely21 opined. But when we were finally settled with cigars, a variety of which, culled22 from many ports—German, Dutch, and Belgian—Davies kept in a battered23 old box in the net-rack, the promised talk hung fire.
“I’m no good at description,” he complained; “and there’s really very little to tell. We left Dover—Morrison and I—on the 6th of August; made a good passage to Ostend.”
“You had some fun there, I suppose?” I put in, thinking of—well, of Ostend in August.
“Fun! A filthy24 hole I call it; we had to stop a couple of days, as we fouled25 a buoy26 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, decided27 to go through Holland by canal and river. It was good fun enough navigating28 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 stinking29 canals. Never a peaceful night like this—always moored30 by some quay31 or tow-path, with people passing and boys. Heavens! shall I ever forget those boys! A perfect murrain of them infests32 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 smack33 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 swarms34 of tugs35 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 rattling36 three-reef sail to the Zuyder Zee.”
He reached up to the bookshelf for what looked like an ancient ledger37, 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 frayed38 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 eastward39. You see, the first two of them, Texel and Vlieland, shut in the Zuyder Zee, and the rest border the Dutch and German coasts.” [See Map A]
“What’s all this?” I said, running my finger over some dotted patches which covered much of the chart. The latter was becoming unintelligible40; clean-cut coasts and neat regiments41 of little figures had given place to a confusion of winding42 and intersecting lines and bald spaces.
“All sand,” said Davies, enthusiastically. “You can’t think what a splendid sailing-ground it is. You can explore for days without seeing a soul. These are the channels, you see; they’re very badly charted. This chart was almost useless, but it made it all the more fun. No towns or harbours, just a village or two on the islands, if you wanted stores.”
“They look rather desolate,” I said.
“Desolate’s no word for it; they’re really only gigantic sandbanks themselves.”
“Wasn’t all this rather dangerous?” I asked.
“Not a bit; you see, that’s where our shallow draught43 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, abruptly44:
“Anyway, I don’t go in for looks.”
He had leaned back, and I detected traces of incipient45 absentmindedness. His cigar, which he had lately been lighting46 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 graphic47 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 berth48 under the lee of a bank, but the tides run strong in the channels, and if there’s a gale49 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 ashore50, 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 drowsily51 to some faint send of the sea, with an occasional short jump, like the start of an uneasy dreamer.
“What does it look like?” I called from my sofa. I had to repeat the question.
“Rain coming,” said Davies, returning, “and possibly wind; but we’re safe enough here. It’s coming from the sou’-west; shall we turn in?”
“We haven’t finished your cruise yet,” I said. “Light a pipe and tell me the rest.”
“All right,” he agreed, with more readiness than I expected.
“After Terschelling—here it is, the third island from the west—I pottered along eastward.” [See Map A]
“I?”
“Oh! I forgot. Morrison had to leave me there. I missed him badly, but I hoped at that time to get —— to join me. I could manage all right single-handed, but for that sort of work two are much better than one. The plate’s beastly heavy; in fact, I had to give up using it for fear of a smash.”
“After Terschelling?” I jogged his memory.
“Well, I followed the Dutch islands, Ameland, Schiermonnikoog, Rottum (outlandish names, aren’t they?), sometimes outside them, sometimes inside. It was a bit lonely, but grand sport and very interesting. The charts were shocking, but I worried out most of the channels.”
“I suppose those waters are only used by small local craft?” I put in; “that would account for inaccuracies.” Did Davies think that Admiralties had time to waste on smoothing the road for such quixotic little craft as his, in all its inquisitive52 ramblings? But he fired up.
“That’s all very well,” he said, “but think what folly53 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 dismal54 cavity in the coast, sown with names suggestive of mud, and wrecks55, and dreariness56.
“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 Knight57 did in the Falcon58. 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 vivacity59, and briskly rolled up the chart. The reluctance60 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 mere61 disinclination to spin nautical62 yarns63 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 perilous64 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 tempted65 to persist a little.
“I slept the whole afternoon,” I said; “and, to tell the truth, I rather dread66 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 spoke67 low, bending down to sweep up some cigar ashes on the floor.
“Direct?” I insinuated68. “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 caulk69 that seam over your bunk70, and it’s going to rain. I must do it now. You turn in.”
He disappeared. My curiosity, never very consuming, was banished71 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 immediate72 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 reigned73, “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 inclement74 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 loathe75 it,” I answered, promptly76, 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!”
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1
stationary
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| adj.固定的，静止不动的 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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den
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| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
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steer
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| vt.驾驶，为…操舵；引导；vi.驾驶 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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blur
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| n.模糊不清的事物；vt.使模糊，使看不清楚 | |
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lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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slaughters
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| v.屠杀，杀戮，屠宰( slaughter的第三人称单数 ) | |
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grouse
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| n.松鸡；v.牢骚，诉苦 | |
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salmon
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| n.鲑，大马哈鱼，橙红色的 | |
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amber
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| n.琥珀；琥珀色；adj.琥珀制的 | |
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deft
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| adj.灵巧的，熟练的（a deft hand 能手） | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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fragrant
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| adj.芬香的，馥郁的，愉快的 | |
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insistently
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| ad.坚持地 | |
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mettle
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| n.勇气，精神 | |
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dishonoured
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| a.不光彩的，不名誉的 | |
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recess
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| n.短期休息，壁凹（墙上装架子，柜子等凹处） | |
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champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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sagely
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| adv. 贤能地，贤明地 | |
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culled
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| v.挑选，剔除( cull的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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fouled
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| v.使污秽( foul的过去式和过去分词 )；弄脏；击球出界；（通常用废物）弄脏 | |
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buoy
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| n.浮标；救生圈；v.支持，鼓励 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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navigating
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| v.给（船舶、飞机等）引航，导航( navigate的现在分词 )；（从海上、空中等）横越；横渡；飞跃 | |
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stinking
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| adj.臭的，烂醉的，讨厌的v.散发出恶臭( stink的现在分词 )；发臭味；名声臭；糟透 | |
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moored
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| adj. 系泊的 动词moor的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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quay
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| n.码头，靠岸处 | |
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infests
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| n.害虫、野兽大批出没于( infest的名词复数 )；遍布于v.害虫、野兽大批出没于( infest的第三人称单数 )；遍布于 | |
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smack
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| vt.拍，打，掴；咂嘴；vi.含有…意味；n.拍 | |
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swarms
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| 蜂群，一大群( swarm的名词复数 ) | |
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tugs
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| n.猛拉( tug的名词复数 )；猛拖；拖船v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的第三人称单数 ) | |
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rattling
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| adj. 格格作响的, 活泼的, 很好的 adv. 极其, 很, 非常 动词rattle的现在分词 | |
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ledger
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| n.总帐，分类帐；帐簿 | |
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frayed
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| adj.磨损的v.（使布、绳等）磨损，磨破( fray的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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eastward
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| adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部 | |
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unintelligible
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| adj.无法了解的，难解的，莫明其妙的 | |
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regiments
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| （军队的）团( regiment的名词复数 )； 大量的人或物 | |
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winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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43
draught
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| n.拉，牵引，拖；一网（饮，吸，阵)；顿服药量，通风；v.起草，设计 | |
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44
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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incipient
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| adj.起初的，发端的，初期的 | |
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46
lighting
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| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
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47
graphic
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| adj.生动的，形象的，绘画的，文字的，图表的 | |
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berth
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| n.卧铺，停泊地，锚位；v.使停泊 | |
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49
gale
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| n.大风，强风，一阵闹声（尤指笑声等） | |
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50
ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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51
drowsily
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| adv.睡地，懒洋洋地，昏昏欲睡地 | |
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52
inquisitive
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| adj.求知欲强的，好奇的，好寻根究底的 | |
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53
folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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55
wrecks
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| n.沉船( wreck的名词复数 )；（事故中）遭严重毁坏的汽车（或飞机等）；（身体或精神上）受到严重损伤的人；状况非常糟糕的车辆（或建筑物等）v.毁坏[毁灭]某物( wreck的第三人称单数 )；使（船舶）失事，使遇难，使下沉 | |
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56
dreariness
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| 沉寂，可怕，凄凉 | |
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57
knight
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| n.骑士，武士；爵士 | |
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falcon
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| n.隼，猎鹰 | |
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59
vivacity
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| n.快活，活泼，精神充沛 | |
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60
reluctance
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| n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿 | |
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61
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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62
nautical
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| adj.海上的，航海的，船员的 | |
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63
yarns
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| n.纱( yarn的名词复数 )；纱线；奇闻漫谈；旅行轶事 | |
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64
perilous
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| adj.危险的，冒险的 | |
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65
tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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66
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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67
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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68
insinuated
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| v.暗示( insinuate的过去式和过去分词 )；巧妙或迂回地潜入；（使）缓慢进入；慢慢伸入 | |
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69
caulk
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| v.堵缝 | |
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70
bunk
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| n.(车、船等倚壁而设的)铺位；废话 | |
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71
banished
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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72
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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73
reigned
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| vi.当政，统治（reign的过去式形式） | |
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74
inclement
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| adj.严酷的，严厉的，恶劣的 | |
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75
loathe
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| v.厌恶，嫌恶 | |
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76
promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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