iature-rollers on the bank beside us. My palms, seasoned
as they were, were smarting with watery blisters. The pace was too
hot for my strength and breath.

'I must have a rest,' I gasped.

'Well, I think we're over it,' said Davies.

We stopped the dinghy dead, and he stabbed over the side with the
boat-hook. It passed gently astern of us, and even my bewildered
brain took in the meaning of that.

'Three feet and the current with us. _Well_ over it,' he said. 'I'll
paddle on while you rest and feed.'

It was a few minutes past one and we still, as he calculated, had
eight miles before us, allowing for bends.

'But it's a mere question of muscle,' he said.

I took his word for it, and munched at tongue and biscuits. As for
muscle, we were both in hard condition. He was fresh, and what
distress I felt was mainly due to spasmodic exertion culminating in
that desperate spurt. As for the fog, it had more than once shown a
faint tendency to lift, growing thinner and more luminous, in the
manner of fogs, always to settle down again, heavy as a quilt.

Note the spot marked 'second rest' (approximately correct. Davies
says) and the course of the channel from that point westward. You
will see it broadening and deepening to the dimensions of a great
river, and finally merging in the estuary of the Ems. Note, too, that
its northern boundary, the edge of the now uncovered Nordland Sand,
leads, with one interruption _(marked A),_ direct to Memmert, and is
boomed throughout. You will then understand why Davies made so light
of the rest of his problem. Compared with the feats he had performed,
it was child's play, for he always had that visible margin to keep
touch with if he chose, or to return to in case of doubt. As a matter
of fact--observe our dotted line--he made two daring departures from
it, the first purely to save time, the second partly to save time and
partly to avoid the very awkward spot marked A, where a creek with
booms and a little delta of its own interrupts the even bank. During
the first of these departures--the shortest but most brilliant--he
let me do the rowing, and devoted himself to the niceties of the
course; during the second, and through both the intermediate stages,
he rowed himself, with occasional pauses to inspect the chart. We
fell into a long, measured stroke, and covered the miles rapidly,
scarcely exchanging a single word till, at the end of a long pull
through vacancy, Davies said suddenl