Davies had his bearings, and struck on his course confidently. “Now for the lead,” he said; “the compass’ll be little use soon. We must feel the edge of the sands till we pick up more booms.”
“Where are we going to anchor for the night?” I asked.
“Under the Hohenhörn,” said Davies, “for auld lang syne!”
Partly by sight and mostly by touch we crept round the outermost alley of the hidden maze till a new clump of booms appeared, meaningless to me, but analysed by him into two groups. One we followed for some distance, and then struck finally away and began another beat to windward.
Dusk was falling. The Hanover coast-line, never very distinct, had utterly vanished; an ominous heave of swell was under-running the short sea. I ceased to attend to Davies imparting instruction on his beloved hobby, and sought to stifle in hard manual labour the dread that had been latent in me all day at the prospect of our first anchorage at sea.
“Sound, like blazes now!” he said at last. I came to a fathom and a half. “That’s the bank,” he said; “we’ll give it a bit of a berth and then let go.”
“Let go now!” was the order after a minute, and the chain ran out with a long-drawn moan. The Dulcibella snubbed up to it and jauntily faced the North Sea and the growing night.
“There we are!” said Davies, as we finished stowing the mainsail, “safe and snug in four fathoms in a magnificent sand-harbour, with no one to bother us and the whole of it to ourselves. No dues, no stinks, no traffic, no worries of any sort. It’s better than a Baltic cove even, less beastly civilization about. We’re seven miles from the nearest coast, and five even from Neuerk—look, they’re lighting up.” There was a tiny spark in the east.
“I suppose it’s all right,” I said, “but I’d rather see a solid breakwater somewhere; it’s a dirty-looking night, and I don’t like this swell.”
“The swell’s nothing,” said Davies; “it’s only a stray drain from outside. As for breakwaters, you’ve got them all round you, only they’re hidden. Ahead and to starboard is the West Hohenhörn, curling round to the sou’-west for all the world like a stone pier. You can hear the surf battering on its outside over to the north. That’s where I was nearly wrecked that day, and the little channel I stumbled into must be quite near us somewhere. Half a mile away—to port there—is the East Hohenhörn, where I brought up, after dashing across this lake we’re in. Another mile astern is the main body of the sands, the top prong of your fork. So you see we’re shut in—practically. Surely you remember the chart? Why, it’s——”