 CHAPTER XXVI SELECTING the very humblest gusthouse I could discover. I laid down my bundle, and called for beer, bread, and worst. The landlord, as I had expected, spoke the Frisian dialect, so that, though he was rather difficult to understand, he had no doubts about the purity of my own German high accent. He was a worthy fellow, and hospitably interested. Did I want a bed? No, I was going on to Benzazil, I said, to sleep there, and take the morning post-shift to Langeorg Island. I had not forgotten our friends, the twin giants, and their functions. I was not an islander myself, he asked. No, but I had a married sister there, had just returned from a year's voyaging, and was going to visit her. By the way, I asked, how were they getting on with the Benzartif? My friend shrugged his shoulders. It was finished, he believed. And the connection to Wittmund? Under construction still. Langeorg would be going ahead, then. Oh, he's supposed so, but he did not believe in these newfangled schemes. But it was good for trade, I supposed. Isens would benefit in sending goods by the Tief. What was the traffic, by the way? Oh, a few more barge loads than before of brick, timber, coals, et cetera. But it would come to nothing he knew. Aktsingeserchöften, companies, were an invention of the devil. A few speculators got them up and made money themselves out of land and contracts, while the shareholders they had hoodwinked starved. There's something in that, I conceded, to this bigoted old conservative. My sister at Langeorg rents her lodging-house from a man named Dolman. They say he owns a heap of land about. I saw his yacht once, pink velvet and electric light inside, they say. That's the name, said my host. That's one of them, some sort of foreigner I've heard. Runs a salvage-concern, too, used way. Well, he won't get any of my savings, I laughed, and soon after took my leave and inquired from a passer-by the road to Dornum. Follow the railway, I was told. With a warm wind in my face from the south-west, fleecy clouds and half-moon overhead I set out, not for Benzazil, but for Benzateef, which I knew must cross the road to Dornum somewhere. A mile or so of cobbled causeway flanked with ditches and willows, and running cheek by jowl with a railway track. Then a bridge, and below me the teaf, which was in fact a small canal. A rotty track left the road and sloped down to it one side, a rough siding left the railway, and sloped down to it on the other. I littered pipe and sat on the parapet for a little. No one was staring, 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 sculpt along a sandy tow-path in solitude. Fends and field were round me, as the map had said, willows and ozio-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 offside, 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 Wittman 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 pailing. 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 sawmill, 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 Mehmet, and below it, nearer the canal, loomed a dark skeleton framework which proved to be a half-built vessel on stalks. Close by was a similar object, only nearly completed, a barge. A paved slipway ledge to the water here, and the canal broadened to a siding or backwater, in which lay seven or eight more barges in tears. I scaled another pailing 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 was adding little to my information. I had encountered a brick field, but soon after that there was increasing proof that the canal was as yet little used for traffic. It grew narrower, and there were many signs of recent labour for its improvement. In one place a dam-dough deviation was being excavated, abruptly ending, evidently to abridged an impossible bend. The path had become atrocious and my boots were heavy with clay. Bearing in mind the abruptly ending blue line on the map, I considered it useless to go farther, and retraced my steps, trying to concoct a story which would satisfy an irritable easin's innkeeper that it was a respectable wayfarer and not a tramp or lunatic who knocked him up at half-past one of their abats. But a much more practical resource occurred to me as I approached the timber-yard, for lodging, free and accessible, lay there ready to hand. I boarded one of the empty barges in the backwater, and surveyed my quarters for the night. It was of a similar pattern to all the others I had seen. A lighter, strictly, in the sense that it had no means of self-propulsion, had no separate quarters for a crew, the whole interior of the hull being free for cargo. At both bow and stern there were ten feet or so of deck, garnished with bits and bollards. The rest was an open wall, flanked by waterways of substantial breadth, the whole of stout construction, and for a humble lighter, of well-proportioned and even graceful design, with a marked forward shear, and, as I had observed in this specimen on the stocks, easy lines at the stern. In short it was apparent, even to an ignorant landsman like myself, that she was designed not merely for canal work, but for rough water, and well she might be, for though the few miles of sea she had to cross in order to reach the islands were both shallow and sheltered, I knew from experience what a vicious surf they could be whipped into by a sudden gale. It must not be supposed that I dwelt on this matter. On limited lines I was making progress, but the wings of my imagination still drooped nervously at my sides. Otherwise I perhaps should have examined this lighter more particularly, instead of regarding it mainly as a convenient hiding-place. Under the stern deck was stored a massive roll of tarpaulin, a corner of which made an excellent blanket, at my bundle a good pillow. It was a descent from the luxury of last night, but a spy, I reflected philosophically, cannot expect a feather-bed two nights running, and this one was at any rate airier and roomier than the coffin-like bunk of the Delcibella, at not so very much harder. When Snugglean's gonst I studied the map by intermittent match-light. It had been dawning on me in the last half-hour that this canal was only one of several, that in concentrating myself on easins and benza zeal I had forgotten that there were other villages ending in zeal, also furnished on the chart with corkscrew streams, and moreover that boomers statistics of depth and distance had been marshaled in seven categories, A to G. The very first match brought full recollection as to the villages. The suffix zeal repeated itself all round the coastline. Five miles eastward of Benza zeal was Neuharlinger zeal, and farther on Carolinenseal. Four miles westward was Dorneuma zeal, and farther on Nesma zeal and Hülgenrieda zeal. That was six on the north coast of the peninsula alone. On the west coast, facing the Ems, there was only one, Great zeal, a good way south of Norden. But on the east, facing the Yarde, there were no less than eight at very close intervals. A moment's thought, and I disregarded this latter group, they had nothing to do with easins, nor had they any imaginable raison d'être as veins for commas, differing markedly in this respect from the group of six on the north coast, whose outlook was the chain of islands, and whose inland centre, almost exactly, was easins. I still wanted one to make seven, and as a working hypothesis added the solitary Great zeal. At all seven villages, streams debouched as at Benza zeal. From all seven points of issue, dotted lines were marked seaward, intersecting the Great tidal sands and leading towards the islands. And on the mainland, behind the whole seven-fold system, ran the loop of railway. But there were manifold minor points of difference. No stream boasted so deep and decisive a blue lintel, as did Benza Tief, and unpenetrated so far into the hinterland. They varied in length and sinuosity. Two, those belonging to Hülgenrieder zeal and Gretzeal, appeared not to reach the railway at all. On the other hand, Carolinen zeal opposite Wangerog island had a branch line all to itself. Much after much waxed and waned as I puzzled over the mystic seven. In the end I puzzled myself to sleep, with the one fixed idea that tomorrow, on my way back to Norden, I must see more of these budding canals if such they were. My dreams that night were of a mighty chain of redoubts, at masked batteries, couching perdue among the sand dunes of desolate islets. Built coral-like, by infinitely slow and secret labour, fed by lethal cargos born in lighters and in charge of stealthy mutes, who, one and all, bore the likeness of Grimm. I was up and away at daylight, the weather mild and chowry, meeting some navies on my way back to the road, who gave me good morning and a stare. On the bridge I halted and fell into torments of indecision. There was so much to do and so little time to do it in. The whole problem seemed to have been multiplied by seven, and the total again doubled and redoubled. Seven blue lines on land, seven dotted lines on the sea, seven islands in the offing. Once I was near deciding to put my pretext into practice and cross to Langorg, but that meant missing the rendezvous and I was lost to do that. At any rate I wanted breakfast badly, and the best way to get it, and at the same time to open new ground, was to walk to Dornham. Then I should find a blue line called the Neuest Tief, leading to Dornham-Azill on the coast. That explored I could pass on to Nessa, where there was another blue line to Ness-Mazill. All this was on my way to Norden, and I should have the railway constantly at my back to carry me there in the evening. The last train, my timetable told me, was one reaching Norden at 7.15 p.m. I could catch this at Harger Station at 5.7. A brisk walk of six miles brought me, ravenously hungry, to Dornham. Road and railway had clung together all the time, and about half way had been joined on the left by a third companion in the shape of a puny stream which I knew from the map to be the upper portion of Neuest Tief. Riggling and doubling like an eel choked with sedges and reeds, it had no pretensions to be navigable. At length it looped away into the fens out of sight, only to reappear again close to Dornham in a much more dignified guise. There was no siding where the railway crossed it, but at the town itself which it had skirted on the east, a towpath began, and a piled wharf had been recently constructed. Going on to this was a red brick building with a look of a warehouse, roofless as yet, and with workmen on its scaffolds. It sharpened the edge of my appetite. If I had been wise, I should have been content with a snack bought at a counter, but a thirst for hot coffee and clues induced me to repeat the experiment of easins and seek a primitive beer-house. I was less lucky on this occasion. The house I chose was obscure enough, but its proprietor was no simple frisian but an ill-looking rascal with shifty eyes and a debauched complexion who showed a most unwelcome curiosity in his customer. As a last fatality he wore a peaked cap like my own and turned out to be an ex-sailor. I should have fled at the sight of him had I had the chance, but I was attended to firstly by a slattenly girl, who I am sure called him up to view me. To explain my muddy boots and trousers I said I had walked from easins, and from that I found myself involved in a tangle of impromptu lies. Going down an old groove I placed my sister this time on Baltrum Island, and said I was going to Dorne-Mazil, which is opposite Baltrum, to cross from there. As this was drawing a bow at a venture I dared not assume local knowledge and spoke of the visit as my first. Dorne-Mazil was a lucky shot. There was a fairy Galleot from there to Baltrum, but he knew or pretended to know Baltrum and had not heard of my sister. I grew the more nervous in that I saw from the first that he took me to be of better condition than most merchant-seaman, and to make matters worse I was imprudent enough in pleading haste to pull out from an inner pocket my gold watch, with a chain and seals attached. He told me there was no hurry that I should miss the tide at Dorne-Mazil, and then fell to pressing strong waters on me, and asking questions whose insinuating grossness gave me the key to his biography. He must have been at one stage in his career a doxide crimp, one of those foul sharks who prey on discharged seamen, and as often as not, are ex-seaman themselves, versed in the weaknesses of the tribe. He was now keeping his hand in with me, who unhappily purported to belong to the very class he was used to victimise, and moreover had a gold watch, and, dad-less, a full purse. Nothing more ridiculously inopportune could have befallen me, or more dangerous, for his class are as cosmopolitan as waiters and concierge, with as facile a gift for language and as unearing ascent for nationality. Sure enough, the fellow recognised mine, and positively challenged me with it in fairly fluent English with the Yankee twang. Encumbered with the mythical sister, of course, I stuck to my lie, said I had been on an English ship so long that I had picked up the accent, and also gave him some words and broken English. At the same time I showed I thought him an impertinent nuisance, paid my score, and walked out, quit of him, not a bit of it. He insisted on showing me the way to Don Amozio, and followed me down this street. Perceiving that he was in liquor, in spite of the early hour, I dared not risk a quarrelsome scene with a man who already knew so much about me, at might at any moment elicit more. So I melted and humoured him, treated him in a gin-shop, in the hope of giving him the slip, a disastrous resource which was made a precedent for further petitions elsewhere. I would gladly draw a veil over our scandalous progress through peaceable Don Amozio. Of the terrors I experienced when he introduced me as his friend, and as his English friend, and of the abasement I felt too, as, linked arm in arm, we trod the three miles of road coastwards. It was his malicious whim that we should talk English, a fortunate whim, as it turned out, because I knew no folksal German, but had a smattering of folksal English, gathered from Cutliffe, Hine, and Kipling. With these I extemporised a disreputable hybrid, mostly consisting of oaths and blasphemies, and so yarned of imaginary voyages. Of course he knew every port in the world, but happily was none too critical, owing to repeated schnappeson. Nevertheless, it was a deplorable contreton from every point of view. I was wasting my time, for the road took a different direction to the noise-teeth, so that I had not even the advantage of inspecting the canal, and only met with it when we reached the sea. Here it split into two mouths, both furnished with locks, and emptying into two little mud-hole harbours, replicas of Benza zeal, each owning its cluster of houses. I made straight for the gust-house at Dornum a zeal, primed my companion well, and asked him to wait while I saw about a boat in the harbour, but needless to say I never rejoined him. I just took a cursory look at the left-hand harbour, saw a lighter locking through, for the tide was high, and then walked as fast as my legs would carry me to the outermost dyke, mounted it, and strode along the sea westwards in the teeth of a smart shower of rain, full of deep apprehensions as to the stir and gossip my disappearance might cause, if my odious crimp was sober enough to discover it. As soon as I deemed it safe, I dropped onto the sand, and ran till I could run no more. Then I sat on my bundle with my back to the dyke in partial shelter from the rain, watching the sea recede from the flats and dwindle into slender meers, and the laden clouds fly weeping over the islands till those pale shapes were lost and missed. The barge I had seen locking through was creeping across towards Langeorg, behind a tug and a whisper of smoke. No more exploration by daylight. That was my first resolve, for I felt as if the country must be ringing with reports of an Englishman in disguise. I must remain in hiding till dusk, then regain the railway, and slink into that train to Norden. Now directly I began to resign myself to temporary inaction, and to centre my thoughts on the rendezvous, a new doubt assailed me. Nothing had seemed more certain yesterday than that Norden was the scene of the rendezvous, but that was before the seven zeals had come into prominence. The name Norden now sounded naked and unconvincing. As I wondered why, it suddenly occurred to me that all the stations along this northern line, though farther inland than Norden, were equally coast stations in the sense that they were in touch with harbours of a sort on the coast. Norden had its tidal creek, but Asens and Dornum had their teafs or canals. Fool that I had been to put such a narrow and such a literal construction on the phrase the tide serves. Which was it more likely that my conspirators would visit, Norden, whose intrusion into our theories was purely hypothetical, or one of these zeals to whose sevenfold systems all my latest observations gave such transcendent significance. There was only one answer, and it filled me with profound discouragement. Seven possible rendezvous. Eight counting Norden. Which to make for? Out came the timetable and map, and with them hope. The case was not so bad after all. It demanded no immediate change of plan, though it imported grief, uncertainties and risks. Norden was still the objective, but mainly as a railway junction, only remotely as a seaport. Though the possible rendezvous were eight, the possible stations were reduced to five. Norden, Harger, Dornum, Isens, Wittmund, all on one single line. Trains from east to west along this line were negligible, because there was none that could be called night trains. The latest being the one I had this morning fixed on to bring me to Norden, were derived at five-fifteen. Of trains from west to east there was only one that need be considered, the same one that I had travelled by last night, leaving Norden at seven-forty-three and reaching Isens at eight-fifty and Wittmund at nine-thirteen. This train, as the reader who was with me in it knows, was in correspondence with another from Emden and the south, and also, I now have found, with services from Hannover, Bremen and Berlin. He will also remember that I had to wait three-quarters of an hour at Norden from seven to seven-forty-three. The platform at Norden Junction, therefore between seven-fifteen when I should arrive at it from the east, and seven-forty-three when Boomer and his unknown friend should leave it for the east, there, and in that half hour, was my opportunity for recognising and shadowing, to at least of the conspirators. I must take the train they took, and alight where they alighted. If I could not find them at all I should be thrown back on the rejected view that Norden itself was the rendezvous, and should wait there till ten-forty-six. In the meantime it was all very well to resolve one in action till dusk. But after an hour's rest, damp clothes and feet, and the absence of pursuers, tempted me to take the field again. Avoiding roads and villages as long as it was light, I cut across country south-westwards, a dismal and laborious journey, with oozy fens and knee-deep drains to cross, with circuits to be made to pass clear of peasants, and many furtive crouchings behind dykes and willows. What little I learnt was in harmony with previous explorations, for my track cut at right angles the line of the harker-teeth, the stream-issuing at Nesma Ziu. It, too, was in the nature of a canal, but only in embryo at the point I touched it, south of Nessa. Works on a deviation were in progress, and in a short digression, down stream, I sighted another lighter-building yard. As for Hülgenrieder Ziu, the fourth of the seven, I had no time to see anything of it at all. At seven o'clock I was at Harger Station, very tired, wet and foot sore, after covering nearly twenty-five miles all told since I left my bed in the lighter. From here to Norden it was a run in the train of ten minutes, which I spent in eating some rye bread and smoked eel and in scraping the mud off my boots and trousers. Fatigue vanished when the train drew up at the station, and the momentous twenty-eight minutes began to run their course. Having donned a bulky muffler and turned up the collar of my P-jacket, I crossed over immediately to the upper platform, walked boldly to the booking office, and had once sighted Fondbruning, yes, Fondbruning, in Mufti, but there was no mistaking his tall, athletic figure, pleasant features and neat brown beard. He was just leaving the window, gathering up a ticket and some coins. I joined a queue of three or four passants who were waiting their turn, flattened myself between them and the partition till I heard them walk out. Not having heard what station he had booked for, I took a fourth-class ticket to Wittmund, which covered all chances. Then, with my chin buried in my muffler, I sought the darkest corner of the ill-lit combination of bar and waiting-room, where, by the tiresome custom in Germany, would be travellers append till their train is ready. Fondbruning I perceived sitting in another corner with his hat over his eyes and a cigar between his lips. A boy brought me a tankard of tawny Munich beer, and sipping it I watched. People passed in and out, but nobody spoke to the sailor in Mufti. When a quarter of an hour elapsed, a platform door opened and a raucous voice shouted, Harge Dornum Isens Wittmund. A knot of passengers jostled out to the platform, showing their tickets. I was slow over my beer, and was last of the knot, with Fondbruning immediately ahead of me, so close that his cigar smoke curled into my face. I looked over his shoulder at the ticket he showed, missed the name, but caught a muttered double sibilant from the official who checked it, ran over the stations in my head, and pounced on Isens. That was as much as I wanted to know for the present, so I made my way to a fourth-class compartment and lost sight of my quarry, not venturing till the last door had banged to look out of the window. When I did so, two late arrivals were hurrying up to a carriage, one tall, one of middle height, both in cloaks and comforters. Their features I could not distinguish, but certainly neither of them was boomer. They had not come through the waiting-room door, but plainly from the dark end of the platform where they had been waiting. A guard with some surly remonstrances shut them in, and the train started. Isens, the name had not surprised me, it fulfilled a presentiment that had been growing in strength all the afternoon. For the last time I referred to the map, pulpy and blurred with a day's exposure, and tried to etch it into my brain. I marked the road to Benzazio and how it converged by degrees on the Benzatif until they met at the sea. The tide serves. Longing for Davis to help me, I reckoned by the aid of my diary that high tide at Benzazio would be about eleven, and for two hours I remembered, say from ten to twelve to-night, there were from five to six feet of water in the harbour. We should reach Isens at eight-fifty, with their drive, as von Brunning had done a week ago. I tightened my belt, stumped my mud-burdened boots, and thanked God for the Munich beer. With it they were going from Benzazio, and in what, and how was I to follow them? These were nebulous questions, but I wasn't a fettle for anything. Boat-stealing was a bugger-tell. Fortune, I thought, smiled. Romance beckoned. Even the sea looked kind. I, and I do not know, but that imagination was already beginning to un-stiffen and flutter those nerveless wings. CHAPTER XXVII. THE LUCK OF THE STOW AWAY. At Isens station I reversed my Norden tactics, jumped out smartly, and got to the door of Egress first of all, gave up my ticket, and hung about the gate of the station under cover of darkness. Fortune smiled still, there was no vehicle in waiting at all, and there were only half a dozen passengers. Two of these were the cloaked gentlemen who had been so nearly left behind at Norden, and another was von Brunning. The latter walked well in advance of the first pair, but at the gate on to the high road the three showed a common purpose, in that, unlike the rest who turned towards Isens town, they turned southwards, much to my perplexity, for this was the contrary direction to Benzazeel and the sea. I, with my bundle on my shoulder, had been bringing up the rear, and, as their faithful shadow turned to the right, too, without foreseeing the consequence. When it was too late to turn back, I saw that, fifty yards ahead, the road was barred by the gates of a level crossing, and that the four of us must inevitably accumulate at the barrier till the train had steamed away. This, in fact, happened, and for a minute or two we were all in a group, elaborately indifferent to one another, silent, but I am sure very conscious. As for me, secret laughter tickled all my soul. When the gates were opened the three seemed disposed to lag, so I tactfully took my cue, trudged briskly on ahead, and stopped after a few minutes to listen. Hearing nothing, I went cautiously back, and found that they had disappeared, in which direction was not long in doubt, for I came on a grassy path, leading into the fields on the left or west of the road, and though I could see no one, I heard the distant murmur of receding voices. I took my bearings collectively, placed one foot on the path, thought better of it, and turned back towards Asens. I knew without reference to the map that the path would bring them to the Benzertief, at a point somewhere near the timber-yard. In a fog I might have followed them there, as it was, the night was none too dark, and I had my strength to husband. And stamped on my memory were the words, the tide serves. I judged it a wiser use of time and sinew to anticipate them at Benzertief by the shortest road, leaving them to reach it by way of the devious teeth, to examine which was, I felt convinced, one of their objects. It was nine o'clock of a fresh wild night, a halo round a beclouded moon. I passed through quiet Asens, and in an hour I was close to Benzertief and could hear the sea. In the rooted idea that I should find Grimm on the outskirts, awaiting visitors, I left the road short of the village, and made a circuit to the harbour by way of the sea wall. The lower windows of the inn shared a warm glow into the night, and within I could see the village circle gathered over cards, and dominated, as of old, by the assertive little postmaster, whose high-pitched, excitable voice I could clearly distinguish, as he sat with his cap on the back of his head and a finest schnapps at his elbow. The harbour itself looked exactly the same as I remembered it a week ago. The post boat lay in her old berth at the eastern jetty, her mainsail set, and her twin giants spitting over the rail. I hailed them boldly from the shore, without showing them who I was, and was told they were starting for Langehorke in a few minutes. The wind was offshore, the mail the board, and the water just high enough. Did I want a passage? No, I thought I would wait. Positive that my party could never have got here so soon, I nevertheless kept an eye on the Galleot till she let go her sternrope and slid away. One contingency was eliminated. Some loiterers dispersed, and all port business appeared to be ended for the night. Three-quarters of an hour of strained suspense ensued. Most of it I spent on my knees in a dark angle between the dyke and the western jetty, whence I had a strategic survey of the basin. But I was driven at times to relieve inaction by sallies which increased in audacity. I scouted on the road beyond the bridge, hovered round the lock, and peered in at the impala, but nowhere could I see a trace of grim. I examined every floating object in the harbour. They were very few. Dropped on two lighters, and pried under top paulins, bordered a deserted tug, and two or three clumsy rowboats tied up to a mooring post. Only one of these had the look of readiness, the rest being devoid of oars and rollocks, a discouraging state of things for a prospective boatlifter. It was the sight of these rowboats that suggested a last and more distracting possibility, namely that the boat in waiting, if both they were, might not be in the harbour at all, but somewhere on the sands outside the dyke, where at this high state of the tide, it would have water and to spare. Back to the dyke then, but as I peered seaward on the way, contingencies evaporated, and a solid fact supervened, for I saw the lights of a steamboat approaching the harbour-mouth. I had barely time to gain my coin of vantage before she had swept in between the pairs, and with a fitful swizzling of her screw was turning and backing down to a berth just ahead of one of the lighters, at not fifty feet from the hiding place. A deckhand jumped ashore with a rope, while the man at the wheel gave gruff directions. The vessel was a small tug, and the man at the wheel disclosed his identity when, having rung off his engines, he jumped ashore also, looked at his watch in the beam of the sidelight, and walked towards the village. It was grim by height and build, grim clad in a long tarpaulin coat and sour-wester. I watched him cross the shaft of light from the inn window, and disappear in the direction of the canal. Another sailor now appeared, and helped his fellow to tie up the tug. The two together then went aft and began to set about some job whose nature I could not determine. To emerge was perilous, so I set about a job of my own, tearing open my bundle and pulling a noibskin jacket and trousers over my clothes, and discarding my peaked cap for a sour-wester. This operation was prompted instantaneously by the garb of two sailors, who in hauling on the forward warp came into the field of the mast headlight. It was something of a gymnastic masterpiece, since I was lying, or rather standing as slant, on the rough sea wall, with crannies of brick for foothold and the water plushing below me, but then I had not lived on the dulcabella for nothing. My chain of thoughts, I fancy, was this. The tug is to carry my party. I cannot shadow a tug and a rowboat, yet I intend to shadow my party. I must therefore go with them in the tug, and the first and soundest step is to mimic her crew. But the next step was a hard matter, for the crew having finished their job sat side by side on the bollocks and lit their pipes. However a little pantomime soon occurred, as amusing as it was in spiriting. They seemed to consult together, looking from the tug to the inn and from the inn to the tug. One of them walked a few paces inwards and beckoned to the other, who in his turn called something down to the engine room skylight, and then joined his mate in a scuttle to the inn. Even while I watched the pantomime I was sliding off my boots, and it had not been consummated a second before I had them in my arms and was tripping over the mud in my stocking feet. A dozen noiseless steps and I was over the bollocks between the wheel and the smoke stack, casting about for a hiding place. The conventional stowway hides in the hold, but there was only a stokehold here occupied moreover, nor was there an empty apple barrel such as Jim of Treasure Island found so useful. As far as I could see and I dared not venture far for fear of the skylight, the surface of the deck offered nothing secure. But on the farther or starboard side, rather above the beam, there was a small boat in davits swung outboard, to which common sense and perhaps a vague prescience of its after-utility pointed irresistibly. In any case, discrimination was out of place, so I mounted the bollock and gently entered my refuge. The tackles quick to trifle, oars and seats impeded me, but well before the thirsty trunes had returned, I was settled on the floorboards between two thwarts, so placed that I could, if necessary, peep over the gunnel. The two sailors returned at a run and very soon after voices approached, and I recognized that of Herr Schenkel, chattering volubly. He and Grimm bordered the tug, and went down a companion-way aft, near which, as I peeped over, I saw a second skylight, no bigger than the Delta Bellas, illuminated from below. Then I heard a cork drawn and the kiss of glasses, and in a minute or two they re-emerged. It was apparent that Herr Schenkel was inclined to stay and make merry, and that Grimm was anxious to get rid of him, at none too courteous in showing it. The former urged that to-morrow's tide would do, the latter gave orders to cast off, and at length observed with an angry oath that the water was falling and he must start. And to clinch matters with the curt good night, he went to the wheel and rang up his engines. Herr Schenkel landed and strutted off in a high dudgeon, while the tug's screw began to revolve. We had only glided a few yards on when the engines stopped, a short blast of the whistle sounded, and before I had had time to recast the future I heard a scurry of footsteps in the direction of the dyke, first on the bank, next on the deck. The last of these new arrivals panted audibly as he got aboard, and dropped on the planks with an unelastic thud. Her compliment made up, the tug left the harbour, but not alone. While slowly gathering way, the hull checked all at once with a sharp jerk, recovered, and increased its speed. We had something in tow, what? The lighter, of course, that had been lying astern of us. Now I knew what was in that lighter, because I had been to sea half an hour ago. It was no lethal cargo, but coal, common household coal, not a full load of it, I remembered, just a good sized mound amid chips, trimmed with buttons foreign aft to prevent shifting. Well, sought I, this is intelligible enough, Grimm was ostensibly here to call for a load of coal for Mehmet. But does that mean we are going to Mehmet? At the same time I recalled a phrase overheard at the depot, only one, half a load. Why half a load? For some few minutes there was a good deal of movement on deck, and of orders shouted by Grimm and answered by a voice, from Farrestern on the lighter. Presently, however, the tug warmed to her work, the hull vibrated with energy, and an ordered peace reigned on board. I also realised that having issued from the boomed channel we had turned westward, for the wind which had been blowing us fair, now blew strongly over the port beam. I peeped out of my airy, and was satisfied in a moment that as long as I made no noise, and observed proper prudence, I was perfectly safe until the boat was wanted. There were no deck lamps, the two skylights diffused by the sickly radiance, and I was abaffed the sidelights. I was abaffed the wheel also, though thrillingly near it in point of distance, about twelve feet, I should say, and Grimm was steering. The wheel, I should mention here, was raised, as you often see them, on a sort of pulpit, approached by two or three steps and fenced by a breast-high arc of boarding. Only one of the crew was visible, and he was acting as lookout in the extreme boughs, the rays of the must-head lights. For a second had been hoisted, in sign of towage, glistening in his oil-skin back. The other man, I concluded, was steering the lighter, which I could dimly locate by the pale foam at her bow. And the passengers? They were altogether aft, three of them, leaning over the tough rail, with their backs turned to me. One was short in stout, boomer unquestionably. The panting and the thud on the planks had prepared me for that. Though where he had sprung from, I did not know. Two were tall, and one of these must be from Bruning. There ought to be four, I reckoned, but three were all I could see. And what of the third? It must be he who insists on coming, the unknown superior at whose instance and for whose behoof this secret expedition had been planned. And who could he be? Many times needless to say I had asked myself that question, but never till now, when I had found the rendezvous and joined the expedition, did it come one of burning import. Any weather was another of those stored-up phrases that were apropos. It was a dirty, squally night, not very cold, for the wind still hung in the south-south west, an offshore wind on this coast, causing no appreciable sea on the shoal-spaces we were traversing. In the matter of our bearings I set myself doggedly to overcome that paralyzing perplexity always induced in me by night or fog in these intricate waters, and by screwing round and round, succeeding so far as to discover and identify two flashing lights, one alternately red and white, far in faint a stern, the other right ahead and rather stronger, giving white flashes only. The first and least familiar was, I made out, from the lighthouse on Wangerog, the second well known to me as our beacon star in the race from Mehmed, was the light on the center of Norderney Island, about ten miles away. I had no accurate idea of the time, for I could not see my watch, but I thought we must have started about quarter past eleven. We were travelling fast, the funnel belching out smoke and the bow-wave curling high, for the target-page to be a powerful little craft, and her load was comparatively light, so much for the general situation. As for my own predicament, I was in no mood to brood on the hazards of this mad adventure, a hundredfold more hazardous than my fog-smothered eavesdropping at Mehmed. The crises I knew had come, and the reckless impudence that had brought me here must serve me still and extricate me. Fortune loves rough wooing. I backed my luck and watched. The behavior of the passengers struck me as odd. They remained in a row at the taff rail, gazing a stern like regretful emigrants, and sometimes gesticulating and pointing. Now no vestige of the low land was visible, so I was driven to the conclusion that it was the lighter they were discussing, and I date my awakening from the moment that I realized this. But the thread broke prematurely, for the passengers took to pacing the deck, and I had to lie low. When next I was able to raise my head, they were round Grimm at the wheel, engaged as far as I could discover from their gestures, in an argument about our course and the time, for Grimm looked at his watch by the light of a hand lantern. We were heading north, and I knew by this swell that we must be near the Akkomae, the gap between Langeurg and Baltrum. Were we going out to open sea? It came over me with a rush that we must, if we were to drop this lighter at Memet. Had I been Davis, I should have been quicker to seize certain rigid conditions of this cruise, which no human power could modify. We had left after high tide, the water therefore was falling everywhere, and the tributary channels in rear of the islands were slowly growing impossible. It was quite thirty miles to Memet, with three watersheds to pass, behind Baltrum, Nordenei, and Juist. A skipper with nerve and perfect confidence might take us over one of these in the dark, but most of the run would infallibly have to be made outside. I now better understood the protests of Herr Schenkel to Grimm. Never once had we seen a lighter in tow in the open sea, though plenty behind the barrier of islands. Indeed, it was the very existence of the sheltered byways that created such traffic as there was. It was only Grimm's mittier and the incubus of the lighter that had suggested Memet as our destination at all, and I began to doubt it now. That tricky hoop of sand had befooled us before. At this moment, and as if to corroborate my thought, the telegraph rang and the tug slowed down. I faced myself and heard Grimm shouting to the man on the lighter to starboard his helm, and to the lookout to come aft. The next order froze my very marrow. It was lower away. Someone was at the davits of my boat, fingering the tackles. The forward fall rope actually slipped on the block and tilted the boat of fraction. I was just wondering how far it was to swim to Langeurg when a strong imperious voice, unknown to me, rang out, No, no, we don't want the boat. This welds nothing, we can jump. Can't we boomer? The speaker ended with a jovial laugh. Mercy, thought I. Are they going to swim to Langeurg? But I also gasped for relief. The tug rolled lifelessly in the swell for a little, and footsteps retreated aft. There were cries of Achtung, and some laughter, one big bump and a good deal of grinding, and on we moved again, taking the strain of the tow rope gingerly, and then full speed ahead. The passengers, it seemed, preferred the lighter to the tug for cruising in. Cold dust and exposure to clean planks and a warm cuddy. When silence reigned again, I peeped out. Grimm was at the wheel still, impassively twirling the spokes, with a glance over his shoulder at his precious freight, and, after all, we were going outside. Close on the port hand lay a black foam-girt shape, the east of Spitt-Baltrum. It fused with the night, while we swung slowly round to Windward over the troubled Bar. Now we were in the spacious deeps of the North Sea, and feeling it too in increase of swell and volleys of spray. At this point evolutions began. Grimm gave the wheel up to the lookout, and himself went to the taff rail, whence he roared back orders of port or starboard, in response to signals from the lighter. We made one complete circle, steering on each point of the wind in succession, after that worked straight out to sea till the water was a good deal rougher, and back again at a tangent, till an ear-shot of the surf on the island beach. There the maneuvers, which were clearly in the nature of a trial trip, ended, and we hoped too, to transship our passengers. They, when they came aboard, went straight below, and Grimm, having steadied the tug on a settled course, and entrusted the wheel to the sailor again, stripped off his dripping oil-skin coat, threw it down on the cabin skylight, and followed them. The course he had set was about west, with northern eye light, a couple of points off the port bow. The course for Mehmet? Possibly, but I cared not, for my mind was far from Mehmet tonight. It was the course for England, too. Yes, I understood it last. I was assisting, at an experimental rehearsal of a great scene, to be enacted, perhaps in the near future, a scene when multitudes of sea-going lighters, carrying full loads of soldiers, not half loads of coals, should issue simultaneously, in seven ordered fleets, from seven shallow outlets, and under escort of the Imperial Navy, traverse the North Sea, and throw themselves bodily upon English shores. Indulgent reader, you may be pleased to say that I have been very obtuse, and yet, with humility, I protest against that verdict. Remember that, recent as Ark, the events I am describing, it is only since they happened that the possibility of invasion of England by Germany has become a topic of public discussion. Davis and I had never, I was going to say had never considered it, but that would be inaccurate, for we had glanced at it once or twice, and if any single incident in his or our joint cruise had provided a semblance of confirmation, he, at any rate, would have kindled to that spark. But you will see how perversely, from first to last, circumstances drove us deeper and deeper into the wrong groove, till the idea became inveterate, that the secret we were seeking was one of defence and not of offence. Hence a complete mental somersault was required, and as an amateur, I found it difficult, the more so that the method of invasion, as I darkly comprehended it now, was of such a strange and unprecedented character, for orthodox invasions start from big ports and involve a fleet of ocean transports, while none of our clues pointed that way. To neglect obvious methods, to draw on the obscure resources of an obscure strip of coast, to improve and exploit a quantity of insignificant streams and tidal outlets, and thence, screened by the islands, to dispatch an amada of light-draft barges capable of flinging themselves on a correspondingly obscure and therefore unexpected portion of the enemy's coast. That was a conception so daring, I and so quixotic, in some of its aspects, that even now I was half-incredulous. Yet it must be the true one. Bit by bit the fragments of the puzzle fell into order till a coherent hole was adumbrated. The reader will find the whole matter dealt with in the epilogue. The tug surged on into the night, a squall of rain leapt upon us and swept hissing a stern. Baltrum vanished and the strands of Nordenei beamed under transient moonlight. Drunk with triumph, I cuddled in my rocking cradle and ransacked every unvisited chamber in the memory, tossing out their dusty contents to make a joyous bonfire of some, and to see the residue take life and meaning in the light of the great revelation. My reverie was of things, not persons, of vast national issues rather than of the poignant human interests so closely linked with them. But on a sudden I was recalled with a shock to myself, Davis, and the present. We were changing our course, as I knew by variations in the whirl of drafts which whistled about me. I heard grim afoot again and, choosing my moment, surveyed the scene. Broad on the port beam were the garish nights of Nordenei town and promenade, and the tug, I perceived, was drawing in to enter the zee-gut. Round she came, hustling through the broken water of the bar, till her nose was south and the wind was on the starbed bow. Not a mile from me were the villa and the yacht and the three persons of the drama, three, that is, if Davis was safe. Were we to land at Nordenei harbour? Heavens, what a magnificent climax! If only I could rise to it! My work here was done, at a stroke to rejoin Davis and be free to consummate our designs. A desperate idea of cutting the david tackles, I blushed to think of the stupidity, was rejected as soon as it was born, and instead I endeavoured to imagine our approach to the pier. My boat hung on the starbed side, that would be the side away from the key, and the tide would be low. I could swarm down the davids, during the stir of arrival, dropping to the sea, and swim the few yards across the drenched-out channel, wade through the mud to within a short distance of the dulcabella, and swim the rest. I rubbed the salt out of my eyes and wriggled my cramped legs. Hello! Why was Grimm leaving the helm again? Back he went to the cabin, leaving the sailor at the helm. We ought to be turning to port now, but no, on we went south for the mainland. Though one plan was frustrated, the longing to get to Davis, once implanted, waxed apace. Our destination was at last beyond dispute. The channel we were in was the same that we had cut across on our blind voyage to Mehmet, and the same my ferry steamer had followed two days ago. It was a cul-de-sac, leading to one place only, the landing stage at Norddeich. The only place on the whole coast, now I came to think of it, where the tug could land at this tide. There the key would be on the starboard side, and I saw myself tied to an airy, while the passengers landed, and the tug and lighter turned back from Mehmet, at Mehmet dawn and discovery. There was some way out, some way out, I repeated to myself, some way to reap the fruit of Davis's long tutelage in the law of this strange reason. What would he do? For answer, there came the familiar frou-frou of gentle surf on drying sands. The swell was dying away, the channel's narrowing. Dusky and weird on the starboard hand stretched leagues of now risen sand. Two men only were on deck. The moon was quenched under the vanguard clouds of a fresh squall. A madcap scheme danced before me. The time, I must know the time. Crouching low and cloaking the flame with my jacket, I struck a match. 2.30 a.m., the tide had been ebbing for about three hours and a half. Low water, about five. They would be aground till 7.30. Danger to life? None. Flares and rescues? Not likely, with him who insists on board. Besides, no one could come, there being no danger. I should have a fair wind and a fair tide for my trip. Grimm's coat was on the skylight. We were both clean-shaved. The helmsman gazed ahead, intent on his difficult course, and the wind held to perfection. I knelt up and examined one of the david tackles. There was nothing remarkable about it, a double and a single block, like our own peak halyards. The lower one hooked into a ring in the boat. The hauling parts made fast to a cleat on the david itself. Something there must be to give lateral support, or the boat would have racketed abroad in the roll-out side. The support I found consisted of two lanyards spliced to the davids and drove through holes in the keel. These I leaned over and cut with my pocket knife, the result being a barely perceptible swaying of the boat, for the tug was under the lee of sands and on an even keel. Then I left my hiding place, climbing out of the standsheets by the after-david, and preparing every successive motion with exquisite tenderness till I stood on the deck. In another moment I was in the cabin skylight, lifting Grimm's long oil-skin coat. A second's yielding to temptation here, but no, the skylight was ground glass, fastened from below. So on with the coat, up with the collar, and forward to the wheel on tiptoe. As soon as I was up to the engine room skylight, that is to say, well ahead of the cabin roof, I assumed the natural step, went up to the pulpit and touched the helmsman on the arm, as I had seen Grimm do. The man stepped aside, grunted something about a light, and I took the wheel from him. Grimm was a man of few words, so I just jogged his satellite, and pointed forward. He went off like a lamb to his customary place in the bowels, not having dreamt, why should he, of examining me? But in him I had instantly recognized one of the crew of the Komuran. My ruse developed in all its delicious simplicity. We were, I estimated, about half-way to Norddeich, in the Buse-Tief, a channel of navigable breadth, at the utmost, of two hundred yards, at this period of the tide. Two faint lights, one above the other, tinkled far ahead. What they meant I neither knew nor cared, since the only use I put them to was to test the effect of the wheel, for this was the first time I had ever tasted the sweets of command on a steamboat. A few cautious essays taught me the rudiments, and nothing could hinder the catastrophe now. I edged over to starboard, that was the side I had selected, and again a little more, till the glistening back of the lookout gave a slight movement, but he was a well-drilled minion with implicit trust in the old man. Now, hard over, and spoke by spoke I gave her the full pressure of the helm. The lookout shouted a warning, and I raised my arm in calm acknowledgement. A cry came from the lighter, and I remember I was just thinking what the dickens will happen to her. When the end came, a euthanasia so mild and gradual, for the sands are fringed with mud, that the disaster was on us before I was aware of it. There was just the tiniest premonitory shuddering, as our keel clove the buttery medium, a cascade of ripples from either beam, and the wheel jammed to rigidity in my hands as the tug nestled up to her riding-place. In the scene of panic that followed, it is safe to say that I was the only soul on board who acted with methodical tranquility. The lookout flew astern like an arrow, balling to the lighter. Grim, with the passengers tumbling up after him, was on deck in an instant, storming and cursing, flung himself on the wheel which I had respectfully abandoned, jangled the telegraph and wrenched at the spokes. The tug listed over under the force of the tide, wind, darkness, and rain aggravated the confusion. For my part I stepped back behind the smokestack, threw off my robe of office, and made for the boat. Long and bitter experience of running aground had told me that that was sure to be wanted. On the way I canned into one of the passengers and pressed him to my service, incidentally seeing his face and verifying an old conjecture. It was one who, in Germany, has a better right to insist than anyone else. As we reached the davits there was a report like a pistol shot from the port side, the tow-rope parting, I believe, as the lighter with her shallower draft swung on past the tug. Fresh tumult arose, in which I heard, lower the boat from Grimm, but the order was already executed. My ally, the passenger, and I had each cast off a tackle and slacked away with a run. That done I promptly clutched the wire guy to steady myself and tumbled in. It was not far to tumble, for the tug listed heavily to starboard. Think of our course and the set of the ebb stream and you will see why. The fore would fall unhooked sweetly, but the after one lost play. Slack away, I called peremptorily, and felt for my knife. My helper above obeyed, the hook yielded. I filliped away the loose tackle, and the boat floated away. End of Chapter 27, Chapter 28 OF THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Gesine THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS by Erskine Childers Chapter 28 We achieve our double aim. When exactly the atmosphere of misunderstanding on the stranded tug was dissipated, I do not know, for by the time I had fitted the rollox and shipped skulls, tide and wind had caught me, and were sweeping me merrily back on the road to Northern Eye, whose lights twinkled for the scud in the north. With my first few strokes I made towards the lighter, which I could see sagging helplessly to leeward, but as soon as I thought I was out of sight of the tug, I pulled round and worked out my own salvation. There was an outburst of shouting, which soon died away. Full speed on a falling tide. They were pinned there for five hours, sure. It was impossible to miss the way, and with my stout allies heaving me forward, I made short work of the two-mile passage. There was a sharp tussle at the last, where the rift-gut poured its steam across my path, and then I was craning over my shoulder, God knows with what tense anxiety, for the low hull and taper-mast of the dulcabella, not there! No, not where I had left her. I pulled furiously up the harbour past a sleeping fairy steamer, and, praise heaven, came on her, warped alongside the jetty. Who's that? came from below, as I stepped on board. Hush, it's me! And Davies and I were pawing one another in the dark of the cabin. Are you all right, old chap? said he. Yes, are you? A match, what's the time? Quick! Good heavens, Carothers, what the blazes have you done to yourself? I suspect I cut a pretty figure after my two days outing. Ten past three. It's the invasion of England. Is Dolman at the villa? Invasion? Is Dolman at the villa? Yes. Is the Medusa a float? No, on the mud. The devil. Are we a float? I think so, still, but they made me shift. Think, track her out, pole her out, cut those warps, for a few strenuous minutes we toiled at the sweeps till the dulcer bella was birthed the head of the steamer in deeper water. Meanwhile I had whispered a few facts. How soon can you get under way? I asked. Ten minutes. Wednesday light. Sunrise about seven, first dawn about five. Where are we bound? Holland or England? Are they invading it now? said Davis calmly. No, only rehearsing. I laughed wildly. Then we can wait. We can wait exactly an hour and a half. Come ashore and knock up Dolman. We must denounce him, and get them both aboard. It's now or never. Holy Saint's man, not as you are. He was in pajamas. Sea-clothes. While he put on Christian attire, I resumed my facts and sketched a plan. Are you watched? I asked. I think so, by the Cormoran's men. Is the Cormoran here? Yes. The men? Not tonight. Grim called for them in that tug. I was watching. And, Carothers, the blitz is here. Where? In the roads outside, did you see her? Wasn't looking. Her skipper's safe, anyway. So's Boomer, so's the tertium quid, and so are the Cormoran's men. The coast's clear. It's now or never. Once more we were traversing the long jetty and the silent streets, rain driving at our backs. We trod on air, I think. I remember no fatigue. Davis sometimes broke into a little run, muttering scoundrel to himself. I was right, only upside down, he murmured more than once. Always really right. Those channels are the key to the whole concern. Chatham, our only eastern base, no North Sea base or squadron, they'd landed one of those godforsaken flats off the Crouch and Blackwater. It seems a wild scheme, I observed. Wild? In a way. So is any invasion. But it's thorough. It's German. No other country could do it. It's all dawning on me, by Jove it will be on the wash, much the nearest, and as sandy as this side. How's Dormann been? I asked. Polite, but queer and jumpy. It's too long a story. Clara? She's all right. By Jove, Carothers, never mind. We found a nightbell at the villa door and rang it lusterly. A window aloft opened and, a message from Commander von Bruning, urgent, I called up. The window shut, and soon after the hall was lighted, and the door opened by Dormann in a dressing gown. Good morning, Lieutenant X, I said in English. Stop, we're friends, you fool. As the door was flung nearly to, it opened very slowly again, and we walked in. Silence, he hissed. The sweat stood on his steep forehead, and a hectic flush on either cheek, but there was a smile, what a smile, on his lips. Motioning us to tread noiselessly, a vain ideal for me, he led the way to the sitting-room we knew, switched on the light, and faced us. Well, he said in English, still smiling. I consulted my watch, and I may say that if my hand was an index to my general appearance, I must have looked the most abject ruffian under heaven. We probably understand one another, I said, and to explain is to lose time. We sail for Holland, or perhaps England, at five at the latest, and we want the pleasure of your company. We promise you immunity, on certain conditions which can wait. We have only two births, so that we can only accommodate Miss Clara beside yourself. He smiled on for this terse harangue, but the smile froze, as though beneath it raged some crucial debate. Suddenly he laughed, a low, ironical laugh. You fools, he said, you confounded meddlesome young idiots, I thought I had done with you. Promise me immunity, give me till five. By God, I'll give you five minutes to be off to England, and be done to you, or else to be locked up for spies. What the devil do you take me for? A traitor in German service, said Davis, none too firmly. We were both taken aback by this slushing attack. Atch, you pig-headed young marplets, I'm in British service, you're wrecking the work of years, and on the very threshold of success. For an instant Davis and I looked at one another in stupefaction. He lied, I could swear he lied, but how make sure? Why did you try to wreck Davis? I said mechanically. Sure. They made me clear him out, I knew he was safe and safe he is. There was only one thing for it, a last finesse to put him to the proof. Very well, I said after a moment or two, we'll clear out, silence Davis. As it appears we have acted an error, but it's right to tell you that we know everything. Not so loud, Cassie, what do you know? I was taking notes at Mehmed the other night. Impossible. Thanks to Davis, under difficulties of course, but I heard quite enough. You were reporting your English tour, Chatham, you know, and the English scheme of attack, a mythical one no doubt, as you're on the right side. Boomer and the rest were dealing with the German scheme of defence, A to G, I heard it all, the seven islands and the seven channels between them, Davis knows every one of them by heart. And then on land, the ring of railway, easins, the centre, the army corps to mobilise and entrench, or nuketry, wasted, as you're on the right. Not so loud, you fiend of mischief. He turned his back and made in a resolute pace or two towards the door, his hands kneading the folds of his dressing gown as they had kneaded the curtain at Mehmed. Twice he began a question and twice broke off. I congratulate you, gentlemen, he said, finally, and with more composure, facing us again. You have done marvels in your misplaced zeal, but you have compromised me too much already. I shall have to have you arrested, purely for form's sake. Thank you, I broke in. We have wasted five minutes and time presses. We sail at five and, purely for form's sake, would rather have you with us. What do you mean? he snarled. I had the advantage of you at Mehmed, in spite of acoustic obstacles. Your friends made an appointment behind your back, and I, in my misplaced zeal, have taken some trouble to attend it. So that I've had a working demonstration on another matter, the invasion of England from the Seven Zeal's. Davis nudged me. No, I should let that pistol alone, and no, I wouldn't ring the bell. You can arrest us if you like, but the secrets in safe hands. You lie. He was right there, but he could not know it. Do you suppose I haven't taken that precaution? But no names are mentioned. He gave a sort of groan, sank into a chair, and seemed to age and grizzle before our very eyes. What did you say about immunity, and Clara? He muttered. We're friends, we're friends, burst out Davis with a gulp in his voice. We wanted to help you both. Through a sudden mist that filmed my eyes, I saw him impetuously walk over and lay hands on the other's shoulder. Those chaps are on our track, and yours. Come with us. Wake her, tell her. It'll be too late soon. Ex shrank from his touch. Tell her? I can't tell her. You tell her, boy. I was huddling back into his chair. Davis turned to me. Where's her room? I said sharply. Above this one. Go up, brothers, said Davis. Not I. I shall frighten her into a fit. I don't like to. Nonsense, man. We'll both go then. Don't make a noise, said a dazed voice. We left that huddled figure and stole upstairs, sickly carpeted stairs, luckily. The door we wanted was half open, and the room behind it lighted. On the threshold stood a slim white figure, barefooted, bare-throated. What is it, father? She called in a whisper. Whom have you been talking to? I pushed Davis forward, but he hung back. Hush, don't be frightened, I said. It's I, Co-Others, and Davis. May we come in, just for one moment? I gently widened the opening of the door, while she stepped back and put one hand to her throat. Please come to your father, said I. We are going to take you both to England and the Dalsa Bella, now at once. She had heard me, but her eyes wanted to Davis. I understand not. She faltered, trembling and cowering in such touching bewilderment that I could not bear to look at her. For God's sake, say something, Davis, I muttered. Clara, said Davis, will you not trust us? I heard a little gasp from her. There was a flutter of lace and cambrick, and she was in his arms, sobbing like a tired child, her little white feet between his great clumsy seaboots, her rose-brown cheek on his rough jersey. It's past four-old, chap, I remarked brutally. I'm going down to him again, no packing to speak of, mind. They must be out of this in half an hour. I stumbled awkwardly on the stairs, again that tiresome film, and found him stuffing some papers pel-mel into the stove. There were only slumbering embers in it, but he did not seem to notice that. He must be dressed in half an hour, I said, furtively pocketing a pistol which lay on the table. Have you told her? Take her to England, you two boys. I think I'll stay. He sank into a chair again. Nonsense, she won't go without you. You must, for her sake, in half an hour, too. I prefer to pass that half-hour lightly over. Davis left before me to prepare the yacht for sea, and I had to bear the brunt of what followed, including, as a mere episode, a scene with a stepmother, the memory of which rankles in me yet. After all, she was a sensible woman. But for the other two, the girl when I saw her next in her short boating skirt and tamo shanta was a miracle of coolness and pluck, but for her I should never have got him away. And how good it was to be out in the wholesome rain again, hurrying to the harbour with my two charges, hurrying them down the greasy ladder to that frail atom of English soil, their first garden of home and safety. Our flight from the harbour was un molested, unnoticed. Only the first ghastly evidences of dawn were mingling with a strangled moonlight as we tacked round the pier head and headed close weaved down the rift-gut on the leaves of the abtide. We had to pass under the very quarter of the blitz, so Davis said, for of course he alone was on deck till we reached the open sea. Day was breaking then. It was dead low water, and far away to the south, between dun swathes of sand I thought I saw, but probably it was only a fancy, two black stranded specks. Rail-a-wash and decks streaming, we took the outer swell and clawed close hold under the lee of used, westward, hurrying westward. Up the Ems on the flood, and to Dutch Telfzu, I urged. No, thought Davis, it was too near Germany, and there was a tidal cut through from Buzetief, better to dodge in behind Rotom Island. So on we pressed past Mehmet, over the Euster Reef, and the Corins buried millions, and across the two broad and yeasty mouths of the Ems, till Rotom, a wee lintsome wafer of an islet, the first of the Dutch archipelago, was close on the weather bow. We must get in behind that, said Davis, then we shall be safe. I think I know the way, but get the next chart, and then take a rest, old chap. Clara and I can manage. She had been on deck most of the time, as capable a hand as you could wish for, better far than I in my present state of exhaustion. I crawled along the slippery sloping planks, and went below. Where are we? cried Doilman, starting up from the lee-sofa, where he seemed to have been lying in a sort of trance. A book, his own book, slipped from his knees, and I saw the frontispiece lying on the floor in a pool of oil, for the stove had gone adrift, and the saloon was in a wretched state of squalor and litter. Of frottum, I said, had knelt up to find the chart. There was a look in his eyes that I suppose I ought to have understood, but I can scarcely blame myself, for the accumulated strain, not only of the last three days and nights, but the whole arduous month of my cruise with Davis, was beginning to tell on me, now that safety and success were at hand. I handed up the charts for the companion, and then crept into the reeling foxhole, and lay down on the spare sail-bags, with the thunder and sump of the seas around and above me. I must quote Davis for the event that happened now, for by the time I had responded to the alarm, and climbed up for the forehatch, the whole tragedy was over and done with. Ex came down the companion, he said, soon after he went down. He held on by the runner, and stared to windward at rottum, as though he knew the place quite well. And then he came towards us, moving so unsteadily that I gave Clara the tiller, and went to help him. I tried to make him go down again, but he wouldn't, and came aft. Give me the helm, he said, after himself. Sees too bad outside, there's a short cut here. Thanks, I said, I know this one. I don't think I'm meant to be sarcastic. He said nothing and settled himself on the counter behind us, safe enough, with his feet against the lee-rail, and then to my astonishment began to talk over my shoulder jolly sensibly about the course, pointing out a boy, which is wrong on the chart, as I knew, and telling me it was wrong, and so on. Well, we came to the bar of the shield, and had to turn south for that twisty bit of beating between rottum and bosch flat. Clara was at the jib-seat. I had the chart and the tiller. You know how absent I get like that. There was a bobble of sea, and we both had heaps to do, and, well, I happened to look round, and he was gone. He hadn't spoken for a minute or two, but I believe the last thing I had him say— I was hardly attending at the time, for we were in the thick of it— was something about his short cut again. He must have slipped over quietly. He had an ulster and big boots on. We cruised about for a time, but never found him. That evening, after threading the maze of shells between the Dutch mainland and the islands, we anchored off the little hamlet of Ostmahorn, gave the yacht in charge of some astonished fisherman, and thence by road and rail, hurrying still, gained Harlingen, and took passage on a steamer to London. From that point our personal history is of no concern to the outside world, and here, therefore, I bring this narrative to an end. The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers Epilogue and Postscript Epilogue by the Editor An interesting document, somewhat damaged by fire, lies on my study table. It is a copy, in cipher, of a confidential memorandum to the German government, embodying a scheme for the invasion of England by Germany. It is unsigned, but internal evidence, and the fact that it was taken by Mr. Carothers from the stove of the villa at Nordernei, leave no doubt as to its authorship. For many reasons it is out of the question to print the textual translation of it, as deciphered, but I propose to give an outline of its contents. Even this must strain discretion to its uttermost limits, and had I only to consider the constructed few, who follow the trend of professional opinion on such subjects, I should leave the foregoing narrative to speak for itself. But, as was stated in the preface, our primary purpose is to reach everyone, and there may be many who, in spite of able and authoritative warnings, frequently uttered, since these events occurred, are still prone to treat the German danger as an idle bogey, and may be disposed, in this case, to imagine that a baseless romance has been foisted upon them. A few persons, English as well as German, hold that Germany is strong enough now to meet us single-handed, and throw an army on our shores. The memorandum rejects this view, deferring isolated action for at least a decade, and supposing, for present purposes, a coalition of three powers against Great Britain. And subsequent researches, through the usual channels, place it beyond dispute, that this condition was relied on by the German Government in adopting this scheme. They realised that even if, owing to our widely scattered forces, they gained that temporary command of the North Sea, which would be essential for a successful landing, they would inevitably lose it when our standing fleets were concentrated, and our reserve ships mobilised. With its sea communications cut, the prospects of the invading army would be too dubious. I stated in that mild way, for it seems not to have been held that failure was absolutely certain, and rightly, I think, in spite of the dogmas of the strategists. For the ease transcends all experience. No man can calculate the effect on our delicate economic fabric of a well-timed, well-planned blow at the industrial heart of the kingdom, the great northern and midland towns, with their teeming populations of peaceful wage earners. In this instance, however, joint action, the occasion for which is perhaps not difficult to guess, was distinctly contemplated, and German's role in the coalition was exclusively that of invader. Her fleet was to be kept intact, and she herself to remain ostensibly neutral until the first shock was over, and our own battle fleets, either beaten, or the much more likely event so crippled by a hard-won victory as to be incapable of withstanding compact and unscathed forces. Then, holding the balance of power, she would strike. And the blow? It was not till I read this memorandum that I grasped the full merits of that daring scheme under which every advantage, moral, material, and geographical, possessed by Germany, is utilised to the utmost, and every disadvantage of our own turned to account against us. Two root principles pervaded. Perfect organisation, perfect secrecy. Under the first head come some general considerations. The writer, who is intimately conversant with conditions on both sides of the North Sea, argued that Germany is preeminently fitted to undertake an invasion of Great Britain. She has a great army, a mere fraction of which would suffice, in a state of high efficiency, but a useless weapon, as against us, unless transported overseas. She has a peculiar genius for organisation, not only in elaborating minute detail, but in the grasp of a coherent whole. She knows the art of giving a brain to a machine, of transmitting power, to the uttermost cogwheel, and at the same time of concentrating responsibility in a supreme centre. She has a small navy, but very effective for its purpose, built, trained, and manned on methodical principles, for defined ends and backed by an inexhaustible reserve of men from her maritime conscription. She studies and practices co-operation between her army and navy. Her hands are free for offence in home waters, since she has no distant network of coveted colonies and dependencies, on which to dissipate her defensive energies. Finally she is, compared with ourselves, economically independent, having commercial access through her land frontiers to the whole of Europe. She has little to lose, and much to gain. The writer pauses here to contrast our own situation and I summarise his points. We have a small army, dispersed over the whole globe, and administered on a gravely defective system. We have no settled theory of national defence, and no competent authority whose business it is to give us one. The matter is still at the stage of civilian controversy. Co-operation between the army and navy is not studied and practised. Much less do there exist any plans, worthy of the name, for the repulse of an invasion, or any readiness worth considering for the prompt equipment and direction of our home forces to meet a sudden emergency. We have a great and in many respects a magnificent navy, but not great enough for the interests it ensures, and with equally defective institutions, not built or manned methodically, having an utterly inadequate reserve of men, all classes of which would be absorbed at the very outset, without a vestige of preparation for the enrolment of volunteers, distracted by the multiplicity of its functions in guarding our colossal empire and commerce, and conspicuously lacking a brain, not merely for the smooth control of its own unwieldy mechanism, but for the study of rival aims and systems. We have no North Sea naval base, no North Sea fleet, and no North Sea policy. Lastly, we stand in a highly dangerous economical position. The writer then deals with the method of invasion, and rejects the obvious one at once, that of sending forth a fleet of transports from one or more of the North Sea ports. He combats especially the idea of making Emden the nearest to our shores, the Port of Departure. I mention this because, since his own scheme was adopted, it is instructive to note that Emden has been used with caution as a red herring by the inspired German press when the subject was mentioned at all, and industriously dragged across the trail. His objections to the North Sea ports apply, he remarks, in reality to all schemes of invasion, whether the conditions be favourable or not. One is that secrecy is rendered impossible, and secrecy is vital. The collection of the transports would be known in England weeks before the hour was ripe for striking. For all large ports are cosmopolitan, and swarm with potential spies. In Germany's case, moreover, suitable ships are none too plentiful, and the number required would entail a large deduction from her mercantile marine. The other reason concerns the actual landing. This must take place on an open part of the east coast of England. No other objective is even considered. Now the difficulty of trans-shipping and landing troops by boats from transports anchored in deep water in a safe, swift and orderly fashion on an open beach is enormous. The most hastily improvised resistance might cause a humiliating disaster. Yet the first stage is the most important of all. It is imperative that the invaders should seize and promptly entrench a prearranged line of country to serve as an initial base. This once done, they can use other resources, they can bring up transports, land cavalry and heavy guns, pour in stores, and advance. But unless this is done, they are impotent. Be their sea communication never so secure. The logical alternative is then propounded, to dispatch an army of infantry with the lightest type of field guns in big sea-going lighters, towed by powerful but shallow draft tugs under escort of a powerful composite squadron of warships, and to fling the flotilla at high tide if possible straight upon the shore. Such an expedition could be prepared in absolute secrecy by turning to account the natural features of the German coast. No great port was to be concerned in any way. All that was required was sufficient depth of water to float the lighters and tugs, and this is supplied by seven insignificant streams, issuing from the Frisian Littoral, and already furnished with small harbors and sluice-gates, with one exception, namely the Tidal Creek at Norden, for this it appeared was one of the chosen seven, and not, as Carothers supposed, Hülgenrieder Seeu, which, if you remember, he had no time to visit, and which has in fact no stream of any value at all, and no harbour. All of these streams would have to be improved, deepened, and generally canalised, ostensibly with a commercial end, for purposes of traffic with the islands, which are growing health resorts during a limited summer season. The whole expedition would be organised under seven distinct subdivisions, not too great a number in view of its cumbrous character. Seawards, the whole of the coast is veiled by the fringe of islands and the zone of shoals. Landwards, the loop of railway round the Frisian Peninsula would form the line of communication in rear of the seven streams. Easons was to be the local centre of administration when the scheme grew to maturity, but not till then. Every detail for the movement of troops under the seven different heads was to be arranged for with secrecy and exactitude many months in advance, and from headquarters at Berlin. It was not expected that nothing would leak out, but care was to be taken that anything that did so should be attributed to defensive measures, a standing feature in German mobilisation being the establishment of a core of observation along the Frisian coast. In fact the same machinery was to be used, and its conversion for offence concealed up to the latest possible moment. The same precautions were to be taken in the preliminary work on the spot. There four men only, it was calculated, need be in full possession of the secret. One was to represent the Imperial Navy, a post filled by our friend von Bruning. Another, boomer, was to superintend the six canals and the construction of the lighters. The functions of the third were twofold. He was to organise what I may call the local labour, that is, the helpers required for embarkation, the crews of the tugs, and, most important of all, the service of pilots, for the navigation of the seven flotillas through the corresponding channels to the open sea. He must be a local man, thoroughly acquainted with the coast, of a social standing not much above the average of villagers and fishermen, and he must be ready when the time was ripe, with lists of the right men for the right duties, lists to which the conscription authorities could, when required, give instant legal effect. His other function was to police the coast for spies and to report anything suspicious to von Bruning, who would never be far away. On the whole, I think, that they found the Grimm-Grimm a jewel for their purpose. As fourth personage, the writer designates himself, the promoter of the scheme, the indispensable link between the two nations. He undertakes to furnish reliable information as to the disposition of troops in England, as to the hydrography of the coast selected for the landing, as to the supplies available in its vicinity, and the strategic points to be seized. He proposes to be guide-in-chief to the expedition during transit. And in the meantime, when not otherwise employed, he was to reside at Norden Eye, in close touch with the other three, and controlling the commercial undertakings which were to throw dust in the eyes of the curious. Mehmet, by the way, is not mentioned in this memorandum. He speaks of the place selected for the landing, and proceeds to consider this question in detail. I cannot follow him in his review, deeply interesting though it is, and shall say at once that he reduces possible landing places to two, the flats on the Essex coast between Faunus and Brightling Sea, and the Wash, with a decided preference for the latter. Assuming that the enemy, if they got wind of an invasion at all, would expect transports to be employed, he chooses the sort of spot which they would be least likely to defend, and which, nevertheless, was suitable to the character of the flotillas, and similar to the region they started from. There is such a spot on the Lincolnshire coast, on the north side of the Wash, known as East Holland. It is low lying land, dyked against the sea, and bordered like Frisia, with sand flats which dry off at low water. It is easy of access from the coast, by way of Boston deeps, a deep water channel formed by a detached bank, called the Long Sand, lying parallel to the shore for ten miles. This bank makes a natural breakwater against the swell from the east, the only quarter to be feared, and the deeps behind it, where there is an average depth of thirty-four feet at low water, would form an excellent roadstead for the covering squadron, whose guns would command the shore within easy range. It is noted in passing that this is just the case where German first-class battleships would have an advantage over British ships of the same calibre. The latter are of just too heavy a draft to navigate such waters without peril, if indeed they could enter this roadstead at all, for there is a bar at the mouth of it, with only thirty-one feet at high water, spring tines. The former, built as they were with a view to maneuvering in the North Sea, are just within the margin of safety. East Holland is within striking distance of the manufacturing districts, a vigorous raid on which is, the writer urges, the true policy of an invader. He reports positively that there exists, in a proper military sense, no preparation whatever to meet such an attack. East Holland is also the nearest point on the British shores to Germany, accepting the coast of Norfolk, much nearer indeed than the Essex Flats alluded to, and reached by a simple deep sea passage without any dangerous region to navigate, like the mouth of the Channel and the estuary of the Thames from Harwich, Westwoods. The distance is 240 sea miles, west by south roughly, from Borkum Island and 280 from Wangerook. The time estimated for transit after the flotillas had been assembled outside the islands is from thirty to thirty-four hours. Embarkation is the next topic. This couldn't must be effected in one tide. At the six zealts there was a mean period of two and a half hours in every twelve during which the water was high enough. At Norden a rather longer time was available, but this should be amply sufficient if the machinery were in good working order and were punctually set in motion. High water occurs approximately at the same time at all seven outlets, the difference between the two farthest apart, Caroline and Zeal and Great Zeal, being only half an hour. Lastly, the special risks attendant on such an expedition are dispassionately weighed. Ex, though keenly anxious to recommend his scheme, writes in no blindly sanguine spirit. There are no modern precedents for any invasion in the least degree comparable to that of England by Germany. Any such attempt will be a hazardous experiment. But he argues that the advantages of his method outweigh the risks, and that most of the risks themselves would attach equally to any other method. Whatever skill in prediction was used, bad weather might overtake the expedition. Yes, but if transports were used, transshipment into boats for landing would in bad weather be fraught with the same and a greater peril. But transports could stand off and wait. Delay is fatal in any case, and swerving promptitude is the essence of such an enterprise. The lighters would be in danger of foundering. Beside the point, if the end is worth gaining the risks must be faced. Soldiers' lives are sacrificed in tens of thousands on battlefields. The flotilla would be demoralized during transit by the assault of a few torpedo boats. Granted, but the same would apply to a fleet of transports, with the added certainty that one lucky shot would send to the bottom ten times the number of soldiers, with less hope of rescue. In both cases, reliance must be placed on the efficiency and vigilance of the escort. It is admitted, however, in a passage which might well make my two adventurers glow with triumph, that if by any mischance the British discovered what was afoot in good time, and were able to send over a swarm of light-draft boats, which could elude the German warships and get amongst the flotillas while they were still in process of leaving the zeals. It is admitted that in that case the expedition was doomed. But it is held that such an event was not to be feared. Reckless pluck is abundant in the British navy, but expert knowledge of the tides and shoals in these waters is utterly lacking. The British charts are of no value, and there is no evidence, he reports, that the subject has been studied in any way by the British Admiralty. Let me remark here that I believe Mr Davis's views, as expressed in the earlier chapters, when they were still among the great estuaries, are all absolutely sound. The channel theory, though it only bore indirectly on the grand issue before them, was true and should be laid to heart, or I should not have wasted space on it. One word more in conclusion. There is an axiom, much in fashion now, that there is no fear of an invasion of the British Isles because if we lose command of the sea we can be starved, a cheaper and sureer way of reducing us to submission. It is a loose, valueless axiom, but by sheer repetition it is becoming an article of faith. It implies that command of the sea is a thing to be won or lost definitely, that we may have it today and lose it forever tomorrow. On the contrary, the chances are that in anything like an even struggle the command of the sea will hang in the balance for an indefinite time, and even against great odds it would probably be impossible for our enemies so to bar the avenues of our commerce, so to blockade the ports of our extensive coastline, and so to overcome the interest which neutrals will have in supplying us, as to bring us to our knees in less than two years, during which time we can be recuperating and rebuilding from our unique internal resources and endeavouring to regain command. No, the better axiom is that nothing short of a successful invasion could finally compel us to make peace. Our hearts are stout, we hope, but facts are facts, and a successful raid such as that he has sketched, if you will think out its consequences, must appall the stoutest heart. It was checkmated, but others may be conceived. In any case, we know the way in which they look at these things in Germany. Postscript, March 1903. It so happens that while this book was in the press, a number of measures have been taken by the government to counteract some of the very weaknesses and dangers which are eluded to above. A committee of national defence has been set up, and the welcome given to it was a truly extraordinary comment on the apathy and confusion which it has designed to supplant. A site on the fourth has been selected for a new North Sea naval base, an excellent if tardy decision, for ten years or so must elapse before the existing anchorage becomes in any sense a base. A North Sea fleet has also been created, another good measure, but it should be remembered that its ships are not modern, or in the least capable of meeting the principal German squadrons under the circumstances supposed above. Lastly, a Manning committee has, among other matters, reported vaguely in favour of a volunteer reserve. There is no means of knowing what this recommendation will lead to. Let us hope not to the fiasco of the last badly conceived experiment. Is it not becoming patent that the time has come for training all Englishmen systematically either for the sea or for the rifle? End of epilogue and postscript. And this is the end of The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers.