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 you can.”
“I’ve half a mind to try,” I said.
“We want another chart now,” and he pulled down a second yet more stained and frayed than the first. “We had a splendid time then exploring the Zuyder Zee, its northern part at least, and round those islands which bound it on the north. Those are the Frisian Islands, and they stretch for 120 miles or so eastward. You see, the first two of them, Texel and Vlieland, shut in the Zuyder Zee, and the rest border the Dutch and German coasts.” [[See Map A]]
“What’s all this?” I said, running my finger over some dotted patches which covered much of the chart. The latter was becoming unintelligible; clean-cut coasts and neat regiments of little figures had given place to a confusion of winding and intersecting lines and bald spaces.
“All sand,” said Davies, enthusiastically. “You can’t think what a splendid sailing-ground it is. You can explore for days without seeing a soul. These are the channels, you see; they’re very badly charted. This chart was almost useless, but it made it all the more fun. No towns or harbours, just a village or two on the islands, if you wanted stores.”
“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.