The Riddle of the Sands

When, exactly, the atmosphere of misunderstanding on the stranded tug was dissipated, I do not know, for by the time I had fitted the rowlocks and shipped sculls, tide and wind...

At Esens Station I reversed my Norden tactics, jumped out smartly, and got to the door of egress first of all, gave up my ticket, and hung about the gate of the station under co...

“Here she comes,” said Davies. It was nine o’clock on the next day, October 22, and we were on deck waiting for the arrival of the steamer from Norddeich. There was no change in...

The door of a room on the ground floor was opened to us by a man-servant. As we entered the rattle of a piano stopped, and a hot wave of mingled scent and cigar-smoke struck my...

I woke (on the 1st of October) with that dispiriting sensation that a hitch has occurred in a settled plan. It was explained when I went on deck, and I found the _Dulcibella_ wr...

I was awakened at ten o’clock on the 19th, after a long and delicious sleep, by Davies’s voice outside, talking his unmistakable German. Looking out, in my pyjamas, I saw him on...

That two days later I should be found pacing the deck of the Flushing steamer with a ticket for Hamburg in my pocket may seem a strange result, yet not so strange if you have di...

Selecting the very humblest _Gasthaus_ I could discover, I laid down my bundle and called for beer, bread, and _Wurst._ The landlord, as I had expected, spoke the Frisian dialec...

It was a cold, vaporous dawn, the glass rising, and the wind fallen to a light air still from the north-east. Our creased and sodden sails scarcely answered to it as we crept ac...

Davies leaned back and gave a deep sigh, as though he still felt the relief from some tension. I did the same, and felt the same relief. The chart, freed from the pressure of ou...

He had all his preparations made, the lamp lit in advance, the compass in position, and we started at once; he at the bow-oar where he had better control over the boat’s nose; l...

I alone was to land. Davies demurred to this out of loyalty, but common sense, coinciding with a strong aversion of his own, settled the matter. Two were more liable to detectio...

“Good-bye,” the whistle blew and the ferry-steamer forged ahead, leaving Davies on the quay, bareheaded and wearing his old Norfolk jacket and stained grey flannels, as at our f...

The reader can see Memmert for himself. South of Juist, _[See Map B]_ abutting on the Ems delta, lies an extensive sandbank called Nordland, whose extreme western rim remains un...

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 toge...

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...

I dozed but fitfully, with a fretful sense of sore elbows and neck and many a draughty hiatus among the blankets. It was broad daylight before I had reached the stage of torpor...

It was not an easy question to answer, for the affair was utterly outside all my experience; its background the sea, and its actual scene a region of the sea of which I was blan...

A low line of sandhills, pink and fawn in the setting sun, at one end of them a little white village huddled round the base of a massive four-square lighthouse—such was Wangeroo...

In the late afternoon of the second day our flotilla reached the Elbe at Brunsbüttel and ranged up in the inner basin, while a big liner, whimpering like a fretful baby, was ten...

“There’s Cuxhaven,” reflected Davies; “but that’s too near, and there’s—but we don’t want to be tied down to landing anywhere. I tell you what: say ‘Post Office, Norderney’, jus...

Nothing disturbed my rest that night, so adaptable is youth and so masterful is nature. At times I was remotely aware of a threshing of rain and a humming of wind, with a nervou...

“Wake up!” I rubbed my eyes and wondered where I was; stretched myself painfully, too, for even the cushions had not given me a true bed of roses. It was dusk, and the yacht was...

I have read of men who, when forced by their calling to live for long periods in utter solitude—save for a few black faces—have made it a rule to dress regularly for dinner in o...

The decisive incidents of our cruise were now fast approaching. Looking back on the steps that led to them, and anxious that the reader should be wholly with us in our point of...

I make no apology for having described these early days in some detail. It is no wonder that their trivialities are as vividly before me as the colours of earth and sea in this...

Memmert gripped me, then, to the exclusion of a rival notion which had given me no little perplexity during the conversation with von Brüning. His reiterated advice that we shou...

Nothing happened during the next ten days to disturb us at our work. During every hour of daylight and many of darkness, sailing or anchored, aground or afloat, in rain and shin...