irring, so with great circumspection I began to reconnoitre the
left bank to the north. The siding entered a fenced enclosure by a
locked gate--a gate I could have easily climbed, but I judged it
wiser to go round by the bridge again and look across. The enclosure
was a small coal-store, nothing more; there were gaunt heaps of coal
glittering in the moonlight; a barge half loaded lying alongside, and
a deserted office building. I skulked along a sandy towpath in
solitude. Fens and field were round me, as the map had said; willows
and osier-beds; the dim forms of cattle; the low melody of wind
roaming unfettered over a plain; once or twice the flutter and quack
of a startled wild-duck.

Presently I came to a farmhouse, dark and silent; opposite it, in the
canal, a couple of empty barges. I climbed into one of these, and
sounded with my stick on the off-side--barely three feet; and the
torpedo-boat melted out of my speculations. The stream, I observed
also, was only just wide enough for two barges to pass with comfort.
Other farms I saw, or thought I saw, and a few more barges lying in
side-cuts linked by culverts to the canal, but nothing noteworthy;
and mindful that I had to explore the Wittmund side of the railway
too, I turned back, already a trifle damped in spirits, but still
keenly expectant.

Passing under the road and railway, I again followed the tow-path,
which, after half a mile, plunged into woods, then entered a clearing
and another fenced enclosure; a timber-yard by the look of it. This
time I stripped from the waist downward, waded over, dressed again,
and climbed the paling. (There was a cottage standing back, but its
occupants evidently slept.) I was in a timber-yard, by the stacks of
wood and the steam saw-mill; but something more than a timber-yard,
for as I warily advanced under the shadow of the trees at the edge of
the clearing I came to a long tin shed which strangely reminded me of
Memmert, and below it, nearer the canal, loomed a dark skeleton
framework, which proved to be a half-built vessel on stocks. Close by
was a similar object, only nearly completed--a barge. A paved slipway
led to the water here, and the canal broadened to a siding or
back-water in which lay seven or eight more barges in tiers. I scaled
another paling and went on, walking, I should think, three miles by
the side of the canal, till the question of bed and ulterior plans
brought me to a halt. It was past midnight, and I wa