hat it will be uneatable anyhow.'

The dinghy was moving fast. There was a rapidly-widening strip of golden
water between myself and the young man on the jetty.

'Not all of it,' I said, raising my voice. 'Try the compote. It is
lovely compote. It is what you would call in England glorified
gooseberry jam.'

'Glorified gooseberry jam?' echoed the young man, apparently much struck
by these three English words. 'Why,' he added, speaking louder, for the
golden strip had grown very wide, 'you said that without the ghost of a
foreign accent!'

'Did I?'

The dinghy shot into the shadow of the fishing-smack. The Viking and the
boy shipped their oars, helped me in, tied the dinghy to the stern,
hoisted the sail, and we dropped away into the sunset.

The young man on the distant jetty raised his cap. He might have been a
young archangel, standing there the centre of so much glory. Certainly a
very personable young man.

THE THIRD DAY

FROM LAUTERBACH TO GOeHREN

The official on the steamer at the Lauterbach jetty had offered to take
me to Baabe when I said I wanted to go to Vilm, and I had naturally
refused the offer. Afterwards, on looking at the map, I found that Baabe
is a place I would have to pass anyhow, if I carried out my plan of
driving right round Ruegen. The guide-book is enthusiastic about Baabe,
and says--after explaining its rather odd name as meaning _Die Einsame_,
the Lonely One--that it has a pine forest, a pure sea air with ozone in
it, a climate both mild and salubrious, and that it works wonders on
people who have anything the matter with their chests. Then it says that
to lie at Baabe embedded in soft dry sand, allowing one's glance to rove
about the broad sea with its foam-crested waves, and the rest of one to
rejoice in the strong air, is an enviable thing to do. Then it bursts
into poetry that goes on for a page about the feelings of him who is
embedded, written by one who has been it. And then comes the practical
information that you can live at Baabe _en pension_ for four marks a
day, and that dinner costs one mark twenty _pfennings_. Never was there
a more irrepressibly poetic guide-book. What tourist wants to be told
first how he will feel when he has embedded himself in sand? Pleasures
of a subtle nature have no attraction for him who has not dined. Before
everything, the arriving tourist wants to know where he will get the
best dinner and what it will cost; and not until that has