Norderney!' and I saw, surmounting a long slope of weedy sand, still
wet with the receding sea, a cluster of sandhills exactly like a
hundred others I had seen of late, but fraught with a new and unique
interest.

The usual formula, 'What have you got now?' checked my reverie, and
'Helm's a-lee,' ended it for the time. We tacked on (for the wind had
headed us) in very shoal water.

Suddenly Davies said: 'Is that a boat ahead?'

'Do you mean that galliot?' I asked. I could plainly distinguish one
of those familiar craft about half a mile away, just within the limit
of vision.

'The Kormoran, do you think?' I added. Davies said nothing, but grew
inattentive to his work. 'Barely four,' from me passed unnoticed, and
we touched once, but swung off under some play of the current. Then
came abruptly, 'Stand by the anchor. Let go,' and we brought up in
mid-stream of the narrow creek we were following. I triced up the
main-tack, and stowed the headsails unaided. When I had done Davies
was still gazing to windward through his binoculars, and, to my
astonishment, I noticed that his hands were trembling violently. I
had never seen this happen before, even at moments when a false turn
of the wrist meant death on a surf-battered bank.

'What is it?' I asked; 'are you cold?'

'That little boat,' he said. I gazed to windward, too, and now saw a
scrap of white in the distance, in sharp relief.