The Riddle of the Sands
suit both of two contingencies. If we were innocent travellers, he was
the genial host, communicative and helpful. If we were spies, his
tactics had been equally applicable. He had outdone us in apparent
candour, hiding nothing which he knew we would discover for ourselves,
and contriving at the same time both to gain knowledge and control of
our movements, and to convey us warnings, which would only be
understood if we were guilty, that we were playing an idle and perilous
game, and had better desist. But in one respect we had had the
advantage, and that was in the version Davies had given of his
stranding on the Hohenhörn. Inscrutable as our questioner was, he let
it appear not only that the incident was new to him, but that he
conjectured at its sinister significance. A little cross-examination on
detail would have been fatal to Davies’s version; but that was where
our strength lay; he dared not cross-examine for fear of suggesting to
Davies suspicions which he might never have felt. Indeed, I thought I
detected that fear underlying his whole attitude towards us, and it
strengthened a conviction which had been growing in me since Grimm’s
furtive midnight visit, that the secret of this coast was of so
important and delicate a nature that rather than attract attention to
it at all, overt action against intruders would be taken only in the
last resort, and on irrefragable proofs of guilty intention.
Now for our clues. I had come away with two, each the germ of a
distinct theory, and both obscured by the prevailing ambiguity. Now,
however, as we thumbed the chart and I gave full rein to my fancy, one
of them, the idea of Memmert, gained precision and vigour every moment.
True, such information as we had about the French wreck and his own
connection with it was placed most readily at our disposal by von
Brüning; but I took it to be information calculated only to forestall
suspicion, since he was aware that we already associated him with
Dollmann, possibly also with Grimm, and it was only likely that in the
ordinary course we should learn that the trio were jointly concerned in
Memmert. So much for the facts; as for the construction he wished us to
put on them, I felt sure it was absolutely false. He wished to give us
the impression that the buried treasure itself was at the root of any
mystery we might have scented. I do not know if the reader fully
appreciated that astute suggestion—the hint that secrecy as to results
was necessary owing both to the great sum at stake and the flaw in the
title, which he had been careful to inform us had passed through
British hands. What he meant to imply was, “Don’t be surprised if you
have midnight visitors; Englishmen prowling along this coast are
suspected of being Lloyd’s agents.” An ingenious insinuation, which, at
the time it was made, had caused me to contemplate a new and much more
commonplace solution of our enigma than had ever occurred to us; but it
was only a passing doubt, and I dismissed it altogether now.
The fact was, it either explained everything or nothing. As long as we
held to our fundamental assumption—that Davies had been decoyed into a
death-trap in September—it explained nothing. It was too fantastic to
suppose that the exigencies of a commercial speculation would lead to
such extremities as that. We were not in the South Sea Islands; nor
were we the puppets of a romance. We were in Europe, dealing not only
with a Dollmann, but with an officer of the German Imperial Navy, who
would scarcely be connected with a commercial enterprise which could
conceivably be reduced to forwarding its objects in such a fashion. It
was shocking enough to find him in relations with such a scoundrel at
all, but it was explicable if the motive were imperial—not so if it
were financial. No; to accept the suggestion we must declare the whole
quest a mare’s nest from beginning to end; the attempt on Davies a
delusion of his own fancy, the whole structure we had built on it,
baseless.
“Well,” I can hear the reader saying, “why not? You, at any rate, were
always a little sceptical.”
Granted; yet I can truthfully say I scarcely faltered for a moment.
Much had happened since Schlei Fiord. I had seen the mechanism of the
death-trap; I had lived with Davies for a stormy fortnight, every hour
of which had increased my reliance on his seamanship, and also,
therefore, on his account of an event which depended largely for its
correct interpretation on a balanced nautical judgement. Finally, I had
been unconsciously realising, and knew from his mouth to-day, that he
had exercised and acted on that judgement in the teeth of personal
considerations, which his loyal nature made overwhelming in their
force.
What, then, was the meaning of Memmert? At the outset it riveted my
attention on the Ems estuary, whose mouth it adjoins. We had always
rather neglected the Ems in our calculations; with some excuse, too,
for at first sight its importance bears no proportion to that of the
three greater estuaries. The latter bear vessels of the largest tonnage
and deepest draught to the very quays of Hamburg, Bremerhaven, and the
naval dockyard of Wilhelmshaven; while two of them, the Elbe and the
Weser, are commerce carriers on the vastest scale for the whole empire.
The Ems, on the other hand, only serves towns of the second class. A
glance at the chart explains this. You see a most imposing estuary on a
grander scale than any of the other three taken singly, with a length
of thirty miles and a frontage on the North Sea of ten miles, or
one-seventieth, roughly, of the whole seaboard; encumbered by outlying
shoals, and blocked in the centre by the island of Borkum, but
presenting two fine deep-water channels to the incoming vessel. These
roll superbly through enormous sheets of sand, unite and approach the
mainland in one stately stream three miles in breadth. But then comes a
sad falling off. The navigable fairway shoals and shrinks, middle
grounds obstruct it, and shelving foreshores persistently deny it that
easy access to the land that alone can create great seaboard cities.
All the ports of the Ems are tidal; the harbour of Delfzyl, on the
Dutch side, dries at low water, and Emden, the principal German port,
can only be reached by a lock and a mile of canal.
But this depreciation is only relative. Judged on its merits, and not
by the standard of the Elbe, it is a very important river. Emden is a
flourishing and growing port. For shallow craft the stream is navigable
far into the interior, where, aided by tributaries and allied canals
(notably the connection with the Rhine at Dortmund, then approaching
completion), it taps the resources of a great area. Strategically there
was still less reason for underrating it. It is one of the great
maritime gates of Germany; and it is the westernmost gate, the nearest
to Great Britain and France, contiguous to Holland. Its great forked
delta presents two yawning breaches in that singular rampart of islets
and shoals which masks the German seaboard—a seaboard itself so short
in proportion to the empire’s bulk, that, as Davies used to say, “every
inch of it must be important.” Warships could force these breaches, and
so threaten the mainland at one of its few vulnerable points. Quay
accommodation is no object to such visitors; intricate navigation no
deterrent. Even the heaviest battleships could approach within striking
distance of the land, while cruisers and military transports could
penetrate to the level of Emden itself. Emden, as Davies had often
pointed out, is connected by canal with Wilhelmshaven on the Jade, a
strategic canal, designed to carry gunboats as well as merchandise.
Now Memmert was part of the outer rampart; its tapering sickle of sand
directly commanded the eastern breach; it _must_ be connected with the
defence of this breach. No more admirable base could be imagined;
self-contained and isolated, yet sheltered, accessible—better than
Juist and Borkum. And supposing it were desired to shroud the nature of
the work in absolute secrecy, what a pretext lay to hand in the wreck
and its buried bullion, which lay in the offing opposite the fairway!
On Memmert was the depôt for the salvage operations. Salvage work, with
its dredging and diving, offered precisely the disguise that was
needed. It was submarine, and so are some of the most important
defences of ports, mines, and dirigible torpedoes. All the details of
the story were suggestive: the “small local company”; the “engineer
from Bremen” (who, I wondered, was he?); the few shares held by von
Brüning, enough to explain his visits; the stores and gear coming from
Wilhelmshaven, a naval dockyard.
Try as I would I could not stir Davies’s imagination as mine was
stirred. He was bent on only seeing the objections, which, of course,
were numerous enough. Could secrecy be ensured under pretext of salving
a wreck? It must be a secret shared by many—divers, crews of tugs,
employees of all sorts. I answered that trade secrets are often
preserved under no less difficult conditions, and why not imperial
secrets?
“Why the Ems and not the Elbe?” he asked.
“Perhaps,” I replied, “the Elbe, too, holds similar mysteries.” Neuerk
Island might, for all we knew, be another Memmert; when cruising in
that region we had had no eyes for such things, absorbed in a
preconceived theory of our own. Besides, we must not take ourselves too
seriously. We were amateurs, not experts in coast defence, and on such
vague grounds to fastidiously reject a clue which went so far as this
one was to quarrel with our luck. There was a disheartening corollary
to this latter argument that in my new-born zeal I shut my eyes to. As
amateurs, were we capable of using our clue and gaining exact knowledge
of the defences in question? Davies, I knew, felt this strongly, and I
think it accounted for his lukewarm view of Memmert more than he was
aware. He clung more obstinately than ever to his “channel theory”,
conscious that it offered the one sort of opportunity of which with his
peculiar gifts he was able to take advantage. He admitted, however,
that it was under a cloud at present, for if knowledge of the coastwise
navigation were a crime in itself we should scarcely be sitting here
now. “It’s something to do with it, anyhow!” he persisted.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Imperial Escort
Memmert gripped me, then, to the exclusion of a rival notion which had
given me no little perplexity during the conversation with von Brüning.
His reiterated advice that we should lose no time in picking up our
anchor and chain had ended by giving me the idea that he was anxious to
get us away from Bensersiel and the mainland. At first I had taken the
advice partly as a test of our veracity (as I gave the reader to
understand), and partly as an indirect method of lulling any suspicions
which Grimm’s midnight visit may have caused. Then it struck me that
this might be over-subtlety on my part, and the idea recurred when the
question of our future plans cropped up, and hampered me in deciding on
a course. It returned again when von Brüning offered to tow us out in
the evening. It was in my mind when I questioned him as to his business
ashore, for it occurred to me that perhaps his landing here was not
solely due to a wish to inspect the crew of the _Dulcibella_. Then came
his perfectly frank explanation (with its sinister _double entente_ for
us), coupled with an invitation to me to accompany him to Esens. But,
on the principle of _timeo Danaos_ etc., I instantly smelt a ruse, not
that I dreamt that I was to be decoyed into captivity; but if there was
anything here which we two might discover in the few hours left to us,
it was an ingenious plan to remove the most observant of the two till
the hour of departure.