“I slept the whole afternoon,” I said; “and, to tell the truth, I rather dread the idea of going to bed, it’s so tiring. Look here, you’ve rushed over that last part like an express train. That passage to the Schleswig coast—the Eider River, did you say?—was a longish one, wasn’t it?”
“Well, you see what it was; about seventy miles, I suppose, direct.” He spoke low, bending down to sweep up some cigar ashes on the floor.
“Direct?” I insinuated. “Then you put in somewhere?”
“I stopped once, anchored for the night; oh, that’s nothing of a sail with a fair wind. By Jove! I’ve forgotten to caulk that seam over your bunk, and it’s going to rain. I must do it now. You turn in.”
He disappeared. My curiosity, never very consuming, was banished by concern as to the open seam; for the prospect of a big drop, remorseless and regular as Fate, falling on my forehead throughout the night, as in the torture-chamber of the Inquisition, was alarming enough to recall me wholly to the immediate future. So I went to bed, finding on the whole that I had made progress in the exercise, though still far from being the trained contortionist that the occasion called for. Hammering ceased, and Davies reappeared just as I was stretched on the rack—tucked up in my bunk, I mean.
“I say,” he said, when he was settled in his, and darkness reigned, “do you think you’ll like this sort of thing?”
“If there are many places about here as beautiful as this,” I replied, “I think I shall. But _I_ should like to land now and then and have a walk. Of course, a great deal depends on the weather, doesn’t it? I hope this rain” (drops had begun to patter overhead) “doesn’t mean that the summer’s over for good.”
“Oh, you can sail just the same,” said Davies, “unless it’s very bad. There’s plenty of sheltered water. There’s bound to be a change soon. But then there are the ducks. The colder and stormier it is, the better for them.”
I had forgotten the ducks and the cold, and, suddenly presented as a shooting-box in inclement weather, the _Dulcibella_ lost ground in my estimation, which she had latterly gained.
“I’m fond of shooting,” I said, “but I’m afraid I’m only a fair-weather yachtsman, and I should much prefer sun and scenery.”