Orakel Classics
The Riddle of the Sands
The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers, prepared as a public-domain Orakel edition with 28 chapter-aware companion links.
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CHAPTER I.: The Letter
CHAPTER I.: The Letter from The Riddle of the Sands. I have read of men who, when forced by their calling to live for long periods in utter solitude—save for a few black faces—have made it a rule to dress regularly for dinner in order to maintain their self-respect and prevent a relapse into barbarism. It was in some such spirit, with an added touch of self-consciousness, that, at seven o’clock in the evening of September 23 in a recent year, I was making my evening
Open2CHAPTER II.: The _Dulcibella_
CHAPTER II.: The _Dulcibella_ from The Riddle of the Sands. That two days later I should be found pacing the deck of the Flushing steamer with a ticket for Hamburg in my pocket may seem a strange result, yet not so strange if you have divined my state of mind. You will guess, at any rate, that I was armed with the conviction that I was doing an act of obscure penance, rumours of which might call attention to my lot and perhaps awaken remorse in the right quarter, while it
Open3CHAPTER III.: Davies
CHAPTER III.: Davies from The Riddle of the Sands. I dozed but fitfully, with a fretful sense of sore elbows and neck and many a draughty hiatus among the blankets. It was broad daylight before I had reached the stage of torpor in which such slumber merges. That was finally broken by the descent through the skylight of a torrent of water. I started up, bumped my head hard against the decks, and blinked leaden-eyed
Open4CHAPTER IV: Retrospect
CHAPTER IV: Retrospect from The Riddle of the Sands. “Wake up!” I rubbed my eyes and wondered where I was; stretched myself painfully, too, for even the cushions had not given me a true bed of roses. It was dusk, and the yacht was stationary in glassy water, coloured by the last after-glow. A roofing of thin upper-cloud had spread over most of the sky, and a subtle smell of rain was in the air. We seemed to be in the middle of the fiord, whose shores looked distant
Open5CHAPTER V.: Wanted, a North Wind
CHAPTER V.: Wanted, a North Wind from The Riddle of the Sands. Nothing disturbed my rest that night, so adaptable is youth and so masterful is nature. At times I was remotely aware of a threshing of rain and a humming of wind, with a nervous kicking of the little hull, and at one moment I dreamt I saw an apparition by candle-light of Davies, clad in pyjamas and huge top-boots, grasping a misty lantern of gigantic proportions. But the apparition mounted the ladder and
Open6CHAPTER VI.: Schlei Fiord
CHAPTER VI.: Schlei Fiord from The Riddle of the Sands. I make no apology for having described these early days in some detail. It is no wonder that their trivialities are as vividly before me as the colours of earth and sea in this enchanting corner of the world. For every trifle, sordid or picturesque, was relevant; every scrap of talk a link; every passing mood critical for good or ill. So slight indeed were the determining causes that changed my autumn holiday into
Open7CHAPTER VII.: The Missing Page
CHAPTER VII.: The Missing Page from The Riddle of the Sands. I woke (on the 1st of October) with that dispiriting sensation that a hitch has occurred in a settled plan. It was explained when I went on deck, and I found the Dulcibella wrapped in a fog, silent, clammy, nothing visible from her decks but the ghostly hull of a galliot at anchor near us. She must have brought up there in the night, for there had been nothing so close the evening before; and I remembered that my
Open8CHAPTER VIII.: The Theory
CHAPTER VIII.: The Theory from The Riddle of the Sands. Davies leaned back and gave a deep sigh, as though he still felt the relief from some tension. I did the same, and felt the same relief. The chart, freed from the pressure of our fingers, rolled up with a flip, as though to say, “What do you think of that?” I have straightened out his sentences a little, for in the excitement of his story they had grown more and more jerky and
Open9CHAPTER IX.: I Sign Articles
CHAPTER IX.: I Sign Articles from The Riddle of the Sands. It was not an easy question to answer, for the affair was utterly outside all my experience; its background the sea, and its actual scene a region of the sea of which I was blankly ignorant. There were other difficulties that I could see perhaps better than Davies, an enthusiast with hobbies, who had been brooding in solitude over his dangerous adventure. Yet both narrative and theory (which have lost, I fear, in
Open10CHAPTER X.: His Chance
CHAPTER X.: His Chance from The Riddle of the Sands. “I say, Davies,” I said, “how long do you think this trip will last? I’ve only got a month’s
Open11CHAPTER XI.: The Pathfinders
CHAPTER XI.: The Pathfinders from The Riddle of the Sands. In the late afternoon of the second day our flotilla reached the Elbe at Brunsbüttel and ranged up in the inner basin, while a big liner, whimpering like a fretful baby, was tenderly nursed into the lock. During the delay Davies left me in charge, and bolted off with an oil-can and a milk-jug. An official in uniform was passing along the quay from vessel to vessel countersigning papers. I went up to meet him with
Open12CHAPTER XII.: My Initiation
CHAPTER XII.: My Initiation from The Riddle of the Sands. The yacht lay with a very slight heel (thanks to a pair of small bilge-keels on her bottom) in a sort of trough she had dug for herself, so that she was still ringed with a few inches of water, as it were with a
Open13CHAPTER XIII.: The Meaning of our Work
CHAPTER XIII.: The Meaning of our Work from The Riddle of the Sands. Nothing happened during the next ten days to disturb us at our work. During every hour of daylight and many of darkness, sailing or anchored, aground or afloat, in rain and shine, wind and calm, we studied the bed of the estuaries, and practised ourselves in threading the network of channels; holding no communication with the land and rarely approaching it. It was a life of toil, exposure, and peril; a struggle
Open14CHAPTER XIV.: The First Night in the Islands
CHAPTER XIV.: The First Night in the Islands from The Riddle of the Sands. A low line of sandhills, pink and fawn in the setting sun, at one end of them a little white village huddled round the base of a massive four-square lighthouse—such was Wangeroog, the easternmost of the Frisian Islands, as I saw it on the evening of October 15. We had decided to make it our first landing-place; and since it possesses no harbour, and is hedged by a mile of sand at low water, we had run in on the
Open15CHAPTER XV.: Bensersiel
CHAPTER XV.: Bensersiel from The Riddle of the Sands. The decisive incidents of our cruise were now fast approaching. Looking back on the steps that led to them, and anxious that the reader should be wholly with us in our point of view, I think I cannot do better than give extracts from my diary of the next three
Open16CHAPTER XVI.: Commander von Brüning
CHAPTER XVI.: Commander von Brüning from The Riddle of the Sands. I was awakened at ten o’clock on the 19th, after a long and delicious sleep, by Davies’s voice outside, talking his unmistakable German. Looking out, in my pyjamas, I saw him on the quay above in conversation with a man in a long mackintosh coat and a gold-laced navy cap. He had a close-trimmed auburn beard, a keen, handsome face, and an animated manner. It was raining in a raw
Open17CHAPTER XVII.: Clearing the Air
CHAPTER XVII.: Clearing the Air from The Riddle of the Sands. “I don’t think so,” said I. “Let’s go aboard before that Customs fellow buttonholes
Open18CHAPTER XVIII.: Imperial Escort
CHAPTER XVIII.: Imperial Escort from The Riddle of the Sands. Memmert gripped me, then, to the exclusion of a rival notion which had given me no little perplexity during the conversation with von Brüning. His reiterated advice that we should lose no time in picking up our anchor and chain had ended by giving me the idea that he was anxious to get us away from Bensersiel and the mainland. At first I had taken the advice partly as a test of our veracity (as I gave the reader to
Open19CHAPTER XIX.: The Rubicon
CHAPTER XIX.: The Rubicon from The Riddle of the Sands. It was a cold, vaporous dawn, the glass rising, and the wind fallen to a light air still from the north-east. Our creased and sodden sails scarcely answered to it as we crept across the oily swell to Langeoog. “Fogs and calms,” Davies prophesied. The Blitz was astir when we passed her, and soon after steamed out to sea. Once over the bar, she turned westward and was lost to view in the haze. I should be sorry to
Open20CHAPTER XX.: The Little Drab Book
CHAPTER XX.: The Little Drab Book from The Riddle of the Sands. 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
Open21CHAPTER XXI.: Blindfold to Memmert
CHAPTER XXI.: Blindfold to Memmert from The Riddle of the Sands. “Here she comes,” said Davies. It was nine o’clock on the next day, October 22, and we were on deck waiting for the arrival of the steamer from Norddeich. There was no change in the weather—still the same stringent cold, with a high barometer, and only fickle flaws of air; but the morning was gloriously clear, except for a wreath or two of mist curling like smoke from the sea, and an attenuated belt of opaque fog on
Open22CHAPTER XXII.: The Quartette
CHAPTER XXII.: The Quartette from The Riddle of the Sands. His tour de force was achieved, and for the moment something like collapse set
Open23CHAPTER XXIII.: A Change of Tactics
CHAPTER XXIII.: A Change of Tactics from The Riddle of the Sands. We pushed off without a word, and paddled out of sight of the beach. A voice was approaching, hailing us. “Hail back,” whispered Davies; “pretend we’re a
Open24CHAPTER XXIV.: Finesse
CHAPTER XXIV.: Finesse from The Riddle of the Sands. The door of a room on the ground floor was opened to us by a man-servant. As we entered the rattle of a piano stopped, and a hot wave of mingled scent and cigar-smoke struck my nostrils. The first thing I noticed over Davies’s shoulder, as he preceded me into the room, was a woman—the source of the perfume I decided—turning round from the piano as he passed it and staring him up and down with a disdainful
Open25CHAPTER XXV.: I Double Back
CHAPTER XXV.: I Double Back from The Riddle of the Sands. “Good-bye,” the whistle blew and the ferry-steamer forged ahead, leaving Davies on the quay, bareheaded and wearing his old Norfolk jacket and stained grey flannels, as at our first meeting in Flensburg station. There was no bandaged hand this time, but he looked pinched and depressed; his eyes had black circles round them; and again I felt that same indefinable pathos in
Open26CHAPTER XXVI.: The Seven Siels
CHAPTER XXVI.: The Seven Siels from The Riddle of the Sands. Selecting the very humblest Gasthaus I could discover, I laid down my bundle and called for beer, bread, and Wurst. The landlord, as I had expected, spoke the Frisian dialect, so that though he was rather difficult to understand, he had no doubts about the purity of my own German high accent. He was a worthy fellow, and hospitably interested: “Did I want a bed?” “No; I was going on to Bensersiel,” I said, “to sleep
Open27CHAPTER XXVII.: The Luck of the Stowaway
CHAPTER XXVII.: The Luck of the Stowaway from The Riddle of the Sands. At Esens Station I reversed my Norden tactics, jumped out smartly, and got to the door of egress first of all, gave up my ticket, and hung about the gate of the station under cover of darkness. Fortune smiled still; there was no vehicle in waiting at all, and there were only half a dozen passengers. Two of these were the cloaked gentlemen who had been so nearly left behind at Norden, and another was von Brüning. The
Open28CHAPTER XXVIII.: We Achieve our Double Aim
CHAPTER XXVIII.: We Achieve our Double Aim from The Riddle of the Sands. When, exactly, the atmosphere of misunderstanding on the stranded tug was dissipated, I do not know, for by the time I had fitted the rowlocks and shipped sculls, tide and wind had caught me, and were sweeping me merrily back on the road to Norderney, whose lights twinkled through the scud in the north. With my first few strokes I made towards the lighter—which I could see sagging helplessly to leeward—but as soon
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