the creek: two figures were out on
the brink, hauling on two painters. Then Davies was striding over the
sand, and a girl--I could see her now--was coming to meet him. And
then I thought it was time to go below and tidy up.

Nothing on earth could have made the 'Dulcibella's' saloon a worthy
reception-room for a lady. I could only use hurried efforts to make
it look its best by plying a bunch of cotton-waste and a floor-brush;
by pitching into racks and lockers the litter of pipes, charts,
oddments of apparel, and so on, that had a way of collecting afresh,
however recently we had tidied up; by neatly arranging our
demoralized library, and by lighting the stove and veiling the table
under a clean white cloth.

I suppose about twenty minutes had elapsed, and I was scrubbing
fruitlessly at the smoky patch on the ceiling, when I heard the sound
of oars and voices outside. I threw the cotton-waste into the
fo'c'sle, made an onslaught on my hands, and then mounted the
companion ladder. Our own dinghy was just rounding up alongside,
Davies sculling in the bows, facing him in the stern a young girl in
a grey tam-o'-shanter, loose waterproof jacket and dark serge skirt,
the latter, to be frigidly accurate, disclosing a pair of
workman-like rubber boots which, _mutatis mutandis,_ were very like
those Davies was wearing. Her hair, like his, was spangled with
moisture, and her rose-brown skin struck a note of delicious colour
against the sullen Stygian background.

'There he is,' said Davies. Never did his 'meiner Freund,
Carruthers,' sound so pleasantly in my ears; never so discordantly
the 'Fraulein Dollmann' that followed it. Every syllable of the four
was a lie. Two honest English eyes were looking up into mine; an
honest English hand--is this insular nonsense? Perhaps so, but I
stick to it--a brown, firm hand--no, not so very small, my
sentimental reader--was clasping mine. Of course I had strong
reasons, apart from the racial instinct, for thinking her to be
English, but I believe that if I had had none at all I should at any
rate have congratulated Germany on a clever bit of plagiarism. By her
voice, when she spoke, I knew that she must have talked German
habitually from childhood; diction and accent were faultless, at
least to my English ear; but the native constitutional ring was
wanting.

She came on board. There was a hollow discussion first about time and
weather, but it ended as we all in our hearts wished it to