The Riddle of the Sands quotes

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.

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;

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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 mizzenmast, 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;

But Davies’s sangfroid 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;

“

They want a Herod, with some statesmanlike views on infanticide.

”

“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.

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.

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.

For a second I was back in the dreary splendour of the London clubroom, 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?”

“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;

“By the way, that reminds me,” he added; “we must stop at Kiel for the inside of a day and lay in a lot of stores. We want to be independent of the shore.” I said nothing.

Independence of the shore in a seven-tonner in October! What an end to aim at!

About nine o’clock we weathered the point, entered Kiel Fjord, and began a dead beat to windward of seven miles to the head of it where Kiel lies.

He drew inspiration from the very wind and spray.

He communed with his tiller, I believe, and marshalled his figures with its help.

To hear him talk was to feel a current of clarifying air blustering into a close clubroom, where men bandy ineffectual platitudes, and mumble old shibboleths, and go away and do nothing.

He drew inspiration from the very wind and spray. He communed with his tiller, I believe, and marshalled his figures with its help.

To hear him talk was to feel a current of clarifying air blustering into a close clubroom, where men bandy ineffectual platitudes, and mumble old shibboleths, and go away and do nothing.

In our talk about policy and strategy we were Bismarcks and Rodneys, wielding nations and navies; and, indeed, I have no doubt that our fancy took extravagant flights sometimes.

behind lay the same flat country, colourless, humid; and opposite us, two miles away, scarcely visible in the deepening twilight, ran the outline of a similar shore. Between rolled the turgid Elbe.

“The Styx flowing through Tartarus,” I thought to myself, recalling some of our Baltic anchorages.

I told my news to Davies as soon as the anchor was down, instinctively leaving the sex of the inquirer to the last, as my informant had done.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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 centreboard hiccuped and choked. Overhead another horde of demons seemed to have been let loose.

“Seven miles from land,” I thought, “scuttling like seabirds on a transient islet of sand, encircled by rushing tides and hammered by ocean, at midnight in a rising gale—cut off even from our one dubious refuge.” It was the time, if ever, to conquer weakness.

A mad gaiety surged through me as I drank the wind and pressed forward.

It seemed but a minute or two and Davies clutched me.

“She’s riding beautifully now,” said he, when he had secured the painter. “There’ll be no rolling on the flood, and it’s nearly low water.”

I don’t think I should have cared, however much she had rolled. I was finally cured of funk.

It was well that I was, for to be pitched out of your bunk on to wet oilcloth is a disheartening beginning to a day. This happened about eight o’clock.

The stiffer it was the cooler he became. He had, too, that intuition which is independent of acquired skill, and is at the root of all genius; which, to take cases analogous to his own, is the last quality of the perfect guide or scout.

I believe he could smell sand where he could not see or touch it.

As for me, the sea has never been my element, and never will be; nevertheless, I hardened to the life, grew salt, tough, and tolerably alert.

All the time our sturdy little craft grew shabbier and more weatherworn, the varnish thinner, the decks greyer, the sails dingier, and the cabin roof more murky where stove-fumes stained it.

But the only beauty she ever possessed, that of perfect fitness for her functions, remained.

With nothing to compare her to she became a home to me. My joints adapted themselves to her crabbed limits, my tastes and habits to her plain domestic economy.

but his own personality was really our tower of strength. I realized that as I watched the play of his eager features, and heard him struggle for expression on his favourite hobby; all his pet phrases translated crudely into the most excruciating German.

He was convincing, because he was himself.

“Are there many like you in England?” asked von Brüning once.

two figures were out on the brink, hauling on two painters. Then Davies was striding over the sand, and a girl—I could see her now—was coming to meet him. And then I thought it was time to go below and tidy up.

Nothing on earth could have made the Dulcibella’s saloon a worthy reception-room for a lady.

I could only use hurried efforts to make it look its best by plying a bunch of cotton-waste and a floor-brush;

Never till this night had we talked with absolute mutual confidence, for Davies broke down the last barriers of reserve and let me see his whole mind.

He loved this girl and he loved his country, two simple passions which for the time absorbed his whole moral capacity.

There was no room left for casuistry. To weigh one passion against the other, with the discordant voices of honour and expediency dinning in his ears, had too long involved him in fruitless torture. Both were right; neither could be surrendered.

perhaps, too, of character, for Galahads are not so common but that ordinary folk must needs draw courage from their example and put something of a blind trust in their tenfold strength.

To reduce a romantic ideal to a working plan is a very difficult thing.

“We shall have to argue backwards,” I said. “What is to be the final stage? Because that must govern the others.”

There was only one answer—to get Dollmann, secrets and all, daughter and all, away from Germany altogether. So only could we satisfy the double aim we had set before us.

What a joy it is, when beset with doubts, to find a bedrock necessity, however unattainable!

We fastened on this one and reasoned back from it. The first lesson was that, however many and strong were the enemies we had to contend with, our sole overt foe must be Dollmann.

The most remarkable feature was the nose, which was broad and flat, merging almost imperceptibly in the wrinkled cheeks. Lightly beaked at the nether extremity, it drooped towards an enormous cigar which was pointing at us like a gun just discharged.

He looked wise as Satan, and you would say he was smiling inwardly.

“Who’s that?” I whispered to Davies. (There was no need to talk in whispers, but we did so instinctively.)

And find her we did soon after, the outermost of the stack of galliots, on the farther side of the harbour. Two men, whose faces we took a good look at, were sitting on her hatch, mending a sail.

Flooded with sun, yet still as the grave, the town was like a dead butterfly for whom the healing rays had come too late.

We crossed some deserted public gardens commanded by a gorgeous casino, its porticos heaped with chairs and tables;

W. roughly I made the course. (“Southeast—southeast for coming back,” I repeated inwardly, like a child learning a lesson.) Then of my two allies I abandoned one, the beach, and threw myself wholly on the fog.

“Play the game,” I said to myself. “Nobody expects you; nobody will recognize you.”

I advanced in rapid stages of ten yards or so, while grass disappeared and soft sand took its place, pitted everywhere with footmarks. I trod carefully, for obstructions began to show themselves—an anchor, a heap of rusty cable;

“Pessimist! Haven’t I written proof of good faith in my pocket—official letters of recall, received today? It’s one deception the less, you see; for those letters may have been opened; skilfully done it’s impossible to detect.

When in doubt, tell the truth!

”

“Guarded,” I observed. “I beg your pardon; I mean that perhaps you only saw what you were allowed to see. And, in any case, the Fräulein has no expert knowledge and no responsibility, and, perhaps, no shares.

Her province is to be charming, not to hold financial secrets.

”

but I had too much respect for our adversaries to trade on any fancied security we had won thereby. They had allowed me to win the trick, but I credited them with a better knowledge of my hand than they chose to show.

On the other hand I hugged the axiom that in all conflicts it is just as fatal to underrate the difficulties of your enemy as to overrate your own.

Their chief one—and it multiplied a thousandfold the excitement of the contest—was, I felt sure, the fear of striking in error; of using a sledgehammer to break a nut. In breaking it they risked publicity, and publicity, I felt convinced, was death to their secret.

so that I might well have grown nervous about my connections at Amsterdam, which were in some jeopardy. But as I battled out of my lethargy and began to take account of our position and prospects, quite a different thought at the outset affected me.

Anxiety to reach London was swamped in reluctance to quit Germany, so that I found myself grudging every mile that I placed between me and the frontier.

It was the old question of urgency. Today was the 23rd. The visit to London meant a minimum absence of forty-eight hours, counting from Amsterdam;

Otherwise I perhaps should have examined this lighter more particularly, instead of regarding it mainly as a convenient hiding-place. Under the stern-deck was stored a massive roll of tarpaulin, a corner of which made an excellent blanket, and my bundle a good pillow.

It was a descent from the luxury of last night; but a spy, I reflected philosophically, cannot expect a feather bed two nights running, and this one was at any rate airier and roomier than the coffin-like bunk of the Dulcibella, and not so very much harder.

When snugly ensconced, I studied the map by intermittent match-light. It had been dawning on me in the last half-hour that this canal was only one of several;

The crisis, I knew, had come, and the reckless impudence that had brought me here must serve me still and extricate me.

Fortune loves rough wooing.

I backed my luck and watched.