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George MacDonald - "The Princess and the Goblin"

Upton Sinclair - "Damaged Goods"

Ellis Parker Butler - "The Water Goats and Other Troubles"

Robert Louis Stevenson - "Songs of Travel and Other Verses"

Riddle of the Sands

E >> Erskine Childers >> Riddle of the Sands




'It's not a mistake,' said Davies, half to himself. 'But _did_ he
send her? He'd have sent one of his men. He can't be on board at
all.'

This was a new light.

'What do you mean?' I asked.

'He must have left the yacht when he got to Hamburg; some other
devil's work, I suppose. She's being sailed back now, and passing
here--'

'Oh, I see! It's a private supplementary inquiry.'

'That's a long name to call it.'

'Would the girl sail back alone with the crew?'

'She's used to the sea--and perhaps she isn't alone. There was that
stepmother--But it doesn't make a ha'porth of difference to our
plans: we'll start on the ebb to-morrow morning.'

We were busier than usual that night, reckoning stores, tidying
lockers, and securing movables. 'We must economize,' said Davies, for
all the world as though we were castaways on a raft. 'It's a wretched
thing to have to land somewhere to buy oil,' was a favourite
observation of his.

Before getting to sleep I was made to recognize a new factor in the
conditions of navigation, now that the tideless Baltic was left
behind us. A strong current was sluicing past our sides, and at the
eleventh hour I was turned out, clad in pyjamas and oilskins (a
horrible combination), to assist in running out a kedge or spare
anchor.

'What's kedging-off?' I asked, when we were tucked up again. 'Oh,
it's when you run aground; you have to--but you'll soon learn all
about it.' I steeled my heart for the morrow.

So behold us, then, at eight o'clock on 5th October, standing down
the river towards the field of our first labours. It is fifteen miles
to the mouth; drab, dreary miles like the dullest reaches of the
lower Thames; but scenery was of no concern to us, and a
south-westerly breeze blowing out of a grey sky kept us constantly on
the verge of reefing. The tide as it gathered strength swept us down
with a force attested by the speed with which buoys came in sight,
nodded above us and passed, each boiling in its eddy of dirty foam. I
scarcely noticed at first--so calm was the water, and so regular were
the buoys, like milestones along a road--that the northern line of
coast was rapidly receding and that the 'river' was coming to be but
a belt of deep water skirting a vast estuary, three--seven--ten miles
broad, till it merged in open sea.

'Why, we're at sea!' I suddenly exclaimed, 'after an hour's sailing!'

'Just discovered that?' said Davies, laughing.

'You said it was fifteen miles,' I complained.

'So it is, till we reach this coast at Cuxhaven; but I suppose you
may say we're at sea; of course that's all sand over there to
starboard. Look! some of it's showing already.'

He pointed into the north. Looking more attentively I noticed that
outside the line of buoys patches of the surface heaved and worked;
in one or two places streaks and circles of white were forming; in
the midst of one such circle a sleek mauve hump had risen, like the
back of a sleeping whale. I saw that an old spell was enthralling
Davies as his eye travelled away to the blank horizon. He scanned it
all with a critical eagerness, too, as one who looks for a new
meaning in an old friend's face. Something of his zest was
communicated to me, and stilled the shuddering thrill that had seized
me. The protecting land was still a comforting neighbour; but our
severance with it came quickly. The tide whirled us down, and our
straining canvas aiding it, we were soon off Cuxhaven, which crouched
so low behind its mighty dyke, that of some of its houses only the
chimneys were visible. Then, a mile or so on, the shore sharpened to
a point like a claw, where the innocent dyke became a long, low fort,
with some great guns peeping over; then of a sudden it ceased,
retreating into the far south in a dim perspective of groins and
dunes.

We spun out into the open and leant heavily over to the now
unobstructed wind. The yacht rose and sank to a little swell, but my
first impression was one of wonder at the calmness of the sea, for
the wind blew fresh and free from horizon to horizon.

'Why, it's all sand _there_ now, and we're under the lee of it,' said
Davies, with an enthusiastic sweep of his hand over the sea on our
left, or port, hand. 'That's our hunting ground.'

'What are we going to do?' I inquired.

'Pick up Sticker's Gat,' was the reply. 'It ought to be near Buoy K.'

A red buoy with a huge K on it soon came into view. Davies peered
over to port.

'Just pull up the centre-board, will you?' he remarked abstractedly,
adding, 'and hand me up the glasses as you re down there.'

'Never mind the glasses. I've got it now; come to the main-sheet,'
was the next remark.

He put down the helm and headed the yacht straight for the troubled
and discoloured expanse which covered the submerged sands. A
'sleeping whale', with a light surf splashing on it, was right in our
path.

'Stand by the lead, will you?' said Davies, politely. 'I'll manage
the sheets, it's a dead beat in. Ready about!'

The wind was in our teeth now, and for a crowded half-hour we wormed
ourselves forward by ever-shortening tacks into the sinuous recesses
of a channel which threaded the shallows westward. I knelt in a
tangle of line, and, under the hazy impression that something very
critical was going on, plied the lead furiously, bumping and
splashing myself, and shouting out the depths, which lessened
steadily, with a great sense of the importance of my function. Davies
never seemed to listen, but tacked on imperturbably, juggling with
the tiller, the sheets, and the chart, in a way that made one giddy
to look at. For all our zeal we seemed to be making very slow
progress.

'It's no use, tide's too strong: we must chance it,' he said at last.

'Chance what?' I wondered to myself. Our tacks suddenly began to grow
longer, and the depths, which I registered, shallower. All went well
for some time though, and we made better progress. Then came a longer
reach than usual.

'Two and a half--two--one and a half--one--only five feet,' I gasped,
reproachfully. The water was growing thick and frothy.

'It doesn't matter if we do,' said Davies, thinking aloud. 'There's
an eddy here, and it's a pity to waste it--ready about! Back the
jib!'

But it was too late. The yacht answered but faintly to the helm,
stopped, and heeled heavily over, wallowing and grinding. Davies had
the mainsail down in a twinkling; it half smothered me as I crouched
on the lee-side among my tangled skeins of line, scared and helpless.
I crawled out from the folds, and saw him standing by the mast in a
reverie.

'It's not much use,' he said, 'on a falling tide, but we'll try
kedging-off. Pay that warp out while I run out the kedge.'

Like lightning he had cast off the dinghy's painter, tumbled the
kedge-anchor and himself into the dinghy, pulled out fifty yards into
the deeper water, and heaved out the anchor.

'Now haul,' he shouted.

I hauled, beginning to see what kedging-off meant.

'Steady on! Don't sweat yourself,' said Davies, jumping aboard again.

'It's coming,' I spluttered, triumphantly.

'The warp is, the yacht isn't; you're dragging the anchor home. Never
mind, she'll lie well here. Let's have lunch.'

The yacht was motionless, and the water round her visibly lower.
Petulant waves slapped against her sides, but, scattered as my senses
were, I realized that there was no vestige of danger. Round us the
whole face of the waters was changing from moment to moment,
whitening in some places, yellowing in others, where breadths of sand
began to be exposed. Close on our right the channel we had left began
to look like a turbid little river; and I understood why our progress
had been so slow when I saw its current racing back to meet the Elbe.
Davies was already below, laying out a more than usually elaborate
lunch, in high content of mind.

'Lies quiet, doesn't she?' he remarked. 'If you _do_ want a sit-down
lunch, there's nothing like running aground for it. And, anyhow,
we're as handy for work here as anywhere else. You'll see.'

Like most landsmen I had a wholesome prejudice against running
aground', so that my mentor's turn for breezy paradox was at first
rather exasperating. After lunch the large-scale chart of the
estuaries was brought down, and we pored over it together, mapping
out work for the next few days. There is no need to tire the general
reader with its intricacies, nor is there space to reproduce it for
the benefit of the instructed reader. For both classes the general
map should be sufficient, taken with the large-scale fragment _[See
Chart A]_ which gives a fair example of the region in detail. It will
be seen that the three broad fairways of the Jade, Weser, and Elbe
split up the sands into two main groups. The westernmost of these is
symmetrical in outline, an acute-angled triangle, very like a sharp
steel-shod pike, if you imagine the peninsula from which it springs
to be the wooden haft. The other is a huge congeries of banks, its
base resting on the Hanover coast, two of its sides tolerably clean
and even, and the third, that facing the north-west, ribboned and
lacerated by the fury of the sea, which has eaten out deep cavities
and struck hungry tentacles far into the interior. The whole
resembles an inverted E, or, better still, a rude fork, on whose
three deadly prongs, the Scharhorn Reef, the Knecht Sand, and the
Tegeler Flat, as on the no less deadly point of the pike, many a good
ship splinters herself in northerly gales. Following this simile, the
Hohenhörn bank, where Davies was wrecked, is one of those that lie
between the upper and middle prongs.

Our business was to explore the Pike and the Fork and the channels
which ramify through them. I use the general word 'channel', but in
fact they differ widely in character, and are called in German by
various names: Balje, Gat, Loch, Diep. Rinne. For my purpose I need
only divide them into two sorts -those which have water in them at
all states of the tide, and those which have not, which dry off, that
is, either wholly or partly at low-tide.

Davies explained that the latter would take most learning, and were
to be our chief concern, because they were the 'through-routes'--the
connecting links between the estuaries. You can always detect them on
the chart by rows of little Y-shaped strokes denoting 'booms', that
is to say, poles or saplings fixed in the sand to mark the passage.
The strokes, of course, are only conventional signs, and do not
correspond in the least to individual 'booms', which are far too
numerous and complex to be indicated accurately on a chart, even of
the largest scale. The same applies to the course of the channels
themselves, whose minor meanderings cannot be reproduced.

It was on the edge of one of these tidal swatchways that the yacht
was now lying. It is called Sticker's Gat, and you cannot miss it
_[See Chart A]_ if you carry your eye westward along our course from
Cuxhaven. It was, so Davies told me, the last and most intricate
stage of the 'short cut' which the Medusa had taken on that memorable
day--a stage he himself had never reached. Discussion ended, we went
on deck, Davies arming himself with a notebook, binoculars, and the
prismatic compass, whose use--to map the angles of the channels--was
at last apparent. This is what I saw when we emerged.



12 My Initiation

THE yacht lay with a very slight heel (thanks to a pair of small
bilge-keels on her bottom) in a sort of trough she had dug for
herself, so that she was still ringed with a few inches of water, as
it were with a moat.

For miles in every direction lay a desert of sand. To the north it
touched the horizon, and was only broken by the blue dot of Neuerk
Island and its lighthouse. To the east it seemed also to stretch to
infinity, but the smoke of a steamer showed where it was pierced by
the stream of the Elbe. To the south it ran up to the pencil-line of
the Hanover shore. Only to the west was its outline broken by any
vestiges of the sea it had risen from. There it was astir with
crawling white filaments, knotted confusedly at one spot in the
north-west, whence came a sibilant murmur like the hissing of many
snakes. Desert as I call it, it was not entirely featureless. Its
colour varied from light fawn, where the highest levels had dried in
the wind, to brown or deep violet, where it was still wet, and
slate-grey where patches of mud soiled its clean bosom. Here and
there were pools of water, smitten into ripples by the impotent wind;
here and there it was speckled by shells and seaweed. And close to
us, beginning to bend away towards that hissing knot in the
north-west, wound our poor little channel, mercilessly exposed as a
stagnant, muddy ditch with scarcely a foot of water, not deep enough
to hide our small kedge-anchor, which perked up one fluke in impudent
mockery. The dull, hard sky, the wind moaning in the rigging as
though crying in despair for a prey that had escaped it, made the
scene inexpressibly forlorn.

Davies scanned it with gusto for a moment, climbed to a point of
vantage on the boom, and swept his glasses to and fro along the
course of the channel.

'Fairly well boomed,' he said, meditatively, 'but one or two are very
much out. By Jove! that's a tricky bend there.' He took a bearing
with the compass, made a note or two, and sprang with a vigorous leap
down on to the sand.

This, I may say, was the only way of 'going ashore' that he really
liked. We raced off as fast as our clumsy sea-boots would let us, and
followed up the course of our channel to the west, reconnoitring the
road we should have to follow when the tide rose.

'The only way to learn a place like this,' he shouted, 'is to see it
at low water. The banks are dry then, and the channels are plain.
Look at that boom'--he stopped and pointed contemptuously--'it's all
out of place. I suppose the channel's shifted there. It's just at an
important bend too. If you took it as a guide when the water was up
you'd run aground.'

'Which would be very useful,' I observed.

'Oh, hang it!' he laughed, 'we're exploring. I want to be able to run
through this channel without a mistake. We will, next time.' He
stopped, and plied compass and notebook. Then we raced on till the
next halt was called.

'Look,' he said, the channel's getting deeper, it was nearly dry a
moment ago; see the current in it now? That's the flood tide coming
up--from the _west,_ mind you; that is, from the Weser side. That
shows we're past the watershed.'

'Watershed?' I repeated, blankly.

'Yes, that's what I call it. You see, a big sand such as this is like
a range of hills dividing two plains, it's never dead flat though it
looks it; there's always one point, one ridge, rather, where it's
highest. Now a channel cutting right through the sand is, of course,
always at its shallowest when it's crossing this ridge; at low water
it's generally dry there, and it gradually deepens as it gets nearer
to the sea on either side. Now at high tide, when the whole sand is
covered, the water can travel where it likes; but directly the ebb
sets in the water falls away on either side the ridge and the channel
becomes two rivers flowing in opposite directions _from_ the centre,
or watershed, as I call it. So, also, when the ebb has run out and
the flood begins, the channel is fed by two currents flowing to the
centre and meeting in the middle. Here the Elbe and the Weser are our
two feeders. Now this current here is going eastwards; we know by the
time of day that the tide's rising, _therefore_ the watershed is
between us and the yacht.'

'Why is it so important to know that?'

'Because these currents are strong, and you want to know when you'll
lose a fair one and strike a foul one. Besides, the ridge is the
critical point when you're crossing on a falling tide, and you want
to know when you're past it.'

We pushed on till our path was barred by a big lagoon. It looked far
more imposing than the channel; but Davies, after a rapid scrutiny,
treated it to a grunt of contempt.

'It's a _cul de sac_,' he said. ' See that hump of sand it's making
for, beyond?'

'It's boomed,' I remonstrated, pointing to a decrepit stem drooping
over the bank, and shaking a palsied finger at the imposture.

'Yes, that's just where one goes wrong, it's an old cut that's silted
up. That boom's a fraud; there's no time to go farther, the flood's
making fast. I'll just take bearings of what we can see.'

The false lagoon was the first of several that began to be visible in
the west, swelling and joining hands over the ribs of sand that
divided them. All the time the distant hissing grew nearer and
louder, and a deep, thunderous note began to sound beneath it. We
turned our backs to the wind and hastened back towards the
Dulcibella, the stream in our channel hurrying and rising alongside
of us.

'There's just time to do the other side,' said Davies, when we
reached her, and I was congratulating myself on having regained our
base without finding our communications cut. And away we scurried in
the direction we had come that morning, splashing through pools and
jumping the infant runnels that were stealing out through rifts from
the mother-channel as the tide rose. Our observations completed, back
we travelled, making a wide circuit over higher ground to avoid the
encroaching flood, and wading shin-deep in the final approach to the
yacht.

As I scrambled thankfully aboard, I seemed to hear a far-off voice
saying, in languid depreciation of yachting, that it did not give one
enough exercise. It was mine, centuries ago, in another life. From
east and west two sheets of water had overspread the desert, each
pushing out tongues of surf that met and fused.

I waited on deck and watched the death-throes of the suffocating
sands under the relentless onset of the sea. The last strongholds
were battered, stormed, and overwhelmed; the tumult of sounds sank
and steadied, and the sea swept victoriously over the whole expanse.
The Dulcibella, hitherto contemptuously inert, began to wake and
tremble under the buffetings she received. Then, with an effort, she
jerked herself on to an even keel and bumped and strained fretfully,
impatient to vanquish this insolent invader and make him a slave for
her own ends. Soon her warp tightened and her nose swung slowly
round; only her stern bumped now, and that with decreasing force.
Suddenly she was free and drifting broadside to the wind till the
anchor checked her and she brought up to leeward of it, rocking
easily and triumphantly. Good-humoured little person! At heart she
was friends alike with sand and sea. It was only when the old love
and the new love were in mortal combat for her favours, and she was
mauled in the _fracas_, that her temper rose in revolt.

We swallowed a hasty cup of tea, ran up the sails, and started off
west again. Once across the 'watershed' we met a strong current, but
the trend of the passage was now more to the north-west, so that we
could hold our course without tacking, and consequently could stem
the tide. 'Give her just a foot of the centre-plate,' said Davies.
'We know the way here, and she'll make less leeway; but we shall
generally have to do without it always on a falling tide. If you run
aground with the plate down you deserve to be drowned.' I now saw how
valuable our walk had been. The booms were on our right; but they
were broken reeds, giving no hint as to the breadth of the channel. A
few had lost their tops, and were being engulfed altogether by the
rising water. When we came to the point where they ceased, and the
false lagoon had lain, I should have felt utterly lost. We had
crossed the high and relatively level sands which form the base of
the Fork, and were entering the labyrinth of detached banks which
obstruct the funnel-shaped cavity between the upper and middle
prongs. This I knew from the chart. My unaided eye saw nothing but
the open sea, growing dark green as the depths increased; a dour,
threatening sea, showing its white fangs. The waves grew longer and
steeper, for the channels, though still tortuous, now begin to be
broad and deep.

Davies had his bearings, and struck on his course confidently. 'Now
for the lead,' he said; 'the compass'll be little use soon. We must
feel the edge of the sands till we pick up more booms.'

'Where are we going to anchor for the night?' I asked.

'Under the Hohenhörn,' said Davies, 'for auld lang syne!'

Partly by sight and mostly by touch we crept round the outermost
alley of the hidden maze till a new clump of booms appeared,
meaningless to me, but analysed by him into two groups. One we
followed for some distance, and then struck finally away and began
another beat to windward.

Dusk was falling. The Hanover coast-line, never very distinct, had
utterly vanished; an ominous heave of swell was under-running the
short sea. I ceased to attend to Davies imparting instruction on his
beloved hobby, and sought to stifle in hard manual labour the dread
that had been latent in me all day at the prospect of our first
anchorage at sea.

'Sound, like blazes now!' he said at last. I came to a fathom and a
half. 'That's the bank,' he said; 'we'll give it a bit of a berth and
then let go.'

'Let go now!' was the order after a minute, and the chain ran out
with a long-drawn moan. The Dulcibella snubbed up to it and jauntily
faced the North Sea and the growing night.

'There we are!' said Davies, as we finished stowing the mainsail,
'safe and snug in four fathoms in a magnificent sand-harbour, with no
one to bother us and the whole of it to ourselves. No dues, no
stinks, no traffic, no worries of any sort. It's better than a Baltic
cove even, less beastly civilization about. We're seven miles from
the nearest coast, and five even from Neuerk--look, they're lighting
up.' There was a tiny spark in the east.

'I suppose it's all right,' I said, 'but I'd rather see a solid
breakwater somewhere; it's a dirty-looking night, and I don't like
this swell.'

'The swell's nothing,' said Davies; 'it's only a stray drain from
outside. As for breakwaters, you've got them all round you, only
they're hidden. Ahead and to starboard is the West Hohenhörn, curling
round to the sou'-west for all the world like a stone pier. You can
hear the surf battering on its outside over to the north. That's
where I was nearly wrecked that day, and the little channel I
stumbled into must be quite near us somewhere. Half a mile away--to
port there--is the East Hohenhörn, where I brought up, after dashing
across this lake we're in. Another mile astern is the main body of
the sands, the top prong of your fork. So you see we're shut
in--practically. Surely you remember the chart? Why, it's--'

'Oh, confound the chart!' I broke out, finding this flow of plausible
comfort too dismally suggestive for my nerves. '_Look_ at it, man!
Supposing anything happens--supposing it blows a gale! But it's no
good shivering here and staring at the view. I'm going below.'

There was a _mauvais quart d'heure_ below, during which, I am ashamed
to say, I forgot the quest.

'Which soup do you feel inclined for?' said Davies, timidly, after a
black silence of some minutes.

That simple remark, more eloquent of security than a thousand
technical arguments, saved the situation.

'I say, Davies,' I said, 'I'm a white-livered cur at the best, and
you mustn't spare me. But you're not like any yachtsman I ever met
before, or any sailor of any sort. You're so casual and quiet in the
extraordinary things you do. I believe I should like you better if
you let fly a volley of deep-sea oaths sometimes, or threatened to
put me in irons.'

Davies opened wide eyes, and said it was all his fault for forgetting
that I was not as used to such anchorages as he was. 'And, by the
way,' he added, 'as to its blowing a gale, I shouldn't wonder if it
did; the glass is falling hard; but it can't hurt us. You see, even
at high water the drift of the sea--'

'Oh, for Heaven's sake, don't begin again. You'll prove soon that
we're safer here than in an hotel. Let's have dinner, and a
thundering good one!'

Dinner ran a smooth course, but just as coffee was being brewed the
hull, from pitching regularly, began to roll.

'I knew she would,' said Davies. 'I was going to warn you, only--the
ebb has set in _against_ the wind. It's quite safe--'

'I thought you said it would get calmer when the tide fell?'

'So it will, but it may _seem_ rougher. Tides are queer things,' he
added, as though in defence of some not very respectable
acquaintances.

He busied himself with his logbook, swaying easily to the motion of
the boat; and I for my part tried to write up my diary, but I could
not fix my attention. Every loose article in the boat became audibly
restless. Cans clinked, cupboards rattled, lockers uttered hollow
groans. Small things sidled out of dark hiding-places, and danced
grotesque drunken figures on the floor, like goblins in a haunted
glade. The mast whined dolorously at every heel, and the centre-board
hiccoughed and choked. Overhead another horde of demons seemed to
have been let loose. The deck and mast were conductors which
magnified every sound and made the tap-tap of every rope's end
resemble the blows of a hammer, and the slapping of the halyards
against the mast the rattle of a Maxim gun. The whole tumult beat
time to a rhythmical chorus which became maddening.

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