BY TIDELESS SEAS 69 



when the tide suited, we would cast loose the 

 painter and drift, on the last of the ebb, past 

 timber-yards that had known prouder days at 

 the zenith of the League, and sail out between 

 the piers, perchance meeting the afternoon steamer 

 from Gjedse, getting back to our boathouse after 

 tea, on the return of the tide, such tide as there was. 

 Compared with the seas that I had known, with 

 the Channel, where it uncovered reefs of rocks 

 at Hastings or miles of sand at Bognor, with the 

 harbours of Folkestone and Shoreham, dry at low 

 tide, the Baltic seemed almost deficient in that 

 phenomenon. The " Bad Anstalt" where little 

 swimming, but much kummel and social inter- 

 course, occupied the fashion all those hot summer 

 days, stood in an almost unvarying depth of 

 water, whereas on the English coast, it would have 

 been alternately flooded and left sky-high above 

 the receding seas. 



Our fishing in the salt or brackish water at 

 Warnemtinde was so public during July and 

 August that the ordinarily neglected pier became 

 the daily resort of many lookers-on, a class of 

 which Germany, like some other countries, gives 

 generous measure. Such sport, however, as we 

 stole from the upper waters of the river was 

 strictly under the rose. All rights were apparently 

 vested in the netsmen, who caught pike, perch 

 and other kinds of fish in most wasteful fashion 



