“We have no fixed plans. Davies wants to get some shooting.
I insisted on being obtuse, for though this fencing with an unstrung girl was hateful work, the quest was at stake. We were going to Norderney, come what might, and sooner or later we must see Dollmann. It was no use promising not to. I had given no pledge to von Brüning, and I would give none to her. The only alternative was to violate the compact (which the present fiasco had surely weakened), speak out, and try and make an ally of her. Against her own father? I shrank from the responsibility and counted the cost of failure—certain failure, to judge by her conduct. She began to hoist her lugsail in a dazed, shiftless fashion, while our two boats drifted slowly to leeward.
“Father might not like it,” she said, so low and from such tremulous lips that I scarcely caught her words. “He does not like foreigners much. I am afraid . . . he did not want to see Herr Davies again.”
“It was wrong of me to come aboard—I suddenly remembered; but I could not tell Herr Davies.”
“He will understand. I know he will be very sorry, but,” I added, firmly, “you can trust him implicitly to do the right thing.” And how I prayed that this would content her! Thank Heaven, it did.
“Yes,” she said, “I am afraid I did not say good-bye to him. You will do so?” She gave me her hand.
“One thing more,” I added, holding it, “nothing had better be said about this meeting?”
“No, no, nothing. It must never be known.”
I let go the gig’s gunwale and watched her tighten her sheet and make a tack or two to windward. Then I rowed back to the _Dulcibella_ as hard as I could.
I found Davies at the cabin table, surrounded with a litter of books. The shelf was empty, and its contents were tossed about among the cups and on the floor. We both spoke together.
I gave way, and told my story briefly. He listened in silence, drumming on the table with a book which he held.
“It’s not good-bye,” he said. “But I don’t wonder; look here!” and he held out to me a small volume, whose appearance was quite familiar to me, if its contents were less so. As I noted in an early chapter, Davies’s library, excluding tide-tables, “pilots”, etc., was limited to two classes of books, those on naval warfare, and those on his own hobby, cruising in small yachts. He had six or seven of the latter, including Knight’s _Falcon in the Baltic,_ Cowper’s _Sailing Tours,_ Macmullen’s _Down Channel_, and other less known stories of adventurous travel. I had scarcely done more than look into some of them at off-moments, for our life had left no leisure for reading. This particular volume was—no, I had better not describe it too fully; but I will say that it was old and unpretentious, bound in cheap cloth of a rather antiquated style, with a title which showed it to be a guide for yachtsmen to a certain British estuary. A white label partly scratched away bore the legend “3_d_.” I had glanced at it once or twice with no special interest.