rate; West Hinder 5 a.m.,
outside all banks Ostend 11 a.m.' The Scheldt had a couple of pages
very technical and _staccato_ in style. Inland Holland was given a
contemptuous summary, with some half-hearted allusions to windmills,
and so on, and a caustic word or two about boys, paint, and canal
smells.

At Amsterdam technicalities began again, and a brisker tone pervaded
the entries, which became progressively fuller as the writer cruised
on the Frisian coast. He was clearly in better spirits, for here and
there were quaint and laboured efforts to describe nature out of
material which, as far as I could judge, was repellent enough to
discourage the most brilliant and observant of writers; with an
occasional note of a visit on shore, generally reached by a walk of
half a mile over sand, and of talks with shop people and fishermen.
But such lighter relief was rare. The bulk dealt with channels and
shoals with weird and depressing names, with the centre-plate, the
sails, and the wind, buoys and 'booms', tides and 'berths' for the
night. 'Kedging off' appeared to be a frequent diversion; 'running
aground' was of almost daily occurrence.

It was not easy reading, and I turned the leaves rapidly. I was
curious, too, to see the latter part. I came to a point where the
rain of little sentences, pattering out like small shot, ceased
abruptly. It was at the end of 9th September. That day, with its
'kedging' and 'boom-dodging', was filled in with the usual detail.
The log then leapt over three days, and went on: '_13th. Sept._--Wind
W.N.W. fresh. Decided to go to Baltic. Sailed 4 a.m. Quick passage E.
S. to mouth of Weser. Anchored for night under Hohenhoern Sand. _14th
Sept.--Nil. 15th Sept._--Under way at 4 a.m. Wind East moderate.
Course W. by S.: four miles; N.E. by N. fifteen miles Norderpiep
9.30. Eider River 11.30.' This recital of naked facts was quite
characteristic when 'passages' were concerned, and any curiosity I
had felt about his reticence on the previous night would have been
rather allayed than stimulated had I not noticed that a page had been
torn out of the book just at this point. The frayed edge left had
been pruned and picked into very small limits; but dissimulation was
not Davies's strong point, and a child could have seen that a leaf
was missing, and that the entries, starting from the evening of 9th
September (where a page ended), had been written together at one
sitting. I was on the point of calling