“Anyway, it proves,” he said, “that the _Medusa_ has gone back to Norderney. That’s the main thing.”
“Probably,” I agreed, “but let’s sum up all we know. First, it’s certain that nobody we’ve met as yet has any suspicion of _us_——”
“I told you he did it off his own bat,” threw in Davies.
“Or, secondly, of _him._ If he’s what you think it’s not known here.”
“Thirdly, he inquires for you on his way _back_ from Hamburg, three weeks after the event. It doesn’t look as if he thought he had disposed of you—it doesn’t look as if he had _meant_ to dispose of you. He sends his daughter, too; a curious proceeding under the circumstances. Perhaps it’s all a mistake.”
“It’s not a mistake,” said Davies, half to himself. “But _did_ he send her? He’d have sent one of his men. He can’t be on board at all.”
“He must have left the yacht when he got to Hamburg; some other devil’s work, I suppose. She’s being sailed back now, and passing here——”
“Oh, I see! It’s a private supplementary inquiry.”
“Would the girl sail back alone with the crew?”
“She’s used to the sea—and perhaps she isn’t alone. There was that stepmother—— But it doesn’t make a ha’porth of difference to our plans; we’ll start on the ebb to-morrow morning.”
We were busier than usual that night, reckoning stores, tidying lockers, and securing movables. “We must economise,” said Davies, for all the world as though we were castaways on a raft. “It’s a wretched thing to have to land somewhere to buy oil,” was a favourite observation of his.
Before getting to sleep I was made to recognise a new factor in the conditions of navigation, now that the tideless Baltic was left behind us. A strong current was sluicing past our sides, and at the eleventh hour I was turned out, clad in pyjamas and oilskins (a horrible combination), to assist in running out a kedge or spare anchor.
“What’s kedging-off?” I asked, when we were tucked up again. “Oh, it’s when you run aground; you have to—but you’ll soon learn all about it.” I steeled my heart for the morrow.
So behold us, then, at eight o’clock on October 5, standing down the river towards the field of our first labours. It is fifteen miles to the mouth; drab, dreary miles like the dullest reaches of the lower Thames; but scenery was of no concern to us, and a south-westerly breeze blowing out of a grey sky kept us constantly on the verge of reefing. The tide as it gathered strength swept us down with a force attested by the speed with which buoys came in sight, nodded above us and passed, each boiling in its eddy of dirty foam. I scarcely noticed at first—so calm was the water, and so regular were the buoys, like milestones along a road—that the northern line of coast was rapidly receding and that the “river” was coming to be but a belt of deep water skirting a vast estuary, three—seven—ten miles broad, till it merged in open sea.