The Riddle of the Sands Part 24

'_Auf Wiedersehen_,' he said, simply.

She shook her head, did not even offer her hand, and pulled away; Davies turned sharp round and went below.

There was now no muddy Rubicon to obstruct us, for the tide had risen a good deal, and the sands were covering. I offered again to take the sculls, but she took no notice and rowed on, so that I was a silent pa.s.senger on the stem seat till we reached her boat, a spruce little yacht's gig, built to the native model, with a spoon-bow and tiny lee-boards. It was already afloat, but riding quite safely to a rope and a little grapnel, which she proceeded to haul in.

'It was quite safe after all, you see,' I said.

'Yes, but I could not stay. Herr Carruthers, I want to say something to you.' (I knew it was coming; von Bruning's warning over again.) 'I made a mistake just now; it is no use your calling on us to-morrow.'

'Why not?'

'You will not see my father.'

'I thought you said he was coming back?'

'Yes, by the morning steamer; but he will be very busy.'

'We can wait. We have several days to spare, and we have to call for letters anyhow.'

'You must not delay on our account. The weather is very fine at last.

It would be a pity to lose a chance of a smooth voyage to England.

The season--'

'We have no fixed plans. Davies wants to get some shooting.

'My father will be much occupied.'

'We can see _you_.'

I insisted on being obtuse, for though this fencing with an unstrung girl was hateful work, the quest was at stake. We were going to Norderney, come what might, and sooner or later we must see Dollmann.

It was no use promising not to. I had given no pledge to von Bruning, and I would give none to her. The only alternative was to violate the compact (which the present fiasco had surely weakened), speak out, and try and make an ally of her. Against her own father? I shrank from the responsibility and counted the cost of failure--certain failure, to judge by her conduct. She began to hoist her lugsail in a dazed, shiftless fashion, while our two boats drifted slowly to leeward.

'Father might not like it,' she said, so low and from such tremulous lips that I scarcely caught her words. 'He does not like foreigners much. I am afraid ... he did not want to see Herr Davies again.'

'But I thought--'

'It was wrong of me to come aboard--I suddenly remembered; but I could not tell Herr Davies.'

'I see,' I answered. 'I will tell him.'

'Yes, that he must not come near us.

'He will understand. I know he will be very sorry, but,' I added, firmly, 'you can trust him implicitly to do the right thing.' And how I prayed that this would content her! Thank Heaven, it did.

'Yes,' she said, 'I am afraid I did not say good-bye to him. You will do so?' She gave me her hand.

'One thing more,' I added, holding it, 'nothing had better be said about this meeting?'

'No, no, nothing. It must never be known.'

I let go the gig's gunwale and watched her tighten her sheet and make a tack or two to windward. Then I rowed back to the 'Dulcibella' as hard as I could.

XX. The Little Drab Book

I FOUND Davies at the cabin table, surrounded with a litter of books.

The shelf was empty, and its contents were tossed about among the cups and on the floor. We both spoke together.

'Well, what was it?'

'Well, what did she say?'

I gave way, and told my story briefly. He listened in silence, drumming on the table with a book which he held.

'It's not good-bye,' he said. 'But I don't wonder; look here!' and he held out to me a small volume, whose appearance was quite familiar to me, if its contents were less so. As I noted in an early chapter, Davies's library, excluding tide-tables, 'pilots', etc., was limited to two cla.s.ses of books, those on naval warfare, and those on his own hobby, cruising in small yachts. He had six or seven of the latter, including Knight's Falcon in the Baltic, Cowper's Sailing Tours, Macmullen's Down Channel, and other less-known stories of adventurous travel. I had scarcely done more than look into some of them at off-moments, for our life had left no leisure for reading. This particular volume was--no, I had better not describe it too fully; but I will say that it was old and unpretentious, bound in cheap cloth of a rather antiquated style, with a t.i.tle which showed it to be a guide for yachtsmen to a certain British estuary. A white label partly scratched away bore the legend '3d.' I had glanced at it once or twice with no special interest.

'Well?' I said, turning over some yellow pages.

'Dollmann!' cried Davies. 'Dollmann wrote it.' I turned to the t.i.tle-page, and read: 'By Lieut. X--, R.N.' The name itself conveyed nothing to me, but I began to understand. Davies went on: The name's on the back, too--and I'm certain it's the last she looked at.'

'But how do you know?'

'And there's the man himself. a.s.s that I am not to have seen it before! Look at the frontispiece.'

It was a sorry piece of ill.u.s.tration of the old-fashioned sort, lacking definition and finish, but effective notwithstanding; for it was evidently the reproduction, though a cheap and imperfect process, of a photograph. It represented a small yacht at anchor below some woods, with the owner standing on deck in his shirt sleeves: a well-knit, powerful man, young, of middle height, clean shaved. There appeared to be nothing remarkable about the face; the portrait being on too small a scale, and the expression, such as it was, being of the fixed 'photographic' character.

'How do you know him? You said he was fifty, with a greyish beard.'

'By the shape of his head; that hasn't changed. Look how it widens at the top, and then flattens--sort of wedge shaped--with a high, steep forehead; you'd hardly notice it in that' (the points were not very noticeable, but I saw what Davies meant). 'The height and figure are right, too; and the dates are about right. Look at the bottom.'

Underneath the picture was the name of a yacht and a date. The publisher's date on the t.i.tle-page was the same.

'Sixteen years ago,' said Davies. 'He looks thirty odd in that, doesn't he? And fifty now.'

'Let's work the thing out. Sixteen years ago he was still an Englishman, an officer in Her Majesty's Navy. Now he's a German. At some time between this and then, I suppose, he came to grief--disgrace, flight, exile. When did it happen?'

'They've been here three years; von Bruning said so.'

'It was long before that. She has talked German from a child. What's her age, do you think--nineteen or twenty?'

'About that.'

'Say she was four when this book was published. The crash must have come not long after.'

'And they've been hiding in Germany since.