The Riddle of the Sands
moonlight; a barge half loaded lying alongside, and a deserted office
building. I skulked along a sandy towpath in solitude. Fens and field
were round me, as the map had said; willows and osier-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 off-side—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 Wittmund 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 paling. (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 saw-mill; 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
Memmert, and below it, nearer the canal, loomed a dark skeleton
framework, which proved to be a half-built vessel on stocks. Close by
was a similar object, only nearly completed—a barge. A paved slipway
led to the water here, and the canal broadened to a siding or
back-water in which lay seven or eight more barges in tiers. I scaled
another paling 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 dammed-off deviation was being excavated,
evidently to abridge 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 Esens inn-keeper that it was a respectable wayfarer, and not
a tramp or a lunatic, who knocked him up at half-past one or
thereabouts.
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, and 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 bitts and bollards. The
rest was an open well, 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
sheer, and, as I had observed in the 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
imagination still drooped nervelessly 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, and 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 _Dulcibella_,
and not so very much harder.
When snugly ensconced, 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 Esens and
Bensersiel, I had forgotten that there were other villages ending in
siel, also furnished on the chart with corkscrew streams; and,
moreover, that Böhme’s statistics of depth and distance had been
marshalled in seven categories, A to G. The very first match brought
full recollection as to the villages. The suffix _siel_ repeated itself
all round the coast-line. Five miles eastward of Bensersiel was
Neuharlingersiel, and farther on Carolinensiel. Four miles westward was
Dornumersiel; and farther on Nessmersiel and Hilgenriedersiel. That was
six on the north coast of the peninsula alone. On the west coast,
facing the Ems, there was only one, Greetsiel, a good way south of
Norden. But on the east, facing the Jade, 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 Esens, nor had they any
imaginable _raison d’étre_ as veins for commerce; 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
Esens. I still wanted one to make seven, and as a working hypothesis
added the solitary Greetsiel. At all seven villages streams debouched,
as at Bensersiel. 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 sevenfold 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
Benser Tief; none penetrated so far into the Hinterland. They varied in
length and sinuosity. Two, those belonging to Hilgenriedersiel and
Greetsiel, appeared not to reach the railway at all. On the other hand,
Carolinensiel, opposite Wangeroog Island, had a branch line all to
itself.
Match after match waxed and waned as I puzzled over the mystic seven.
In the end I puzzled myself to sleep, with the one fixed idea that
to-morrow, 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 and masked batteries couching _perdus_ among the sand-dunes
of desolate islets; built, coral-like, by infinitely slow and secret
labour; fed by lethal cargoes borne 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 showery), meeting
some navvies 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 Langeoog; but that meant missing
the rendezvous, and I was loth 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 Dornum. Then I
should find a blue line called the _Neues Tief_ leading to
Dornumersiel, on the coast. That explored, I could pass on to Nesse,
where there was another blue line to Nessmersiel. All this was on the
way to Norden, and I should have the railway constantly at my back, to
carry me there in the evening. The last train (my time-table told me)
was one reaching Norden at 7.15 p.m. I could catch this at Hage Station
at 7.5.
A brisk walk of six miles brought me, ravenously hungry, to Dornum.
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 Neues Tief.
Wriggling and doubling like an eel, choked with sedges and reeds, it
had no pretensions to being navigable. At length it looped away into
the fens out of sight, only to reappear again close to Dornum in a much
more dignified guise.
There was no siding where the railway crossed it, but at the town
itself, which it 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 the 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 Esens 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 first by a slatternly
girl who, I am sure, called him up to view me. To explain my muddy
boots and trousers I said I had walked from Esens, and from that I
found myself involved in a tangle of impromptu lies. Floundering down
an old groove, I placed my sister this time on Baltrum Island, and said
I was going to Dornumersiel (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. Dornumersiel was a lucky
shot; there _was_ a ferry-galliot 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 seamen; and, to make matters worse,
I was imprudent enough in pleading haste to pull out from an inner
pocket my gold watch with the chain and seals attached. He told me
there was no hurry, that I should miss the tide at Dornumersiel, 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 dock-side crimp, one of those foul
sharks who prey on discharged seamen, and as often as not are ex-seamen
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,
doubtless, a full purse. Nothing more ridiculously inopportune could
have befallen me, or more dangerous; for his class are as cosmopolitan
as waiters and _concierges,_ with as facile a gift for language and as
unerring a scent for nationality. Sure enough, the fellow recognised
mine, and positively challenged me with it in fairly fluent English