I agreed (and agree still), but still I shrugged my shoulders.
“We go on exploring, then, in the same way?”
“Yes; keeping a sharp look-out, though. Remember, we shall always be in sight of land now.”
“What’s the glass doing?”
“Higher than for a long time. I hope it won’t bring fog. I know this district is famous for fogs, and fine weather at this time of the year is bad for them anywhere. I would rather it blew, if it wasn’t for exploring those gaps, where an on-shore wind would be nasty. Six-thirty to-morrow; not later. I think I’ll sleep in the saloon for the future, after what happened to-night.”
CHAPTER XV.
Bensersiel
[For this chapter see Map B.]
The decisive incidents of our cruise were now fast approaching. Looking back on the steps that led to them, and anxious that the reader should be wholly with us in our point of view, I think I cannot do better than give extracts from my diary of the next three days:
“Oct. 16 (up at 6.30, yacht high and dry). Of the three galliots out at anchor in the channel yesterday, only one is left.... I took my turn with the breakers this morning and walked to Wangeroog, whose village I found half lost in sand drifts, which are planted with tufts of marram-grass in mathematical rows, to give stability and prevent a catastrophe like that at Pompeii. A friendly grocer told me all there is to know, which is little. The islands are what we thought them—barren for the most part, with a small fishing population, and a scanty accession of summer visitors for bathing. The season is over now, and business slack for him. There is still, however, a little trade with the mainland in galliots and lighters, a few of which come from the ‘siels’ on the mainland. ‘Had these harbours?’ I asked. ‘Mud-holes!’ he replied, with a contemptuous laugh. (He is a settler in these wilds, not a native.) Said he had heard of schemes for improving them, so as to develop the islands as health-resorts, but thought it was only a wild speculation.
“A heavy tramp back to the yacht, nearly crushed by impedimenta. While Davies made yet another trip, I stalked some birds with a gun, and obtained what resembled a specimen of the smallest variety of jack-snipe, and small at that; but I made a great noise, which I hope persuaded somebody of the purity of our motives.