The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [974]
'I say,' he said, when he was settled in his, and darkness reigned, 'do you think you'll like this sort of thing?'
'If there are many places about here as beautiful as this,' I replied, 'I think I shall. But I should like to land now and then and have a walk. Of course, a great deal depends on the weather, doesn't it? I hope this rain' (drops had begun to patter overhead) 'doesn't mean that the summer's over for good.'
'Oh, you can sail just the same,' said Davies, 'unless it's very bad. There's plenty of sheltered water. There's bound to be a change soon. But then there are the ducks. The colder and stormier it is, the better for them.'
I had forgotten the ducks and the cold, and, suddenly presented as a shooting-box in inclement weather, the Dulcibella lost ground in my estimation, which she had latterly gained.
'I'm fond of shooting,' I said, 'but I'm afraid I'm only a fair-weather yachtsman, and I should much prefer sun and scenery.'
'Scenery,' he repeated, reflectively. 'I say, you must have thought it a queer taste of mine to cruise about on that outlandish Frisian coast. How would you like that sort of thing?'
'I should loathe it,' I answered, promptly, with a clear conscience. 'Weren't you delighted yourself to get to the Baltic? It must be a wonderful contrast to what you described. Did you ever see another yacht there?'
'Only one,' he answered. 'Good night!'
'Good night!'
5 Wanted, a North Wind
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 nervous kicking of the little hull, and at one moment I dreamt I saw an apparition by candle-light of Davies, clad in pyjamas and huge top-boots, grasping a misty lantern of gigantic proportions. But the apparition mounted the ladder and disappeared, and I passed to other dreams.
A blast in my ear, like the voice of fifty trombones, galvanized me into full consciousness. The musician, smiling and tousled, was at my bedside, raising a foghorn to his lips with deadly intention. 'It's a way we have in the Dulcibella,' he said, as I started up on one elbow. 'I didn't startle you much, did I?' he added.
'Well, I like the _mattinata_ better than the cold douche,' I answered, thinking of yesterday.
'Fine day and magnificent breeze!' he answered. My sensations this morning were vastly livelier than those of yesterday at the same hour. My limbs were supple again and my head clear. Not even the searching wind could mar the ecstasy of that plunge down to smooth, seductive sand, where I buried greedy fingers and looked through a medium blue, with that translucent blue, fairy-faint and angel-pure, that you see in perfection only in the heart of ice. Up again to sun, wind, and the forest whispers from the shore; down just once more to see the uncouth anchor stabbing the sand's soft bosom with one rusty fang, deaf and inert to the Dulcibella's puny efforts to drag him from his prey. Back, holding by the cable as a rusty clue from heaven to earth, up to that _bourgeois_ little maiden's bows; back to breakfast, with an appetite not to be blunted by condensed milk and somewhat _passé_ bread. An hour later we had dressed the Dulcibella for the road, and were foaming into the grey void of yesterday, now a noble expanse of wind-whipped blue, half surrounded by distant hills, their every outline vivid in the rain-washed air.
I cannot pretend that I really enjoyed this first sail into the open, though I was keenly anxious to do so. I felt the thrill of those forward leaps, heard that persuasive song the foam sings under the lee-bow, saw the flashing harmonies of sea and sky; but sensuous perception was deadened by nervousness. The yacht looked smaller than ever outside the quiet fiord. The song of the foam seemed very near, the wave crests aft very high. The novice in sailing clings desperately to the thoughts of sailors--effective,