The Riddle of the Sands
He must be in German service, for he had evidently been in those waters
a long time, and knew every inch of them; of course, it’s a very lonely
part of the world, but he has a house on Norderney Island; and he, and
all about him, must be well known to a certain number of people. One of
his friends I happened to meet; what do you think he was? A naval
officer. It was on the afternoon of the third day, and we were having
coffee on the deck of the _Medusa_, and talking about next day’s trip,
when a little launch came buzzing up from seaward, drew alongside, and
this chap I’m speaking of came on board, shook hands with Dollmann, and
stared hard at me. Dollmann introduced us, calling him Commander von
Brüning, in command of the torpedo gunboat _Blitz_. He pointed towards
Norderney, and I saw her—a low, grey rat of a vessel—anchored in the
Roads about two miles away. It turned out that she was doing the work
of fishery guardship on that part of the coast.
“I must say I took to him at once. He looked a real good sort, and a
splendid officer, too—just the sort of chap I should have liked to be.
You know I always wanted—but that’s an old story, and can wait. I had
some talk with him, and we got on capitally as far as we went, but that
wasn’t far, for I left pretty soon, guessing that they wanted to be
alone.”
“_Were_ they alone then?” I asked, innocently.
“Oh, Fräulein Dollmann was there, of course,” explained Davies, feeling
for his armour again.
“Did he seem to know them well?” I pursued, inconsequently.
“Oh, yes, very well.”
Scenting a faint clue, I felt the need of feminine weapons for my
sensitive antagonist. But the opportunity passed.
“That was the last I saw of him,” he said. “We sailed, as I told you,
at daybreak next morning. Now, have you got any idea what I’m driving
at?”
“A rough idea,” I answered. “Go ahead.”
Davies sat up to the table, unrolled the chart with a vigorous sweep of
his two hands, and took up his parable with new zest.
“I start with two certainties,” he said. “One is that I was ‘moved on’
from that coast, because I was too inquisitive. The other is that
Dollmann is at some devil’s work there which is worth finding out.
Now”—he paused in a gasping effort to be logical and articulate.
“Now—well, look at the chart. No, better still, look first at this map
of Germany. It’s on a small scale, and you can see the whole thing.” He
snatched down a pocket-map from the shelf and unfolded it. _[See Map
A]_ “Here’s this huge empire, stretching half over central Europe—an
empire growing like wildfire, I believe, in people, and wealth, and
everything. They’ve licked the French, and the Austrians, and are the
greatest military power in Europe. I wish I knew more about all that,
but what I’m concerned with is their sea-power. It’s a new thing with
them, but it’s going strong, and that Emperor of theirs is running it
for all it’s worth. He’s a splendid chap, and anyone can see he’s
right. They’ve got no colonies to speak of, and _must_ have them, like
us. They can’t get them and keep them, and they can’t protect their
huge commerce without naval strength. The command of the sea is _the_
thing nowadays, isn’t it? I say, don’t think these are my ideas,” he
added, naïvely. “It’s all out of Mahan and those fellows. Well, the
Germans have got a small fleet at present, but it’s a thundering good
one, and they’re building hard. There’s the——and the——.” He broke off
into a digression on armaments and speeds in which I could not follow
him. He seemed to know every ship by heart. I had to recall him to the
point. “Well, think of Germany as a new sea-power,” he resumed. “The
next thing is, what is her coast-line? It’s a very queer one, as you
know, split clean in two by Denmark, most of it lying east of that and
looking on the Baltic, which is practically an inland sea, with its
entrance blocked by Danish islands. It was to evade that block that
William built the ship canal from Kiel to the Elbe, but that could be
easily smashed in war-time. Far the most important bit of coast-line is
that which lies _west_ of Denmark and looks on the North Sea. It’s
there that Germany gets her head out into the open, so to speak. It’s
there that she fronts us and France, the two great sea-powers of
Western Europe, and it’s there that her greatest ports are and her
richest commerce.
“Now it must strike you at once that it’s ridiculously short compared
with the huge country behind it. From Borkum to the Elbe, as the crow
flies, is only seventy miles. Add to that the west coast of Schleswig,
say 120 miles. Total, say, two hundred. Compare that with the seaboard
of France and England. Doesn’t it stand to reason that every inch of it
is important? Now what _sort_ of coast is it? Even on this small map
you can see at once, by all those wavy lines, shoals and sand
everywhere, blocking nine-tenths of the land altogether, and doing
their best to block the other tenth where the great rivers run in. Now
let’s take it bit by bit. You see it divides itself into three.
Beginning from the west the _first piece_ is from Borkum to
Wangeroog—fifty odd miles. What’s that like? A string of sandy islands
backed by sand; the Ems river at the western end, on the Dutch border,
leading to Emden—not much of a place. Otherwise, no coast towns at all.
_Second piece:_ a deep sort of bay consisting of the three great
estuaries—the Jade, the Weser and the Elbe—leading to Wilhelmshaven
(their North Sea naval base), Bremen, and Hamburg; total breadth of
bay, twenty odd miles only; sandbanks littered about all through it.
_Third piece:_ the Schleswig coast, hopelessly fenced in behind a six
to eight mile fringe of sand. No big towns; one moderate river, the
Eider. Let’s leave that third piece aside. I may be wrong, but, in
thinking this business out, I’ve pegged away chiefly at the other two,
the seventy-mile stretch from Borkum to the Elbe—half of it estuaries,
and half islands. It was there that I found the _Medusa_, and it’s that
stretch that, thanks to him, I missed exploring.”
I made an obvious conjecture. “I suppose there are forts and coast
defences? Perhaps he thought you would see too much. By the way, he saw
your naval books, of course?”
“Exactly. Of course that was my first idea; but it can’t be that. It
doesn’t explain things in the least. To begin with, there _are_ no
forts and can be none in that first division, where the islands are.
There might be something on Borkum to defend the Ems; but it’s very
unlikely, and, anyway, I had passed Borkum and was at Norderney.
There’s nothing else to defend. Of course it’s different in the second
division, where the big rivers are. There are probably hosts of forts
and mines round Wilhelmshaven and Bremerhaven, and at Cuxhaven just at
the mouth of the Elbe. Not that I should ever dream of bothering about
them; every steamer that goes in would see as much as me. Personally, I
much prefer to stay on board, and don’t often go on shore. And, good
Heavens!” (Davies leant back and laughed joyously) “do I _look_ like
that kind of spy?”
I figured to myself one of those romantic gentlemen that one reads of
in sixpenny magazines, with a Kodak in his tie-pin, a sketch-book in
the lining of his coat, and a selection of disguises in his hand
luggage. Little disposed for merriment as I was, I could not help
smiling, too.
“About this coast,” resumed Davies. “In the event of war it seems to me
that every inch of it would be important, _sand and all._ Take the big
estuaries first, which, of course, might be attacked or blockaded by an
enemy. At first sight you would say that their main channels were the
only things that mattered. Now, in time of peace there’s no secrecy
about the navigation of these. They’re buoyed and lighted like streets,
open to the whole world, and taking an immense traffic; well charted,
too, as millions of pounds in commerce depend on them. But now look at
the sands they run through, intersected, as I showed you, by threads of
channels, tidal for the most part, and probably only known to smacks
and shallow coasters, like that galliot of Bartels.
“It strikes me that in a war a lot might depend on these, both in
defence and attack, for there’s plenty of water in them at the right
tide for patrol-boats and small torpedo craft, though I can see they
take a lot of knowing. Now, say _we_ were at war with Germany—both
sides could use them as lines between the three estuaries; and to take
our own case, a small torpedo-boat (not a destroyer, mind you) could on
a dark night cut clean through from the Jade to the Elbe and play the
deuce with the shipping there. But the trouble is that I doubt if
there’s a soul in our fleet who knows those channels. _We_ haven’t
coasters there; and, as to yachts, it’s a most unlikely game for an
English yacht to play at; but it does so happen that I have a fancy for
that sort of thing and would have explored those channels in the
ordinary course.” I began to see his drift.
“Now for the islands. I was rather stumped there at first, I grant,
because, though there are lashings of sand behind them, and the same
sort of intersecting channels, yet there seems nothing important to
guard or attack.
“Why shouldn’t a stranger ramble as he pleases through them? Still
Dollmann had his headquarters there, and I was sure that had some
meaning. Then it struck me that the same point held good, for that
strip of Frisian coast adjoins the estuaries, and would also form a
splendid base for raiding midgets, which could travel unseen right
through from the Ems to the Jade, and so to the Elbe, as by a covered
way between a line of forts.
“Now here again it’s an unknown land to us. Plenty of local galliots
travel it, but strangers never, I should say. Perhaps at the most an
occasional foreign yacht gropes in at one of the gaps between the
islands for shelter from bad weather, and is precious lucky to get in
safe. Once again, it was my fad to like such places, and Dollmann
cleared me out. He’s not a German, but he’s in with Germans, and naval
Germans too. He’s established on that coast, and knows it by heart. And
he tried to drown me. Now what do you think?” He gazed at me long and
anxiously.
CHAPTER IX.
I Sign Articles
It was not an easy question to answer, for the affair was utterly
outside all my experience; its background the sea, and its actual scene
a region of the sea of which I was blankly ignorant. There were other
difficulties that I could see perhaps better than Davies, an enthusiast
with hobbies, who had been brooding in solitude over his dangerous
adventure. Yet both narrative and theory (which have lost, I fear, in
interpretation to the reader) had strongly affected me; his forcible
roughnesses, tricks of manner, sudden bursts of ardour, sudden retreats
into shyness, making up a charm I cannot render. I found myself
continually trying to see the man through the boy, to distinguish sober
judgement from the hot-headed vagaries of youth. Not that I dreamed for
a moment of dismissing the story of his wreck as an hallucination. His
clear blue eyes and sane simplicity threw ridicule on such treatment.
Evidently, too, he wanted my help, a matter that might well have
influenced my opinion on the facts, had he been other than he was. But
it would have taken a “finished and finite clod” to resist the
attraction of the man and the enterprise; and I take no credit whatever
for deciding to follow him, right or wrong. So, when I stated my
difficulties, I knew very well that we should go.
“There are two main points that I don’t understand,” I said. “First,
you’ve never explained why an _Englishman_ should be watching those
waters and ejecting intruders; secondly, your theory doesn’t supply