XII. My Initiation
THE yacht lay with a very slight heel (thanks to a pair of smallbilge-keels on her bottom) in a sort of trough she had dug forherself, so that she was still ringed with a few inches of water, asit were with a moat.
For miles in every direction lay a desert of sand. To the north ittouched the horizon, and was only broken by the blue dot of NeuerkIsland and its lighthouse. To the east it seemed also to stretch toinfinity, but the smoke of a steamer showed where it was pierced bythe stream of the Elbe. To the south it ran up to the pencil-line ofthe Hanover shore. Only to the west was its outline broken by anyvestiges of the sea it had risen from. There it was astir withcrawling white filaments, knotted confusedly at one spot in thenorth-west, whence came a sibilant murmur like the hissing of manysnakes. Desert as I call it, it was not entirely featureless. Itscolour varied from light fawn, where the highest levels had dried inthe wind, to brown or deep violet, where it was still wet, andslate-grey where patches of mud soiled its clean bosom. Here andthere were pools of water, smitten into ripples by the impotent wind;here and there it was speckled by shells and seaweed. And close tous, beginning to bend away towards that hissing knot in thenorth-west, wound our poor little channel, mercilessly exposed as astagnant, muddy ditch with scarcely a foot of water, not deep enoughto hide our small kedge-anchor, which perked up one fluke in impudentmockery. The dull, hard sky, the wind moaning in the rigging asthough crying in despair for a prey that had escaped it, made thescene inexpressibly forlorn.
Davies scanned it with gusto for a moment, climbed to a point ofvantage on the boom, and swept his glasses to and fro along thecourse of the channel.
'Fairly well boomed,' he said, meditatively, 'but one or two are verymuch out. By Jove! that's a tricky bend there.' He took a bearingwith the compass, made a note or two, and sprang with a vigorous leapdown on to the sand.
This, I may say, was the only way of 'going ashore' that he reallyliked. We raced off as fast as our clumsy sea-boots would let us, andfollowed up the course of our channel to the west, reconnoitring theroad we should have to follow when the tide rose.
'The only way to learn a place like this,' he shouted, 'is to see itat low water. The banks are dry then, and the channels are plain.Look at that boom'--he stopped and pointed contemptuously--'it's allout of place. I suppose the channel's shifted there. It's just at animportant bend too. If you took it as a guide when the water was upyou'd run aground.'
'Which would be very useful,' I observed.
'Oh, hang it!' he laughed, 'we're exploring. I want to be able to runthrough this channel without a mistake. We will, next time.' Hestopped, and plied compass and notebook. Then we raced on till thenext halt was called.
'Look,' he said, the channel's getting deeper, it was nearly dry amoment ago; see the current in it now? That's the flood tide comingup--from the _west,_ mind you; that is, from the Weser side. Thatshows 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 likea range of hills dividing two plains, it's never dead flat though itlooks it; there's always one point, one ridge, rather, where it'shighest. Now a channel cutting right through the sand is, of course,always at its shallowest when it's crossing this ridge; at low waterit's generally dry there, and it gradually deepens as it gets nearerto the sea on either side. Now at high tide, when the whole sand iscovered, the water can travel where it likes; but directly the ebbsets in the water falls away on either side the ridge and the channelbecomes two rivers flowing in opposite directions _from_ the centre,or watershed, as I call it. So, also, when the ebb has run out andthe flood begins, the channel is fed by two currents flowing to thecentre and meeting in the middle. Here the Elbe and the Weser are ourtwo feeders. Now this current here is going eastwards; we know by thetime of day that the tide's rising, _therefore_ the watershed isbetween us and the yacht.'
'Why is it so important to know that?'
'Because these currents are strong, and you want to know when you'lllose a fair one and strike a foul one. Besides, the ridge is thecritical point when you're crossing on a falling tide, and you wantto know when you're past it.'
We pushed on till our path was barred by a big lagoon. It looked farmore 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 makingfor, beyond?'
'It's boomed,' I remonstrated, pointing to a decrepit stem droopingover 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 siltedup. That boom's a fraud; there's no time to go farther, the flood'smaking fast. I'll just take bearings of what we can see.'
The false lagoon was the first of several that began to be visible inthe west, swelling and joining hands over the ribs of sand thatdivided them. All the time the distant hissing grew nearer andlouder, and a deep, thunderous note began to sound beneath it. Weturned our backs to the wind and hastened back towards the_Dulcibella_, the stream in our channel hurrying and rising alongsideof us.
'There's just time to do the other side,' said Davies, when wereached her, and I was congratulating myself on having regained ourbase without finding our communications cut. And away we scurried inthe direction we had come that morning, splashing through pools andjumping the infant runnels that were stealing out through rifts fromthe mother-channel as the tide rose. Our observations completed, backwe travelled, making a wide circuit over higher ground to avoid theencroaching flood, and wading shin-deep in the final approach to theyacht.
As I scrambled thankfully aboard, I seemed to hear a far-off voicesaying, in languid depreciation of yachting, that it did not give oneenough exercise. It was mine, centuries ago, in another life. Fromeast and west two sheets of water had overspread the desert, eachpushing out tongues of surf that met and fused.
I waited on deck and watched the death-throes of the suffocatingsands under the relentless onset of the sea. The last strongholdswere battered, stormed, and overwhelmed; the tumult of sounds sankand steadied, and the sea swept victoriously over the whole expanse.The _Dulcibella_, hitherto contemptuously inert, began to wake andtremble under the buffetings she received. Then, with an effort, shejerked herself on to an even keel and bumped and strained fretfully,impatient to vanquish this insolent invader and make him a slave forher own ends. Soon her warp tightened and her nose swung slowlyround; only her stern bumped now, and that with decreasing force.Suddenly she was free and drifting broadside to the wind till theanchor checked her and she brought up to leeward of it, rockingeasily and triumphantly. Good-humoured little person! At heart shewas friends alike with sand and sea. It was only when the old loveand the new love were in mortal combat for her favours, and she wasmauled in the _fracas_, that her temper rose in revolt.
We swallowed a hasty cup of tea, ran up the sails, and started offwest again. Once across the 'watershed' we met a strong current, butthe trend of the passage was now more to the north-west, so that wecould hold our course without tacking, and consequently could stemthe 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 shallgenerally have to do without it always on a falling tide. If you runaground with the plate down you deserve to be drowned.' I now saw howvaluable our walk had been. The booms were on our right; but theywere broken reeds, giving no hint as to the breadth of the channel. Afew had lost their tops, and were being engulfed altogether by therising water. When we came to the point where they ceased, and thefalse lagoon had lain, I should have felt utterly lost. We hadcrossed the high and relatively level sands which form the base ofthe Fork, and were entering the labyrinth of detached banks whichobstruct the funnel-shaped cavity between the upper and middleprongs. This I knew from the chart. My unaided eye saw nothing butthe open sea, growing dark green as the depths increased; a dour,threatening sea, showing its white fangs. The waves gre
w longer andsteeper, for the channels, though still tortuous, now begin to bebroad and deep.
Davies had his bearings, and struck on his course confidently. 'Nowfor the lead,' he said; 'the compass'll be little use soon. We mustfeel the edge of the sands till we pick up more booms.'
'Where are we going to anchor for the night?' I asked.
'Under the Hohenh?rn,' said Davies, 'for auld lang syne!'
Partly by sight and mostly by touch we crept round the outermostalley of the hidden maze till a new clump of booms appeared,meaningless to me, but analysed by him into two groups. One wefollowed for some distance, and then struck finally away and begananother beat to windward.
Dusk was falling. The Hanover coast-line, never very distinct, hadutterly vanished; an ominous heave of swell was under-running theshort sea. I ceased to attend to Davies imparting instruction on hisbeloved hobby, and sought to stifle in hard manual labour the dreadthat had been latent in me all day at the prospect of our firstanchorage at sea.
'Sound, like blazes now!' he said at last. I came to a fathom and ahalf. 'That's the bank,' he said; 'we'll give it a bit of a berth andthen let go.'
'Let go now!' was the order after a minute, and the chain ran outwith a long-drawn moan. The _Dulcibella_ snubbed up to it and jauntilyfaced 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 noone to bother us and the whole of it to ourselves. No dues, nostinks, no traffic, no worries of any sort. It's better than a Balticcove even, less beastly civilization about. We're seven miles fromthe nearest coast, and five even from Neuerk--look, they're lightingup.' There was a tiny spark in the east.
'I suppose it's all right,' I said, 'but I'd rather see a solidbreakwater somewhere; it's a dirty-looking night, and I don't likethis swell.'
'The swell's nothing,' said Davies; 'it's only a stray drain fromoutside. As for breakwaters, you've got them all round you, onlythey're hidden. Ahead and to starboard is the West Hohenh?rn, curlinground to the sou'-west for all the world like a stone pier. You canhear the surf battering on its outside over to the north. That'swhere I was nearly wrecked that day, and the little channel Istumbled into must be quite near us somewhere. Half a mile away--toport there--is the East Hohenh?rn, where I brought up, after dashingacross this lake we're in. Another mile astern is the main body ofthe sands, the top prong of your fork. So you see we're shutin--practically. Surely you remember the chart? Why, it's----'
'Oh, confound the chart!' I broke out, finding this flow of plausiblecomfort too dismally suggestive for my nerves. '_Look_ at it, man!Supposing anything happens--supposing it blows a gale! But it's nogood shivering here and staring at the view. I'm going below.'
There was a _mauvais quart d'heure_ below, during which, I am ashamedto say, I forgot the quest.
'Which soup do you feel inclined for?' said Davies, timidly, after ablack silence of some minutes.
That simple remark, more eloquent of security than a thousandtechnical arguments, saved the situation.
'I say, Davies,' I said, 'I'm a white-livered cur at the best, andyou mustn't spare me. But you're not like any yachtsman I ever metbefore, or any sailor of any sort. You're so casual and quiet in theextraordinary things you do. I believe I should like you better ifyou let fly a volley of deep-sea oaths sometimes, or threatened toput me in irons.'
Davies opened wide eyes, and said it was all his fault for forgettingthat I was not as used to such anchorages as he was. 'And, by theway,' he added, 'as to its blowing a gale, I shouldn't wonder if itdid; the glass is falling hard; but it can't hurt us. You see, evenat high water the drift of the sea----'
'Oh, for Heaven's sake, don't begin again. You'll prove soon thatwe're safer here than in an hotel. Let's have dinner, and athundering good one!'
Dinner ran a smooth course, but just as coffee was being brewed thehull, from pitching regularly, began to roll.
'I knew she would,' said Davies. 'I was going to warn you, only--theebb 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,' headded, as though in defence of some not very respectableacquaintances.
He busied himself with his logbook, swaying easily to the motion ofthe boat; and I for my part tried to write up my diary, but I couldnot fix my attention. Every loose article in the boat became audiblyrestless. Cans clinked, cupboards rattled, lockers uttered hollowgroans. Small things sidled out of dark hiding-places, and dancedgrotesque drunken figures on the floor, like goblins in a hauntedglade. The mast whined dolorously at every heel, and the centreboardhiccoughed and choked. Overhead another horde of demons seemed tohave been let loose. The deck and mast were conductors whichmagnified every sound and made the tap-tap of every rope's endresemble the blows of a hammer, and the slapping of the halyardsagainst the mast the rattle of a Maxim gun. The whole tumult beattime to a rhythmical chorus which became maddening.
'We might turn in now,' said Davies; 'it's half-past ten.'
'What, sleep through this?' I exclaimed. 'I can't stand this, I must_do_ something. Can't we go for another walk?'
I spoke in bitter, half-delirious jest.
'Of course we can,' said Davies, 'if you don't mind a bit of a tumblein the dinghy.'
I reconsidered my rash suggestion, but it was too late now to turnback, and some desperate expedient was necessary. I found myself ondeck, gripping a backstay and looking giddily down and then up at thedinghy, as it bobbed like a cork in the trough of the sea alongside,while Davies settled the sculls and rowlocks.
'Jump!' he shouted, and before I could gather my wits and clutch thesides we were adrift in the night, reeling from hollow to hollow ofthe steep curling waves. Davies nursed our walnut-shell tenderly overtheir crests, edging her slantwise across their course. He used verylittle exertion, relying on the tide to carry us to our goal.Suddenly the motion ceased. A dark slope loomed up out of the night,and the dinghy rested softly in a shallow eddy.
'The West Hohenh?rn,' said Davies. We jumped out and sank into softmud, hauled up the dinghy a foot or two, then mounted the bank andwere on hard, wet sand. The wind leapt on us, and choked our voices.
'Let's find my channel,' bawled Davies. 'This way. Keep Neuerk lightright astern of you.'
We set off with a long, stooping stride in the teeth of the wind, andstraight towards the roar of the breakers on the farther side of thesand. A line of Matthew Arnold's, 'The naked shingles of the world,'was running in my head. 'Seven miles from land,' I thought,'scuttling like sea-birds on a transient islet of sand, encircled byrushing tides and hammered by ocean, at midnight in a risinggale--cut off even from our one dubious refuge.' It was the time, ifever, to conquer weakness. A mad gaiety surged through me as I drankthe wind and pressed forward. It seemed but a minute or two andDavies clutched me.
'Look out!' he shouted. 'It's my channel.'
The ground sloped down, and a rushing river glimmered before us. Westruck off at a tangent and followed its course to the north,stumbling in muddy rifts, slipping on seaweed, beginning to beblinded by a fine salt spray, and deafened by the thunder of theocean surf. The river broadened, whitened, roughened, gathered itselffor the shock, was shattered, and dissolved in milky gloom. Wewheeled away to the right, and splashed into yeasty froth. I turnedmy back to the wind, scooped the brine out of my eyes, faced back andsaw that our path was barred by a welter of surf. Davies's voice wasin my ear and his arm was pointing seaward.
'This--is--about where--I--bumped first--worse then--nor'-westwind--this--is--nothing. Let's--go--right--round.'
We galloped away with the wind behind us, skirting the line of surf.I lost all account of time and direction. Another sea barred ourroad, became another river as we slanted along its shore. Again wewere in the teeth of that intoxicating wind. Then a point of lightwas swaying and flickering away to
the left, and now we were checkingand circling. I stumbled against something sharp--the dinghy'sgunwale. So we had completed the circuit of our fugitive domain, thatdream-island--nightmare island as I always remember it.
'You must scull, too,' said Davies. 'It's blowing hard now. Keep hernose _up_ a little--all you know!'
We lurched along, my scull sometimes buried to the thwart, sometimesstriking at the bubbles of a wave top. Davies, in the bows, said'Pull!' or 'Steady!' at intervals. I heard the scud smacking againsthis oilskin back. Then a wan, yellow light glanced over the waves.'Easy! Let her come!' and the bowsprit of the _Dulcibella_, swollen tospectral proportions, was stabbing the darkness above me. 'Back abit! Two good strokes. Ship your scull! Now jump!' I clawed at thetossing hull and landed in a heap. Davies followed with the painter,and the dinghy swept astern.
'She's riding beautifully now,' said he, when he had secured thepainter. 'There'll be no rolling on the flood, and it's nearly lowwater.'
I don't think I should have cared, however much she had rolled. I wasfinally cured of funk.
It was well that I was, for to be pitched out of your bunk on to wetoil-cloth is a disheartening beginning to a day. This happened abouteight o'clock. The yacht was pitching violently, and I crawled on allfours into the cabin, where Davies was setting out breakfast on thefloor.
'I let you sleep on,' he said; 'we can't do anything till the waterfalls. We should never get the anchor up in this sea. Come and have alook round. It's clearing now,' he went on, when we were crouchinglow on deck, gripping cleats for safety. 'Wind's veered to nor'-west.It's been blowing a full gale, and the sea is at its worst now--nearhigh water. You'll never see worse than this.'
I was prepared for what I saw--the stormy sea for leagues around, anda chaos of breakers where our dream-island had stood--and took itquietly, even with a sort of elation. The _Dulcibella_ faced the stormas doggedly as ever, plunging her bowsprit into the sea and flinginggreen water over her bows. A wave of confidence and affection for herwelled through me. I had been used to resent the weight and bulk ofher unwieldy anchor and cable, but I saw their use now; varnish,paint, spotless decks, and snowy sails were foppish absurdities of ahateful past.
'What can we do to-day?' I asked.
'We must keep well inside the banks and be precious careful whereverthere's a swell. It's rampant in here, you see, in spite of thebarrier of sand. But there's plenty we can do farther back.'
We breakfasted in horrible discomfort; then smoked and talked tillthe roar of the breakers dwindled. At the first sign of bare sand wegot under way, under mizzen and headsails only, and I learned how tosail a reluctant anchor out of the ground. Pivoting round, we scuddedeast before the wind, over the ground we had traversed the eveningbefore, while an archipelago of new banks slowly shouldered up abovethe fast weakening waves. We trod delicately among and around them,sounding and observing; heaving to where space permitted, andsometimes using the dinghy. I began to see where the risks lay inthis sort of navigation. Wherever the ocean swell penetrated, or thewind blew straight down a long deep channel, we had to be verycautious and leave good margins. 'That's the sort of place youmustn't ground on,' Davies used to say.
In the end we traversed the Steil Sand again, but by a differentswatchway, and anchored, after an arduous day, in a notch on itseastern limit, just clear of the swell that rolled in from theturbulent estuary of the Elbe. The night was fair, and when the tidereceded we lay perfectly still, the fresh wind only sending a lip-lipof ripples against our sides.
The Riddle of the Sands Page 13
