issue hung in the balance ... Again we touched mud, and the artist's
joy of achievement shone in his eyes. Backing away, we headed west.
and for the first time he began to gaze into the fog.

'There's one!' he snapped at last. 'Easy all!'

A boom, one of the usual upright saplings, glided out of the mist. He
caught hold of it, and we brought up.

'Rest for three minutes now,' he said. 'We're in fairly good time.'

It was 11.10. I ate some biscuits and took a nip of whisky while
Davies prepared for the next stage.

We had reached the eastern outlet of Memmert Balje, the channel which
runs east and west behind Juist Island, direct to the south point of
Memmert. How we had reached it was incomprehensible to me at the
time, but the reader will understand by comparing my narrative with
the dotted line on the chart. I add this brief explanation, that
Davies's method had been to cross the channel called the Buse Tief,
and strike the other side of it at a point well _south_ of the outlet
of the Memmert Balje (in view of the northward set of the ebb-tide),
and then to drop back north and feel his way to the outlet. The check
was caused by a deep indentation in the Itzendorf Flat; a
_cul-de-sac,_ with a wide mouth, which Davies was very near mistaking
for the Balje itself. We had no time to skirt dents so deep as that;
hence the dash across its mouth with the chance of missing the upper
lip altogether, and of either being carried out to sea (for the
slightest error was cumulative) or straying fruitlessly along the
edge.