Page:Buchan - The Thirty-Nine Steps (Grosset Dunlap, 1915).djvu/200

 number. It must be some place where there were several staircases and one marked out from the others by having thirty-nine steps. Then I had a sudden thought and hunted up all the steamer sailings. There was no boat which left for the Continent at 10.17 Why was high tide important? If it was a harbour it must be some little place where the tide mattered, or else it was a heavy-draught boat. But there was no regular steamer sailing at that hour, and somehow I didn't think they would travel by a big boat from a regular harbour. So it must be some little harbour where the tide was important, or perhaps no harbour at all.

But if it was a little port I couldn't see what the steps signified. There were no sets of staircases at any harbour that I had ever seen. It must be some place which a particular staircase identified, and where the tide was full at 10.17. On the whole it seemed to me that the place must be a bit of open coast. But the staircases kept puzzling me.