Manners once more produced his tide table.
“Five or six weeks ago,” he repeated, slowly. “That would be between the sixteenth and the twenty-third of August.” He ran his stubby finger up the pages, then read out: “ ‘Twenty-first, Sunday, O point five—that’s five minutes past midnight, you understand. Twenty-second, Monday, one-twenty-three A.M.; twenty-third, Tuesday, two-fifty-five A.M.’ ’Ow would that suit you, sir?”
“All right, I think,” French answered as he noted the three dates. “Any of those top springs?”
“No, sir; you don’t get ’igh water of springs at night. ’Bout six or seven o’clock it runs. Those dates wot I gave you are about dead neaps.”
“But there is still a strong flow at neaps?”
“Oh, bless you, yes! Not so strong as at springs, o’ course, but plenty strong enough.”
All this seemed satisfactory to French and he felt a growing conviction that the small hours of the 21st, 22nd, or 23rd of August had witnessed the launch of the crate. But this was mere theory, and theory is popularly admitted to be worth only one-sixteenth of the value of practice. Could not he arrive at something more definite?
Suddenly he thought he saw his way.
“You say it was neap tides on those three dates in August? What rise and fall does that represent?”
“ ’Bout eighteen feet.”