“But he sent her below when the pilotage was going on?”
“Of course.”
“She said just now, ‘Father said you would be safe.’ What had you been saying to her?”
“It was when I met her on the sand. (By the way, it wasn’t a chance meeting; she had been making inquiries and heard about us from a skipper who had seen the yacht near Wangeroog, and she had been down this way before.) She asked at once about that day, and began apologising, rather awkwardly, you know, for their rudeness in not having waited for me at Cuxhaven. Her father found he must get on to Hamburg at once.”
“But you didn’t go to Cuxhaven; you told her that? What exactly did you tell her? This is important.”
“I was in a fearful fix, not knowing what he had told her. So I said something vague, and then she asked the very question von Brüning did, ‘Wasn’t there a schrecklich sea round the Scharhorn?’
“She didn’t know you took the short cut, then?”
“No; he hadn’t dared to tell her.”
“She knew that they took it?”
“Yes. He couldn’t possibly have hidden that. She would have known by the look of the sea from the portholes, the shorter time, etc.”