The Riddle of the Sands
constituted the whole crew of the _Johannes_, and was as dirty as his
master was clean. I felt a certain envious reverence for this
unprepossessing youth, seeing in him a much more efficient counterpart
of myself; but how he and his little master ever managed to work their
ungainly vessel was a miracle I never understood. Phlegmatically
impervious to rain and cold, he steered the _Johannes_ down the long
grey reaches in the wake of the tug, while we and Bartels held snug
gatherings down below, sometimes in his cabin, sometimes in ours. The
heating arrangements of the latter began to be a subject of serious
concern. We finally did the only logical thing, and brought the
kitchen-range into the parlour, fixing the Rippingille stove on the
forward end of the cabin table, where it could warm as well as cook for
us. As an ornament it was monstrous, and the taint of oil which it
introduced was a disgusting drawback; but, after all, the great
thing—as Davies said—is to be comfortable, and after that to be clean.
Davies held long consultations with Bartels, who was thoroughly at home
in the navigation of the sands we were bound for, his own boat being a
type of the very craft which ply in them. I shall not forget the moment
when it first dawned on him that his young friend’s curiosity was
practical; for he had thought that our goal was his own beloved
Hamburg, queen of cities, a place to see and die.
“It is too late,” he wailed. “You do not know the Nord See as I do.”
“Oh, nonsense, Bartels, it’s quite safe.”
“Safe! And have I not found you fast on Hohenhörn, in a storm, with
your rudder broken? God was good to you then, my son.”
“Yes, but it wasn’t my f——” Davies checked himself. “We’re going home.
There’s nothing in that.” Bartels became sadly resigned.
“It is good that you have a friend,” was his last word on the subject;
but all the same he always glanced at me with a rather doubtful eye. As
to Davies and myself, our friendship developed quickly on certain
limited lines, the chief obstacle, as I well know now, being his
reluctance to talk about the personal side of our quest.
On the other hand, I spoke about my own life and interests, with an
unsparing discernment, of which I should have been incapable a month
ago, and in return I gained the key to his own character. It was
devotion to the sea, wedded to a fire of pent-up patriotism struggling
incessantly for an outlet in strenuous physical expression; a humanity,
born of acute sensitiveness to his own limitations, only adding fuel to
the flame. I learnt for the first time now that in early youth he had
failed for the navy, the first of several failures in his career. “And
I can’t settle down to anything else,” he said. “I read no end about
it, and yet I am a useless outsider. All I’ve been able to do is to
potter about in small boats; but it’s all been _wasted_ till this
chance came. I’m afraid you’ll not understand how I feel about it; but
at last, for once in a way, I see a chance of being useful.”
“There ought to be chances for chaps like you,” I said, “without the
accident of a job such as this.”
“Oh, as long as I get it, what matter? But I know what you mean. There
must be hundreds of chaps like me—I know a good many myself—who know
our coasts like a book—shoals, creeks, tides, rocks; there’s nothing in
it, it’s only practice. They ought to make some use of us as a naval
reserve. They tried to once, but it fizzled out, and nobody really
cares. And what’s the result? Using every man of what reserves we’ve
got, there’s about enough to man the fleet on a war footing, and no
more. They’ve tinkered with fishermen, and merchant sailors, and
yachting hands, but everyone of them ought to be got hold of; and the
colonies, too. Is there the ghost of a doubt that if war broke out
there’d be wild appeals for volunteers, aimless cadging, hurry,
confusion, waste? My own idea is that we ought to go much further, and
train every able-bodied man for a couple of years as a sailor. Army?
Oh, I suppose you’d have to give them the choice. Not that I know or
care much about the Army, though to listen to people talk you’d think
it really mattered as the Navy matters. We’re a maritime nation—we’ve
grown by the sea and live by it; if we lose command of it we starve.
We’re unique in that way, just as our huge empire, only linked by the
sea, is unique. And yet, read Brassey, Dilke, and those _Naval
Annuals_, and see what mountains of apathy and conceit have had to be
tackled. It’s not the people’s fault. We’ve been safe so long, and
grown so rich, that we’ve forgotten what we owe it to. But there’s no
excuse for those blockheads of statesmen, as they call themselves, who
are paid to see things as they are. They have to go to an American to
learn their A B C, and it’s only when kicked and punched by civilian
agitators, a mere handful of men who get sneered at for their pains,
that they wake up, do some work, point proudly to it, and go to sleep
again, till they get another kick. By Jove! we want a man like this
Kaiser, who doesn’t wait to be kicked, but works like a nigger for his
country, and sees ahead.”
“We’re improving, aren’t we?”
“Oh, of course, we are! But it’s a constant uphill fight; and we aren’t
ready. They talk of a two-power standard——” He plunged away into
regions where space forbids me to follow him. This is only a sample of
many similar conversations that we afterwards held, always culminating
in the burning question of Germany. Far from including me and the
Foreign Office among his targets for vague invective, he had a profound
respect for my sagacity and experience as a member of that institution;
a respect which embarrassed me not a little when I thought of my
_précis_ writing and cigarette-smoking, my dancing, and my dining. But
I did know something of Germany, and could satisfy his tireless
questioning with a certain authority. He used to listen rapt while I
described her marvellous awakening in the last generation, under the
strength and wisdom of her rulers; her intense patriotic ardour; her
seething industrial activity, and, most potent of all, the forces that
are moulding modern Europe, her dream of a colonial empire, entailing
her transformation from a land-power to a sea-power. Impregnably based
on vast territorial resources which we cannot molest, the dim instincts
of her people, not merely directed but anticipated by the genius of her
ruling house, our great trade rivals of the present, our great naval
rival of the future, she grows, and strengthens, and waits, an ever
more formidable factor in the future of our delicate network of empire,
sensitive as gossamer to external shocks, and radiating from an island
whose commerce is its life, and which depends even for its daily ration
of bread on the free passage of the seas.
“And we aren’t ready for her,” Davies would say; “we don’t look her
way. We have no naval base in the North Sea, and no North Sea Fleet.
Our best battleships are too deep in draught for North Sea work. And,
to crown all, we were asses enough to give her Heligoland, which
commands her North Sea coast. And supposing she collars Holland; isn’t
there some talk of that?”
That would lead me to describe the swollen ambitions of the
Pan-Germanic party, and its ceaseless intrigues to promote the
absorption of Austria, Switzerland, and—a direct and flagrant menace to
ourselves—of Holland.
“I don’t blame them,” said Davies, who, for all his patriotism, had not
a particle of racial spleen in his composition. “I don’t blame them;
their Rhine ceases to be German just when it begins to be most
valuable. The mouth is Dutch, and would give them magnificent ports
just opposite British shores. _We_ can’t talk about conquest and
grabbing. We’ve collared a fine share of the world, and they’ve every
right to be jealous. Let them hate us, and say so; it’ll teach us to
buck up; and that’s what really matters.”
In these talks there occurred a singular contact of minds. It was very
well for me to spin sonorous generalities, but I had never till now
dreamed of being so vulgar as to translate them into practice. I had
always detested the meddlesome alarmist, who veils ignorance under
noisiness, and for ever wails his chant of lugubrious pessimism. To be
thrown with Davies was to receive a shock of enlightenment; for here,
at least, was a specimen of the breed who exacted respect. It is true
he made use of the usual jargon, interlarding his stammering sentences
(sometimes, when he was excited, with the oddest effect) with the
conventional catchwords of the journalist and platform speaker. But
these were but accidents; for he seemed to have caught his innermost
conviction from the very soul of the sea itself. An armchair critic is
one thing, but a sunburnt, brine-burnt zealot smarting under a personal
discontent, athirst for a means, however tortuous, of contributing his
effort to the great cause, the maritime supremacy of Britain, that was
quite another thing. He drew inspiration from the very wind and spray.
He communed with his tiller, I believe, and marshalled his figures with
its help. To hear him talk was to feel a current of clarifying air
blustering into a close club-room, where men bandy ineffectual
platitudes, and mumble old shibboleths, and go away and do nothing.
In our talk about policy and strategy we were Bismarcks and Rodneys,
wielding nations and navies; and, indeed, I have no doubt that our
fancy took extravagant flights sometimes. In plain fact we were merely
two young gentlemen in a seven-ton pleasure boat, with a taste for
amateur hydrography and police duty combined. Not that Davies ever
doubted. Once set on the road he gripped his purpose with child-like
faith and tenacity. It was his “chance”.
CHAPTER XI.
The Pathfinders
In the late afternoon of the second day our flotilla reached the Elbe
at Brunsbüttel and ranged up in the inner basin, while a big liner,
whimpering like a fretful baby, was tenderly nursed into the lock.
During the delay Davies left me in charge, and bolted off with an
oil-can and a milk-jug. An official in uniform was passing along the
quay from vessel to vessel countersigning papers. I went up to meet him
with our receipt for dues, which he signed carelessly. Then he paused
and muttered _“Dooltzhibella,”_ scratching his head, “that was the
name. English?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Little _lust-cutter_, that is so; there was an inquiry for you.”
“Whom from?”
“A friend of yours from a big barge-yacht.”
“Oh, I know; she went on to Hamburg, I suppose?”
“No such luck, captain; she was outward bound.”
What did the man mean? He seemed to be vastly amused by something.
“When was this—about three weeks ago?” I asked, indifferently.
“Three weeks? It was the day before yesterday. What a pity to miss him
by so little!” He chuckled and winked.
“Did he leave any message?” I asked.
“It was a lady who inquired,” whispered the fellow, sniggering. “Oh,
really,” I said, beginning to feel highly absurd, but keenly curious.
“And she inquired about the _Dulcibella_?”
“Herrgott! she was difficult to satisfy! Stood over me while I searched
the books. ‘A very little one,’ she kept saying, and ‘Are you sure all
the names are here?’ I saw her into her kleine Boot, and she rowed away
in the rain. No, she left no message. It was dirty weather for a young
Fräulein to be out alone in. Ach! she was safe enough, though. To see
her crossing the ebb in a chop of tide was a treat.”
“And the yacht went on down the river? Where was she bound to?”
“How do I know? Bremen, Wilhelmshaven, Emden—somewhere in the North
Sea; too far for you.”
“I don’t know about that,” said I, bravely.
“Ach! you will not follow in _that_? Are not you bound to Hamburg?”