The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [971]
'We shall do well here,' said he.
'Isn't this rather an open anchorage?' I suggested.
'It's only open from that quarter,' he replied. 'If it comes on to blow from there we shall have to clear out; but I think it's only rain. Let's stow the sails.'
Another whirlwind of activity, in which I joined as effectively as I could, oppressed by the prospect of having to 'clear out'--who knows whither?--at midnight. But Davies's _sang froid_ 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; for he produced with stealthy pride, not from the dishonoured grave of the beer, but from some more hallowed recess, a bottle of German champagne, from which we drank success to the Dulcibella.
'I wish you would tell me all about your cruise from England,' I asked. 'You must have had some exciting adventures. Here are the charts; let's go over them.'
'We must wash up first,' he replied, and I was tactfully introduced to one of his very few 'standing orders', that tobacco should not burn, nor post-prandial chat begin, until that distasteful process had ended. 'It would never get done otherwise,' he sagely opined. But when we were finally settled with cigars, a variety of which, culled from many ports--German, Dutch, and Belgian--Davies kept in a battered old box in the net-rack, the promised talk hung fire.
'I'm no good at description,' he complained; 'and there's really very little to tell. We left Dover--Morrison and I--on 6th August; made a good passage to Ostend.'
'You had some fun there, I suppose?' I put in, thinking of--well, of Ostend in August.
'Fun! A filthy hole I call it; we had to stop a couple of days, as we fouled a buoy coming in and carried away the bobstay; we lay in a dirty little tidal dock, and there was nothing to do on shore.'
'Well, what next?'
'We had a splendid sail to the East Scheldt, but then, like fools, decided to go through Holland by canal and river. It was good fun enough navigating the estuary--the tides and banks there are appalling--but farther inland it was a wretched business, nothing but paying lock-dues, bumping against schuyts, and towing down stinking canals. Never a peaceful night like this--always moored by some quay or tow-path, with people passing and boys. Heavens! shall I ever forget those boys! A perfect murrain of them infests Holland; they seem to have nothing in the world to do but throw stones and mud at foreign yachts.'
'They want a Herod, with some statesmanlike views on infanticide.'
'By Jove! yes; but the fact is that you want a crew for that pottering inland work; they can smack the boys and keep an eye on the sculls. A boat like this should stick to the sea, or out-of-the-way places on the coast. Well, after Amsterdam.'
'You've skipped a good deal, haven't you?' I interrupted.
'Oh! have I? Well, let me see, we went by Dordrecht to Rotterdam; nothing to see there, and swarms of tugs buzzing about and shaving one's bows every second. On by the Vecht river to Amsterdam, and thence--Lord, what a relief it was!--out into the North Sea again. The weather had been still and steamy; but it broke up finely now, and we had a rattling three-reef sail to the Zuyder Zee.'
He reached up to the bookshelf for what looked like an ancient ledger, and turned over the leaves.
'Is that your log?' I asked. 'I should like to have a look at it.'
'Oh! you'd find it dull reading--if you could read it at all; it's just short notes about winds and bearings, and so on.' He was turning some leaves over rapidly. 'Now, why don't you keep a log of what we do? I can't describe things, and