knew, had come, and the reckless impudence
that had brought me here must serve me still and extricate me.
Fortune loves rough wooing. I backed my luck and watched.

The behaviour of the passengers struck me as odd. They remained in a
row at the taffrail, gazing astern like regretful emigrants, and
sometimes, gesticulating and pointing. Now no vestige of the low land
was visible, so I was driven to the conclusion that it was the
lighter they were discussing; and I date my awakening from the moment
that I realized this. But the thread broke prematurely; for the
passengers took to pacing the deck, and I had to lie low. When next I
was able to raise my head they were round Grimm at the wheel,
engaged, as far as I could discover from their gestures, in an
argument about our course and the time, for Grimm looked at his watch
by the light of a hand-lantern.

We were heading north, and I knew by the swell that we must be near
the Accumer Ee, the gap between Langeoog and Baltrum. Were we going
out to open sea? It came over me with a rush that we _must,_ if we
were to drop this lighter at Memmert. Had I been Davies I should have
been quicker to seize certain rigid conditions of this cruise, which
no human power could modify. We had left after high tide. The water
therefore was falling everywhere; and the tributary channels in rear
of the islands were slowly growing impassable. It was quite thirty
miles to Memmert, with three watersheds to pass; behind Baltrum,
Norderney, and Juist. A skipper with nerve and perfect confidence
might take us over one of these in the dark, but most of the run
would infallibly have to be made outside. I now better understood the
protests of Herr Schenkel to Grimm. Never once had we seen a lighter
in tow in the open sea, though plenty behind the barrier of islands;
indeed it was the very existence of the sheltered byways that created
such traffic as there was. It was only Grimm's _metier_ and the
incubus of the lighter that had suggested Memmert as our destination
at all, and I began to doubt it now. That tricky hoop of sand had
befooled us before.

At this moment, and as if to corroborate my thought, the telegraph
rang and the tug slowed down. I effaced myself and heard Grimm
shouting to the man on the lighter to starboard his helm, and to the
look-out to come aft. The next order froze my very marrow; it was
'lower away'. Someone was at the davits of my boat fingering the
tackles; the forward fal