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 September 9. 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: “_Sept._ 13. Wind W.N.W. fresh. Decided to go to Baltic. Sailed 4 a.m. Quick passage E. 1/2 S. to mouth of Weser. Anchored for night under Hohenhörn Sand. _ Sept._ 14, _nil_. _Sept._ 15, 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 September 9 (where a page ended), had been written together at one sitting. I was on the point of calling to Davies, and chaffing him with having committed a grave offence against maritime law in having “cooked” his log; but I checked myself, I scarcely know why, probably because I guessed the joke would touch a sensitive place and fail. Delicacy shrank from seeing him compelled either to amplify a deception or blunder out a confession—he was too easy a prey; and, after all, the matter was of small moment. I returned the book to the shelf, the only definite result of its perusal being to recall my promise to keep a diary myself, and I then and there dedicated a notebook to the purpose.
We were just lighting our cigars when we heard voices and the splash of oars, followed by a bump against the hull which made Davies wince, as violations of his paint always did. “Guten Abend; wo fahren Sie hin?” greeted us as we climbed on deck. It turned out to be some jovial fishermen returning to their smack from a visit to Sonderburg. A short dialogue proved to them that we were mad Englishmen in bitter need of charity.