The Riddle of the Sands
something). Querry: Scheme of defence by land and sea for North Sea
Coast?
_Sea_—7 islands, 7 channels between (counting West Ems), very small
depths (what you said) in most of them. Tugs and pilots for patrol work
behind islands, as I always said. Querry: Rondezvous is for inspecting
channels?
_Land_—Look at railway (map in ulster pocket) running in a loop all
round Friesland, a few miles from coast. Querry: To be used as line of
communication for army corps. Troops could be quickly sent to any
threatened point. _Esens_ the base? It is in top centre of loop. Von
Brooning dished us fairly over that at Bensersiel.
_Chatham_—D. was spying after our naval plans for war with Germany.
Von Brooning runs naval part over here.
Where does Burmer come in? Querry—you go to Bremen and find out about
him?
I nodded stupidly over this document—so stupidly that I found myself
wondering whether Burmer was a place or a person. Then I dozed, to wake
with a violent start and find the paper on the floor. Panic-stricken, I
hid it away, and went on deck, when I found we were close to Norddeich,
running up to the bleakest of bleak jetties thrown out from the
dyke-bound polders of the mainland. Böhme and I landed together, and he
was at my elbow as I asked for a ticket for Amsterdam, and was given
one as far as Rheine, a junction near the Dutch frontier. He was
ensconced in an opposite corner to me in the railway carriage, looking
like an Indian idol. “Where do you come in?” I pondered, dreamily. Too
sleepy to talk, I could only blink at him, sitting bolt upright with my
arms folded over my precious pocket-book. Finally, I gave up the
struggle, buttoned my ulster tightly up, and turning my back upon him
with an apology, lay down to sleep, the precious pocket nethermost. He
was at liberty to rifle my bag if he chose, and I dare say he did. I
cannot say, for from this point till Rheine, for the best part of four
hours, that is, I had only two lucid intervals.
The first was at Emden, where we both had to change. Here, as we pushed
our way down the crowded platform, Böhme, after being greeted
respectfully by several persons, was at last buttonholed without means
of escape by an obsequious gentleman, whose description is of no
moment, but whose conversation is. It was about a canal; what canal I
did not gather, though, from a name dropped, I afterwards identified it
as one in course of construction as a feeder to the Ems. The point is
that the subject was canals. At the moment it was seed dropped in
unreceptive soil, but it germinated later. I passed on, mingling with
the crowd, and was soon asleep again in another carriage where Böhme
this time did not follow me.
The second occasion was at Leer, where I heard myself called by name,
and woke to find him at the window. He had to change trains, and had
come to say good-bye. “Don’t forget to go to Lloyd’s,” he grated in my
ear. I expect it was a wan smile that I returned, for I was at a very
low ebb, and my fortress looked sarcastically impregnable. But the
sapper was free; “free” was my last conscious thought.
Even after Rheine, where I changed for the last time, a brutish
drowsiness enchained me, and the afternoon was well advanced before my
faculties began to revive.
The train crept like a snail from station to station. I might, so a
fellow-passenger told me, have waited three hours at Rheine for an
express which would have brought me to Amsterdam at about the same
time; or, if I had chosen to break the journey farther back, two hours
at either Emden or Leer would still have enabled me to catch the said
express at Rheine. These alternatives had escaped Davies, and, I
surmised, had been suppressed by Böhme, who doubtless did not want me
behind him, free either to double back or to follow him to Bremen.
The pace, then, was execrable, and there were delays; we were behind
time at Hengelo, thirty minutes late at Apeldoorn; so that I might well
have grown nervous about my connexions at Amsterdam, which were in some
jeopardy. But as I battled out of my lethargy and began to take account
of our position and prospects, quite a different thought at the outset
affected me. Anxiety to reach London was swamped in reluctance to quit
Germany, so that I found myself grudging every mile that I placed
between me and the frontier. It was the old question of urgency. To-day
was the 23rd. The visit to London meant a minimum absence of
forty-eight hours, counting from Amsterdam; that is to say, that by
travelling for two nights and one day, and devoting the other day to
investigating Dollmann’s past, it was humanly possible for me to be
back on the Frisian coast on the evening of the 25th. Yes, I could be
at Norden, if that was the “rendezvous”, at 7 p.m. But what a scramble!
No margin for delays, no physical respite. Some pasts take a deal of
raking up—other persons may be affected; men are cautious, they trip
you up with red tape; or the man who knows is out at lunch—a protracted
lunch; or in the country—a protracted week-end. Will you see Mr
So-and-so, or leave a note? Oh! I know those public departments—from
the inside! And the Admiralty!... I saw myself baffled and racing back
the same night to Germany, with two days wasted, arriving, good for
nothing, at Norden, with no leisure to reconnoitre my ground; to be
baffled again there, probably, for you cannot always count on fogs (as
Davies said). Esens was another clue, and “to follow Burmer”—there was
something in that notion. But I wanted time, and had I time? How long
could Davies maintain himself at Norderney? Not so very long, from what
I remembered of last night. And was he even safe there? A feverish
dream recurred to me—a dream of Davies in a diving-dress; of a
regrettable hitch in the air-supply—Stop, that was nonsense!... Let us
be sane. What matter if he had to go? What matter if I took my time in
London? Then with a flood of shame I saw Davies’s wistful face on the
quay, heard his grim ejaculation: “He’s our game or no one’s”; and my
own sullen “Oh, I’ll keep the secret!” London was utterly impossible.
If I found my informant, what credentials had I, what claim to
confidences? None, unless I told the whole story. Why, my mere presence
in Whitehall would imperil the secret; for, once on my native heath, I
should be recognised—possibly haled to judgement; at the best should
escape in a cloud of rumour—“last heard of at Norderney”; “only this
morning was raising Cain at the Admiralty about a mythical lieutenant.”
No! Back to Friesland, was the word. One night’s rest—I must have
that—between sheets, on a feather bed; one long, luxurious night, and
then back refreshed to Friesland, to finish our work in our own way,
and with none but our own weapons.
Having reached this resolve, I was nearly putting it into instant
execution, by alighting at Amersfoort, but thought better of it. I had
a transformation to effect before I returned north, and the more
populous centre I made it in the less it was likely to attract notice.
Besides, I had in my mind’s eye a perfect bed in a perfect hostelry
hard by the Amstel River. It was an economy in the end.
So, at half-past eight I was sipping my coffee in the aforesaid
hostelry, with a London newspaper before me, which was unusually
interesting, and some German journals, which, “in hate of a wrong not
theirs”, were one and all seething with rancorous Anglophobia. At nine
I was in the Jewish quarter, striking bargains in an infamous marine
slop-shop. At half-past nine I was despatching this unscrupulous
telegram to my chief—“Very sorry, could not call Norderney; hope
extension all right; please write to Hôtel du Louvre, Paris.” At ten I
was in the perfect bed, rapturously flinging my limbs abroad in its
glorious redundancies. And at 8.28 on the following morning, with a
novel chilliness about the upper lip, and a vast excess of strength and
spirits, I was sitting in a third-class carriage, bound for Germany,
and dressed as a young seaman, in a pea-jacket, peaked cap, and
comforter.
The transition had not been difficult. I had shaved off my moustache
and breakfasted hastily in my bedroom, ready equipped for a journey in
my ulster and cloth cap. I had dismissed the hotel porter at the
station, and left my bag at the cloak-room, after taking out of it an
umber bundle and substituting the ulster. The umber bundle, which
consisted of my oilskins, and within them my sea-boots and a few other
garments and necessaries, the whole tied up with a length of tarry
rope, was now in the rack above me, and (with a stout stick)
represented my luggage. Every article in it—I shudder at their
origin—was in strict keeping with my humble _métier,_ for I knew they
were liable to search at the frontier Custom-house; but there was a
Baedeker of Northern Germany in my jacket pocket.
For the nonce, if questions were asked, I was an English seaman, going
to Emden to join a ship, with a ticket as far as the frontier. Beyond
that a definite scheme of action had still to be thought out. One
thing, however, was sure. I was determined to be at Norden to-morrow
night, the 25th. A word about Norden, which is a small town seven miles
south of Norddeich. When hurriedly scanning the map for coast stations
in the cabin yesterday, I had not thought of Norden, because it did not
appear to be on the coast, but Davies had noticed it while I slept, and
I now saw that his pencilled hint was a shrewd one. The creek he spoke
of, though barely visible on the map, _[See Map B]_ flowed into the Ems
Estuary in a south-westerly direction. The “night train” tallied to
perfection, for high tide in the creek would be, as Davies estimated,
between 10.30 and 11 p.m. on the night of the 25th; and the time-table
showed that the only night train arriving at Norden was one from the
south at 10.46 p.m. This looked promising. Emden, which I had inclined
to on the spur of the moment, was out of court in comparison, for many
reasons; not the least being that it was served by three trains between
9 p.m. and 1 a.m., so that the phrase “night train” would be ambiguous
and not decisive as with Norden.
So far good; but how was I to spend the intervening time? Should I act
on Davies’s “querry” and go to Bremen after Böhme? I soon dismissed
that idea. It was one to act upon if others failed; for the present it
meant another scramble. Bremen is six hours from Norden by rail. I
should spend a disproportionate amount of my limited time in trains,
and I should want a different disguise. Besides, I had already learnt
something fresh about Böhme; for the seed dropped at Emden Station
yesterday had come to life. A submarine engineer I knew him to be
before; I now knew that canals were another branch of his labours—not a
very illuminating fact; but could I pick up more in a single day?
There remained Esens, and it was thither I resolved to go to-night—a
tedious journey, lasting till past eight in the evening; but there I
should only be an hour from Norden by rail.
And at Esens?
All day long I strove for light on the central mystery, collecting from
my diary, my memory, my imagination, from the map, the time-table, and
Davies’s grubby jottings, every elusive atom of material. Sometimes I
issued from a reverie with a start, to find a phlegmatic Dutch peasant
staring strangely at me over his china pipe. I was more careful over
the German border. Davies’s paper I soon knew by heart. I pictured him
writing it with his cramped fist in his corner by the stove, fighting
against sleep, absently striking salvos of matches, while I snored in
my bunk; absently diverging into dreams, I knew, of a rose-brown face
under dewy hair and a grey tam-o’-shanter; though not a word of her
came into the document. I smiled to see his undying faith in the