Why in the world couldn't you
lunch comfortably at Ekken and save this infernal pandemonium of a
picnic? Where's the yacht going to meanwhile? And how are we to lunch
on that slanting table? I'm covered with varnish and mud, and
ankle-deep in crockery. There goes the beer!'

'You shouldn't have stood it on the table with this list on,' said
Davies, with intense composure, 'but it won't do any harm; it'll
drain into the bilge' (ashes to ashes, dust to dust, I thought). 'You
go on deck now, and I'll finish getting ready.' I regretted my
explosion, though wrung from me under great provocation.

'Keep her straight on as she's going,' said Davies, as I clambered up
out of the chaos, brushing the dust off my trousers and varnishing
the ladder with my hands. I unlashed the helm and kept her as she was
going.

We had rounded a sharp bend in the fiord, and were sailing up a broad
and straight reach which every moment disclosed new beauties, sights
fair enough to be balm to the angriest spirit. A red-roofed hamlet
was on our left, on the right an ivied ruin, close to the water,
where some contemplative cattle stood knee-deep. The view ahead was a
white strand which fringed both shores, and to it fell wooded slopes,
interrupted here and there by low sandstone cliffs of warm red
colouring, and now and again by a dingle with cracks of greensward.

I forgot petty squalors and enjoyed things--the coy tremble of the
tiller and the backwash of air from the dingy mainsail, and, with a
somewhat chastened rapture, the lunch which Davies brought up to me
and solicitously watched me eat.

Later, as the wind sank to lazy airs, he became busy with a larger
topsail and jib; but I was content to doze away the afternoon,
drenching brain and body in the sweet and novel foreign atmosphere,
and dreamily watching the fringe of glen cliff and cool white sand as
they passed ever more slowly by.

IV. Retrospect

'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 and steep in the gathering darkness. Close ahead they
faded away suddenly, and the sight lost itself in a grey void.