British Secret Service During the Great War Part 20

"Very well, then," I quietly replied; "fists or single-sticks are good enough for me."

The look on their faces seemed to imply that insult had been added to injury. Such a proposal was most unacceptable and preposterous. They came back to the original weapons and insisted upon a selection being named, which I settled by telling them to provide both. Their next proposition caused a deadlock to further negotiations. They wanted to fix the meeting in a named wood, some little distance from the suburbs of the town, at the early hour of six on the following morning.

Bowing very politely, I smiled. It was the first smile that had crossed the countenance of anyone of the partic.i.p.ants at that memorable interview. "Gentlemen," I commenced, "you may like early hours; they may agree with your const.i.tution and methods of living, but you cannot persuade a civilian gentleman to rise until the world has been properly aired. We English are as regular in our habits as you may be. We go to bed at midnight. We are called at 8 a.m., and we have breakfast--a good substantial repast _a la fourchette_--at 9 a.m. We must read the morning's news-sheet. After 10 a.m. we are at the disposal of our friends. You may have your own way in any other details or particulars of this unfortunate little misunderstanding you please, but upon this point I remain adamant."

Again I bowed to each of them, and although serious enough to all outward appearances, I was chuckling inwardly, because at last I saw a silver lining to the ominous clouds which had so suddenly and so unexpectedly enveloped me.

The English nation flatters itself and is justly proud of its sporting instincts. But it looks with horror upon duelling as being little short of murder. Our national sense of fair play and justice abhors the thought of any expert being matched against an amateur; more particularly in a contest where the skill of each party is unequal, or one of them can easily overmatch the other.

I personally would never attempt the permanent injury of a fellow-being, unless forced into a fight and the doing of it was the only way of saving life. I knew nothing of swordsmanship, nor had I ever practised with the foils. As a revolver shot I was a very doubtful performer, and they are difficult little things to use at any time. I had no quarrel with the two unmannerly cads who had forced themselves uninvited and unwelcomed upon my privacy. All differences had been settled and wiped off the slate with one small wave of the arm. Why, therefore, should I now seek their lives, or to do them some serious bodily harm? If anyone was aggrieved, surely I was ent.i.tled to all sympathy. Why, therefore, should they now seek to destroy me? Little did I know that "Am Tag" was hovering so near at hand.

On these points, however, my mind was not only quite clear but it was quite made up. The meeting must be arranged for 11 a.m. on the morrow or it must be postponed to some more convenient and suitable date.

When my visitors shook their heads and demurred I became indignant. I reminded them of the condition in which I had left those whom they represented. I pointed out the obvious fact that the intervening time was not sufficient for them to sleep off the fumes and effects of the excess of alcohol which they were undoubtedly suffering from; whilst as a final and unanswerable argument I hammered home the fact that I had not yet been introduced to the gentlemen who would act as my friends at this very important meeting. If not an insult to them it certainly would be an insult to me, to be invited or even expected to meet in honourable (?) combat, opponents who were not perfectly sober, or who might be severely handicapped in consequence of the continuing effects of their over-night insobriety.

I enlarged on this, speaking in latent sarcasm which, needless to say, was absolutely lost upon my visitors. Perhaps it was best for my personal safety that it was so. Their highly-educated super-kultur would prevent them from appreciating such, or understanding it. I said that any combat in which a preponderance of advantage rested on one side or the other could not be tolerated by any honourable gentleman, who never minded accepting odds, providing these odds were against himself.

But he would consider it low and mean and altogether unworthy to take advantage of an opponent unless equality and fair play could be ensured.

For my part I insisted that those whom they represented should have full opportunities of equal combat; in other words, that they should have time to get sober.

These honeyed sentiments clinched the business. My visitors bowed most politely and replied, "Having heard your explanations, we fully realise, as gentlemen speaking for and acting on behalf of gentlemen" (G.o.d save the mark!) "that we cannot do otherwise than accept your reasons and act accordingly." Thus they agreed to fix the meeting by mutual consent for eleven the following morning, and with an exchange of courtesies on all sides we parted company.

According to the local railway time-tables, a slow train was advertised as departing south for Hamburg at the early hour of 4 a.m. or a little after; whilst a fast train, running between Hamburg and the north of Denmark, stopped a few minutes at Neumunster about 7 a.m. Neumunster is the junction station for the Kiel Ca.n.a.l on the main Hamburg, Altona, Rensburg, Schleswig, Flensburg, Wogens, Vamdrup, Kolding line, and connecting up Fredericia and Copenhagen by the boat train _via_ Esbjerg.

At 3.30 a.m., long before the hour of dawn, a silent shadow glided along the deserted streets of Kiel. A meek voice at the palatial railway-station in very guttural German requested a third-cla.s.s ticket by the slow train to Hamburg. This modest traveller left the train at Neumunster, but no one appeared to notice he had broken his journey, or that he quietly disappeared from view on the station platform until the fast northward-bound train bustled in. In fact, he was so m.u.f.fled up, and he gripped his handbag so tightly, that he did not appear to be worth ten pfennig in return for any railway official's attention; whilst other travellers were far too occupied by their own concerns to trouble about his existence.

When the world had indeed become properly aired and the morning sun had risen far above the housetops, the landlord of a certain hotel in Kiel might have been seen standing at the entrance of his hostelry. A self-satisfied smile suffused his fat face, and both his hands were dived well down into capacious trouser-pockets, wherein he kept turning over coin after coin, whilst he puzzled his slow-working brains in vain to find a solution to account for the mad eccentricities of all foreigners in general; in particular those lunatics who seemed to prefer night-travelling on any uncomfortable train to snug, warm beds; and who left notes of unintelligible explanation, enclosing double the remuneration necessary for the so-called luxuries supplied by his hotel.

About the same time a lattice window in an upper storey of the same hotel was thrown open, and a sweet-faced maiden, having an Hungarian type of beauty, leaned out upon the window-sill, permitting the full rays of the morning sun to light up the beauties of her face, form, and figure. She was reading a letter which she had found pushed under her bedroom door whilst she had wandered in dreamland through the fairy glades of fancy during her innocent girlish repose. She frowned as she read it and stamped her foot in disappointment at the postscript, muttering the while to herself:

"No, we shan't meet in Paris next month, because I don't know whether I can get there. I'll come after you now."

At twelve noon, in a small clearing on the outskirts of a wood a few kilometres from the town of Kiel, three carriages were drawn into the seclusion of the tree-trunks. The horses attached thereto stamped impatiently. Either they were very fresh or they had been waiting too long. Further in amongst the trees was a party of men talking earnestly to one another. They were military officers, and a doctor was with them.

They appeared to be expecting somebody to arrive, or something of importance to happen. At last one of them, kicking furiously at a small bush, asked his companion, a man much older than himself, "What was that idiotic proviso you spoke about? 'You cannot persuade a civilian gentleman to rise until the world has been properly aired'? We ought to have spitted him when we had the chance!"

"My dear Fritz," replied his companion, "you never did have the chance; what is still more clear to me now is the fact that you never will. But if he's one of those _Swinehund Englander_--if so, then--_mein Gott! Am Tag!_" Saying which he viciously spat upon the turf.

CHAPTER XV

ESCAPING FROM A SUBMARINE

A SHIP OF ILL OMEN--ATTACKED--h.e.l.l LET LOOSE--PANIC--FIGHT FOR THE BOATS--COWARDLY CONDUCT--POWERLESS TO ACT--SHRAPNEL AT SEA--SURRENDER--TAKING CHARGE OF SHIP AND CARRYING ON--VALUE OF SMOKE-BOXES--TERRIBLE ANTIc.i.p.aTIONS--LAND AT LAST--REMINISCENCES UNTOLD.

On one occasion, after I had left the British Foreign Secret Service, I had to undertake a voyage to the outer islands of the Hebrides, situated about one hundred miles into the Atlantic, due west of Scotland, and well away to the north-west of Ireland.

It was known at the time to be a place which was infested with German submarines, which had perpetrated many atrocities whilst operating in that region: senseless, coldblooded murder of innocent fishermen, by blowing up their frail craft to atoms at close range with deck-guns; and the sinking of innumerable ships irrespective of the chances of their crew to make land in the small boats that might be left undamaged by their sh.e.l.l-fire.

It was summer time and no suggestion of a submarine attack troubled anyone concerned on contemplating the voyage.

"I don't like that boat. She looks like a bird of ill-omen," I remarked to my companion as we stood on the high quay at Oban looking downwards at a very small and very dirty steamer which was moored thereto.

She was about one hundred and sixty feet long, with as much available s.p.a.ce as possible devoted to cargo and cattle transit. Her decks seemingly had never been scrubbed since the day she was launched. Paint had been relegated to the background if superior tar was available. The saloon cabin, so-called, reeked with a conglomeration of ancient and nauseous smells, whilst the two private berths matchboarded off from it were altogether impossible to anyone holding the smallest ideas on sanitary principles.

"Well, my son, she's the only ship available. She is designated a mail-boat and she carries a thirteen-pounder aft, which is some consolation at least in these days of stress and submarines," replied my friend.

"Maybe, maybe; but for all that I don't like her. My prejudice is instinctive. She's about the most repulsive, uninviting boat I ever boarded, excepting an old coasting tub in Alaska and a pirate junk on the Yellow Sea; but in Europe one does expect a little more in return for even wartime pa.s.sage money."

"All the grumbling in the world, my son, won't alter or improve the accommodation of this hulk, so come along and make the best of it."

I was silent. I selected one of the largest of my blackest cigars and lighting it with deliberation, proceeded aboard, and turning my back upon the private cabin which had been retained for my special occupation, I proceeded to make myself as comfortable as circ.u.mstances admitted in a s.p.a.ce which was reserved for luggage at the far end of the saloon above the settee.

It had the advantage of being situate immediately below the only skylight, which, as soon as the ship had started, I prised open and thereby obtained some few whiffs of fresh air during the long night.

The following day brought about an improvement to the comfort of the travellers. The sun shone brilliantly, the sea was as smooth as a lake, and one could bask on the p.o.o.p with some degree of comfort, although such things as deck-chairs or cushions were conspicuous by their absence.

I, however, had a thick ulster, which, spread over part of the tarpaulin covering the mails, made an efficient couch, and after a coa.r.s.e yet satisfactory meal I sunned myself to my heart's content and whiled away the time smoking and reading a book, which I was compelled from time to time to characterise as rotten reading, much to the amus.e.m.e.nt of my companion de voyage.

According to regulations, a notice was hung over the main companion that the ship carried two lifeboats with capacity for thirty-three persons, eleven floating apparatus capable of sustaining one hundred and seventy-six persons, and her pa.s.senger allowance was stated to be one hundred and ninety-nine in all. How or where they could have slept did not seem to have occurred to the authorities.

A merciful Providence ordained that on this eventful voyage not more than one hundred people all told happened to come aboard at any one time.

A few calls were made along the rock-bound coast. Cargo was unshipped and more cargo taken in. Travellers disembarked, others took their places.

About midday all vestiges of land disappeared below the horizon and a course was steered for the open sea.

Although during the earlier part of the voyage many wrecks were pa.s.sed and many a gallant ship of n.o.ble proportions could be seen piled upon the rocks, the result of German outrages, and the zone was known to be a particularly dangerous one, no one antic.i.p.ated or thought of danger; least of all from the much-dreaded submarine.

Had not this obsolete and wretched apology for a mail-boat ploughed a weary course along this familiar route for many, many months during the war, whilst her engines wheezed and coughed and leaked in every pore, and her rusty plates collected weed and barnacles week by week, without molestation? Was she worth a torpedo? She was hardly worth a sh.e.l.l! Why should she be noticed now, even by the most amateur belligerent, or by the freshest novice at the game? Yet to the Hun who dreams of the glories of an Iron Cross, or other coveted decoration, a ship sunk is a ship to his credit, however insignificant that craft may be.

Suddenly and all-unexpectedly a low, resounding boom echoed across the waters, followed almost immediately by a whizz and a bang which made the ship's company jump and quake in their shoes.

What was it?

Where did it come from?

Eyes were strained and the horizon searched in vain, whilst some of the women-folk sent up a premature wail of fear of the unknown.