The Riddle of the Sands Part 11

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 n.o.body 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 Bra.s.sey, 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 n.i.g.g.e.r 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 s.p.a.ce 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 inst.i.tution; a respect which embarra.s.sed me not a little when I thought of my _precis_ 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 pa.s.sage 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 a.s.ses 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 sh.o.r.es. 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 bl.u.s.tering into a close club-room, where men bandy ineffectual plat.i.tudes, 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'.

XI. The Pathfinders

IN the late afternoon of the second day our flotilla reached the Elbe at Brunsb.u.t.tel 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 pa.s.sing along the quay from vessel to vessel counter-signing 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 _l.u.s.t-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, sn.i.g.g.e.ring. '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 fraulein 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?'

'We can change our plans. It seems a pity to have missed them.'

'Think twice, captain, there are plenty of pretty girls in Hamburg.

But you English will do anything. Well, viel Gluck!'

He moved on, chuckling, to the next boat. Davies soon returned with his cans and an armful of dark, rye loaves, just in time, for, the liner being through, the flotilla was already beginning to jostle into the lock and Bartels was growing impatient.

'They'll last ten days,' he said, as we followed the throng, still clinging like a barnacle to the side of the 'Johannes'. We spent the few minutes while the lock was emptied in a farewell talk to Bartels.

Karl had hitched their main halyards on to the windla.s.s and was grinding at it in an _acharnement_ of industry, his shock head jerking and his grubby face perspiring. Then the lock gates opened; and so, in a Babel of shouting, whining of blocks, and creaking of spars, our whole company was split out into the dingy bosom of the Elbe. The 'Johannes' gathered way under wind and tide and headed for midstream. A last shake of the hand, and Bartels reluctantly slipped the head-rope and we drifted apart. 'Gute Reise! Gute Reise!' It was no time for regretful gazing, for the flood-tide was sweeping us up and out, and it was not until we had set the foresail, edged into a shallow bight, and let go our anchor, that we had leisure to think of him again; but by that time his and the other craft were shades in the murky east.

We swung close to a _glacis_ of smooth blue mud which sloped up to a weed-grown d.y.k.e; behind lay the same flat country, colourless, humid; and opposite us, two miles away, scarcely visible in the deepening twilight, ran the outline of a similar sh.o.r.e. Between rolled the turgid Elbe. 'The Styx flowing through Tartarus,' I thought to myself, recalling some of our Baltic anchorages.

I told my news to Davies as soon as the anchor was down, instinctively leaving the s.e.x of the inquirer to the last, as my informant had done.

'The 'Medusa' called yesterday?' he interrupted. 'And outward bound?

That's a rum thing. Why didn't he inquire when he was going _up_?'

'It was a lady,' and I drily retailed the official's story, very busy with a deck-broom the while. 'We're all square now, aren't we?' I ended. 'I'll go below and light the stove.'

Davies had been engaged in fixing up the riding-light. When I last saw him he was still so engaged, but motionless, the lantern under his left arm and his right hand grasping the forestay and the half-knotted lanyard; his eyes staring fixedly down the river, a strange look in his face, half exultant, half perplexed. When he joined me and spoke he seemed to be concluding a difficult argument.

'Anyway, it proves,' he said, 'that the 'Medusa' has gone back to Norderney. That's the main thing.'

'Probably,' I agreed, 'but let's sum up all we know. First, it's certain that n.o.body we've met as yet has any suspicion of _us_--'

'I told you he did it off his own bat,' threw in Davies.

'Or, secondly, of _him._ If he's what you think it's not known here.'

'I can't help that.'

'Thirdly, he inquires for you on his way _back_ from Hamburg, three weeks after the event. It doesn't look as if he thought he had disposed of you--it doesn't look as if he had _meant_ to dispose of you. He sends his daughter, too--a curious proceeding under the circ.u.mstances. Perhaps it's all a mistake.'