Scratching at the greasy wall to keep the dinghy close to it, I received in succession our stores, and stowed the cargo as best I could, while the dinghy sank lower and lower in the water, and its precarious superstructure grew higher.
“Catch!” was the final direction from above, and a damp soft parcel hit me in the chest. “Be careful of that, it’s meat. Now back to the stairs!”
I painfully acquiesced, and Davies appeared.
“It’s a bit of a load, and she’s rather deep; but I think we shall manage,” he reflected. “You sit right aft, and I’ll row.”
I was too far gone for curiosity as to how this monstrous pyramid was to be rowed, or even for surmises as to its foundering by the way. I crawled to my appointed seat, and Davies extricated the buried sculls by a series of tugs, which shook the whole structure, and made us roll alarmingly. How he stowed himself into rowing posture I have not the least idea, but eventually we were moving sluggishly out into the open water, his head just visible in the bows. We had started from what appeared to be the head of a narrow loch, and were leaving behind us the lights of a big town. A long frontage of lamp-lit quays was on our left, with here and there the vague hull of a steamer alongside. We passed the last of the lights and came out into a broader stretch of water, when a light breeze was blowing and dark hills could be seen on either shore.
“I’m lying a little way down the fiord, you see,” said Davies. “I hate to be too near a town, and I found a carpenter handy here— There she is! I wonder how you’ll like her!”
I roused myself. We were entering a little cove encircled by trees, and approaching a light which flickered in the rigging of a small vessel, whose outline gradually defined itself.
“Keep her off,” said Davies, as we drew alongside.
In a moment he had jumped on deck, tied the painter, and was round at my end.
“You hand them up,” he ordered, “and I’ll take them.”