To Kiel in the 'Hercules' Part 9

Or rather, they had already skinned it and were busy cutting up the carca.s.s. Watching through my gla.s.s from the bridge of the _Viceroy_, I saw all three of them rush helter-skelter over a hill and out of sight as the _Hercules_ came abreast of them, only to hurry back and resume their grisly work when she had disappeared around a bend just ahead.

When they again took to their heels on sighting the _Viceroy_, I asked the pilot what they were afraid of. The law required, he replied, that the authorities should be notified of the death of any head of live stock in order that the meat (in case it was deemed fit for human consumption) should be distributed through the regular rationing channels. These people, he thought, were in the act of stealing their own dead horse, and doubtless their guilty consciences made them fear they would be reported and delivered up to justice.

Since witnessing this incident I have found myself rather less inclined to dwell in retrospect on that huge, juicy "beefsteak" I had devoured with such gusto when it was the _piece de resistance_ on the menu of our luncheon at the Nordholz Zeppelin station a couple of days previously.

Through the low country the construction of the ca.n.a.l had evidently been only a matter of dredging, but the multiplication in size and number of the "dumps" as the elevation increased showed that there had been places where digging on an extensive scale had been necessary, especially in connection with the widening and deepening operations. The fact that most of the "dumps" appeared to consist of earth of a very loose and sandy nature, some of them so much so that they had been planted thickly with young trees to prevent their being shifted by the winds, showed that the excavation problem had been a comparatively simple one, more of the nature of that at Suez than Panama, where so much of the way had to be blasted through solid rock.

The looseness of the earth had made it necessary to cut the banks at as low an angle as forty-five degrees in places to prevent caving, and at these points the under-water part of the channel was faced with roughly cut stone to minimize erosion. As this work was only carried a few feet above the surface of the water, it required but slight speed on the part of a large ship to produce a wave high enough to splash over on to the unprotected earth and bring it down in slides. This had doubtless happened very often in the course of the frequent shuttling to and fro of the High Sea Fleet, for the stonework was heavily undermined in many places, with few signs to indicate that much had been done in the way of repairs.

Except in the locks (and even there the concrete was cracking badly in places, particularly at the Kiel end), the ca.n.a.l shows many evidences of the haste of its construction and the serious deterioration it has suffered from heavy use and poor maintenance. It will require much money and labour to put it in proper condition, and neither of these is likely to be over plentiful in Germany for some years to come.

Our first glimpse of Allied prisoners in their "natural habitat"

occurred at a point about twenty miles inland from Brunsb.u.t.tel, where a new and very lofty railway viaduct was being thrown across the ca.n.a.l. The extensive groups of huts along the bank in the shadow of the half-completed final span of steel looked, from the distance, like ordinary workmen's quarters. As we drew nearer, however, broad belts of barbed wire surrounding those on the right side suggested that they were used as a prison camp even before our gla.s.ses had revealed the motley clad group on the bank waving to the _Hercules_. As the _Viceroy_ came abreast the excited and constantly augmenting crowd, we saw that the uniforms were mostly French and Russian, though there were three or four men in the grey of Italy and at least one with the unmistakable cap of the Serbs. A hulking chap in khaki, whom I was making the object of an especially close scrutiny on the chance that he might be British or American, put an end to doubt by slapping his chest resoundingly and announcing proudly, "_Je suis Belge!_" From the fact that they were all in good spirits, we took it that they were getting enough to eat and that prospects for repatriation were favourable.

We had quite given up hope of sighting any British when suddenly, from behind a barbed-wire barrier fencing off the last groups of huts, rang out a cry of "'Ow's ol'Blighty?" Sweeping my gla.s.s round to the quarter from whence the query came, I focussed on a phiz which, despite its mask of lather, I should have recognized as c.o.c.kney just as surely in Korea or Katmandu as on the banks of the Kiel Ca.n.a.l. Waving his brush jauntily in response to the salvo of delighted howls boomed out by the bluejackets lining the starboard rail, he turned back to the little pocket mirror on the side of the hut and resumed his interrupted shave.

"Can you beat that, I ask you?" gasped an American Flying officer who had just clambered up to the bridge. "Here it is the first time that 'Tommy' has seen his country's flag in anywhere from one to four years; and yet, even when he must know he could get a lift home for the asking, all he does is to--go on sc.r.a.ping his face! I say, can you beat it?"

The captain did not reply, but his indulgent grin indicated a sympathetic understanding of "British repressiveness."

But if this particular "Tommy" had been somewhat casual in his greeting, there was nothing to complain of on that score in the reception given us by the next British prisoners we encountered, a few miles further along. The incident--one of the most dramatic of the visit--occurred just after the _Hercules_ had pa.s.sed under the great railway viaduct which crosses the ca.n.a.l almost midway between Brunsb.u.t.tel and Kiel.

Wherever practicable, I might explain, all railways have been carried across the ca.n.a.l at a height sufficient to allow even the lofty topmasts of the German warships to pa.s.s under by a comfortable margin. Not one of the several viaducts runs much under two hundred feet above the ca.n.a.l, and to attain this height at an easy grade long approaches have been necessary. Some of these--partly steel trestle, partly embankment--stretched beyond eyescope to left and right; but at the viaduct in question the ascent was made by means of two great spiral loops at either end.

A segment of the loop on the left ran close beside the ca.n.a.l in the form of a steep embankment, and as the _Hercules_ glided under the viaduct I saw (we had closed up to within a few hundred yards of her at the time) a long train of pa.s.senger cars, drawn by two puffing engines, just beginning the heavy climb. Suddenly I caught the flash of what I took to be a red flag being wildly waved from one of the car windows, and I was just starting to tell the captain that we were about to pa.s.s a trainload of revolutionaries when the gust of a mighty cheer swept along the waters to us and set the radio aerials ringing above my head.

"You can't tell me that's a 'Bolshie' yell," observed the American officer decisively. "Nothing but Yanks or Tommies could cough up a roar like that, believe me."

Then I saw that all the ca.n.a.l-ward sides of the dozen or more coaches were wriggling with khaki arms and shoulders (for all the world as though a great two-hundred-yard-long centipede had been pinned up there and left to squirm), and that what I had taken for the red flag of anarchy was only the ma.s.s effect of a number of fluttering bandannas.

Again and again they cheered the _Hercules_ and the White Ensign, with a fresh salvo for the _Viceroy_, which they sighted just before the curve of the loop the train was ascending cut off their view of the ca.n.a.l.

That was all we ever heard or saw of them. We were never even sure whether they were British or American. We felt certain, however, that the fact that most of them were still in khaki indicated that their stay in the "Land of Kultur" had not been a long one, and, moreover, that they were already on the first leg of their journey home.

Prisoners working on the land--mostly Russian--were more and more in evidence as we neared the Kiel end of the ca.n.a.l. The majority of them still wore their army uniforms, but otherwise there was little to differentiate them--a short distance away at least--from the native peasant labour. None of them appeared to be under guard, and in many places they were working side by side with German farm hands of both s.e.xes. At a number of points I saw Russians lounging indolently in groups consisting mostly of Germans (several of which included women) that had gathered along the banks of the ca.n.a.l to watch us pa.s.s, and two or three times I observed unmistakable Russian prisoners (or perhaps ex-prisoners) walking arm-in-arm and apparently in animated conversation with German girls. They seem quite to have taken root in the country.

Indeed, the pilot of the _Viceroy_ for the first half of the pa.s.sage through the ca.n.a.l--he was a Schleswig man, strongly Danish in appearance and probably in sympathies--a.s.sured me that the Germans had had the greatest difficulty in getting Russian prisoners to leave the country at all, and that there had been frequent "desertions" from trains and boats whenever it had been attempted. This may well have been true, though--with labour in Germany as much in demand as it was throughout the war--I doubt very much if a great deal in the way of repatriation of Russians had ever been attempted.

[Ill.u.s.tration: KIEL DOCKYARD FROM THE HARBOR]

With the towns and villages increasing in size and number as we came to the fertile rolling country toward the Baltic end of the ca.n.a.l, evidences multiplied that the population expected our coming and that, directly or indirectly, they had been instructed to adopt a "conciliatory" bearing. In the farming region toward the North Sea end their bearing had been more suggestive of indifference than anything else; but in the crowds that came down to line the railed "promenades"

along the banks an ingratiating att.i.tude was at once apparent. Some of these people, of course, were of Danish extraction and probably sincere, especially a number who waved their hands from well inside their doorways, as though to avoid being observed by their neighbours; but for the most part it was the same nauseating exhibition we had already seen repeated so often at railway stations all over the North Sea littoral.

The only individual we saw in the whole pa.s.sage who thoroughly convinced me of his sincerity was a bloated ruffian who hailed us from the stern of the barge he had edged into a ferry slip to give us room to pa.s.s.

"Go back to England, you English swine!" he roared to the accompaniment of a lewd gesture. We learned later that he gave both the _Hercules_ and _Verdun_ the same peremptory orders. Yes, he was quite sincere, that old bargee, and for that reason I have always thought more kindly of him than of all the rest of his grimacing brethren and sistern we saw along the ca.n.a.l that day. A spectacled student (though it is quite possible he was trying to put the same sentiment in politer language) was rather less convincing. "English gentlemen," he cried, drawing his loose-jointed frame up to its full height and glaring at the bridge of the _Viceroy_ from under his peaked cap, "why do you come here?" That may have been intended for a protest, or, again, he may merely have been "sw.a.n.king" his linguistic accomplishments.

The bluejackets were splendid. There were places--notably at several industrial establishments where crowds of rather "on-coming" girls in trousers exerted their blonde witcheries to the full in endeavours to "start something"--when the least sign of friendliness from the ship would have undoubtedly been met with loud acclaim. But not a British hand did I see lifted in response to the hundreds waved from the banks, while many a simpering grin died out as the moon-face behind it pa.s.sed under the steady stare of the imperturbable _matelots_ lining the rails of the steadily steaming warships.

The length of the Kiel Ca.n.a.l is just under a hundred kilometres (about sixty miles), so that--at the speed of ten kilometres an hour to which we were limited--the pa.s.sage required about ten hours, exclusive of the time spent in locking in and out. As it was an hour after dawn when we began the pa.s.sage at Brunsb.u.t.tel, the short winter day was not long enough to make it possible to reach the other end in daylight.

By five o'clock darkness had begun to settle over the waters, and the grey mists, piling ever thicker in the narrow notch between the hills, deepened through violet to purple before taking on the black opacity of the curtain of the night. Then the lights came on--parallel rows of incandescents narrowing to mist-softened wedges of blurred brightness ahead and astern--and we continued cleaving our easy effortless way through the ebony water.

The blank squares of lighted villa windows heralded the approach to Kiel; then factories, black, still, and stagnant, with the tracery of overhead cranes and the bulk of tall chimneys showing dimly through the mists; then the locks. As the difference between the ca.n.a.l level and the almost tideless Baltic is only a matter of inches, locking-out was even a more expeditious operation than locking in from the Elbe at the other end. There was just time to note that the "_Kaiser Wilhelm_" mosaic, there as at Brunsb.u.t.tel, had been scrubbed up bright and clean, when the gates ahead folded inward and the way into the Baltic was open. Half an hour later, after steaming slowly across a harbour past many moored warships, we were tying up alongside the _Hercules_, where she had come to anchor a mile off Kiel dockyard.

The fog lifted during the night, and for an hour or two the following morning there were even signs that our long-lost friend, the sun, was struggling to show his face through the sinister shoals of c.u.mulo-nimbus banked frowningly across the south-eastern heavens. It was evident dirty weather was brewing, but for the moment Kiel and its harbour were revealed in all their loveliness. Completely land-locked from the open Baltic, the beautiful little fiord disclosed a different prospect in whichever direction one turned his eyes. The famous _Kaiserliche_ Yacht Club was close at hand over the port quarter of the _Hercules_, with a villa-bordered strand opening away to the right. The airy filagree of lofty cranes revealed the location of what had been Europe's greatest naval dockyard, while ma.s.ses of red roofs disclosed the heart of Kiel itself. Heavily wooded hills, still green, rippled along the skyline on the opposite side of the fiord, with snug little bays running back into them at frequent intervals as they billowed away toward the Baltic entrance. Singularly attractive even in winter, it must have been a veritable yachtsman's paradise in summer. Recalling the marshes and bogs of the Jade, I marvelled at the restraint of the German naval officer whom I had heard say that he and his wife "much _preferred_ Kiel to Wilhelmshaven."

The warships in the harbour proved far less impressive by daylight than at night. Looming up through the mists in the darkness, they had suggested the presence of a formidable fleet. Now they appeared as obsolete hulks, from several of which even the guns had been removed.

There was not a modern capital ship left in Kiel; in fact, the only warship of any cla.s.s which could fairly lay claim to that designation was the _Regensburg_, which had managed to push her broken nose through the ca.n.a.l and was now lying insh.o.r.e of us, apparently alongside some sort of quay or dock. The most interesting naval craft (if such a term could be applied to it) in sight was a floating submarine dock, anch.o.r.ed a cable's length on the port beam of the _Hercules_, but even that--as was proved on inspection--was far from being the latest thing of its kind.

The British ships were the object of a good deal of interest, especially during the first few hours of the day while the fog held off. Various and sundry small craft put off with parties to size us up at close range, amongst these--significant commentary on the fact that at every one of the conferences, including the one held that very day, the Germans had advanced "petrol shortage" as the reason why cars could not be provided to reach this or that station--being a number of motor launches. As all of these seemed to be in the hands of white-banded sailors or dockyard "mateys," the inference might have been drawn that the petrol used was not under the control of the naval authorities; but so many of the other "reasons," advanced to discourage, if not to obstruct, inspections which the Germans, for one reason or another, did not want to have made turned out to be fict.i.tious, that one was tempted to believe that "the absolute lack of petrol" was on all fours with them.

Most of these excursion parties kept at a respectful distance, but there was one launch-load of men and girls from the docks, which persisted in circling close to the ships, and even in coming up under the stern of the _Hercules_, and offering to exchange cap ribbons. The two-word reply of one of the bluejackets to these overtures would hardly do to print, but its effect was crushing. Nothing but poor steering prevented that launch from taking the shortest course back to the dockyard landing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FORESh.o.r.e OF KIEL HARBOR WITH THE KAISERLICH YACHT CLUB AT LEFT OF GROVE OF TREES]

The German Naval Armistice Commission which came off to the _Hercules_ at Kiel to discuss arrangements for inspection in the Baltic differed from that at Wilhelmshaven only in a few of the subordinate members. Rear-Admiral Goette continued to preside, with the tall, blonde Von Muller, of the first _Emden_, and the shifty, pasty-faced Hinzmann, of the General Staff at Berlin, as his chief advisers.

Commander Lohmann still presided over the German sub-commission for shipping, but there was a new officer in charge of "air" arrangements.

This latter individual, who proved to be one of the most "Hunnish" Huns we encountered anywhere, I shall have something to say of in the next chapter.

That the German Commission had been "stiffened" under the influence of new forces in Kiel was evident from the opening of the conference; in fact, a good part of this opening Baltic sitting was devoted to reducing them to the same state of "sweet reasonableness" in which they had risen from the closing sitting at Wilhelmshaven. One of the most astonishing of their contentions arose in connection with three unsurrendered U-boats, which had been discovered in the course of warship inspection at Wilhelmshaven. Asked when these might be expected ready to proceed to Harwich, Admiral Goette replied that his Government did not consider themselves under obligation to deliver the boats at all. The justification advanced for this remarkable stand const.i.tuted one of the most delightful instances of characteristic Hun reasoning that developed in the course of the visit. This was the gist of it: "We agreed to deliver all U-boats in condition to proceed to sea in the first fourteen days of the armistice," contended the Germans; "but--although we don't deny that they _should_ have been delivered in that period--the fact that they _were not_ so delivered releases us from our obligation to deliver them now. As evidence of our good faith, however, we propose that the vessels in question be disarmed and remain in German ports."

The Germans had so thoroughly convinced themselves that this fantastic interpretation would be accepted by the Allied Commission that Admiral Goette did not consider himself able to concede Admiral Browning's demand (that the three submarines should be surrendered at once) without referring the matter back to Berlin. Definite settlement, indeed, was not arrived at until the final conference nearly a week later, and in that time news had been brought of several score U-boats completed, or nearing completion, in the yards of the Elbe and the Weser.

There was no phase of the Allied Commission's activities which some endeavour was not made to obstruct or circ.u.mscribe in the course of this opening session at Kiel. The German sub-commission for shipping reported that their Government did not feel called upon to grant the claim of the Allies for the return of vessels seized as prizes; the inability to arrange for special trains and the lack of petrol would make it impossible to reach certain air stations by land, while, so far as the experiment station at Warnemunde was concerned, the armistice did not give the Allies the right to visit it at all; as for the Great Belt forts, they were already disarmed, and really not worth the trouble of inspecting anyway.

And so it went through some hours, the upshot of it being that the Germans, as at Wilhelmshaven, "vowing they would ne'er consent, consented." Merchant ship inspection began that afternoon, continuing throughout the remainder of the stay at Kiel as one steamer after another came in from this or that Baltic port and dropped anchor. The following day search of the numerous old warships was started, and the day after that word came that the way had even been cleared for the inspection of the great experimental seaplane station at Warnemunde. For the first time there was promise that the work of the Commission would be completed within the period of the original armistice.

IX

TO WARNEMuNDE AND RuGEN

There had been a half-mile or more of visibility when we got under weigh at eight o'clock, but in the mouth of Kiel Fiord a solid wall of fog was encountered, behind the impenetrable pall of which all objects more than a few yards ahead were completely cut off. The mist-m.u.f.fled wails of horns and whistles coughed eerily in the depths of the blank smother to port and starboard, and once the beating of a bucket or saucepan heralded the spectre of a "bluff lee-boarded fishing lugger" as the bare steerage way imparted by its flapping yellow mainsail carried it clear of the _Viceroy's_ sharp stem.

Three or four more units of that same fatalistic fishing fleet had been missed by equally narrow margins when, looming high above us as they sharpened out of the fog, appeared the bulging bows of what looked to be a large merchantman. At the same instant, too late by many seconds to be of any use as a warning, the snort of a deep-toned whistle ripped out in response to the querulous shriek of our own syren.

When two ships, steaming on opposite courses at something like ten knots, meet in a fog the usual result is a collision, and nothing but the quick-wittedness of the captain of the _Viceroy_ prevented one on this occasion. The stranger, in starboarding his helm, bared a long expanse of rusty paunch for the nose of the destroyer to bury itself in, as a sword-fish stabs a whale, and that is what must inevitably have happened--with disastrous consequences to both vessels in all probability--had the _Viceroy_ also attempted to avoid collision by turning to port. Realizing this with a sure judgment, the captain fell back on an alternative which would hardly have been open to him with a destroyer less powerfully built and engined than the latest "V's." I have already told how, in the lock at Brunsb.u.t.tel, he had stopped his ship dead, just short of the gates, by going astern with the engines at the proper moment. Here, in scarcely more time than it takes to tell it, he not only stopped her dead but had her backing (at constantly accelerating speed) away from the slowly turning merchantman. The jar (followed by a prolonged throbbing) was almost as sharp as when the air-brakes are set on the wheels of a speeding express, and the outraged wake of her, like the back of a cat whose fur has been rubbed the wrong way, arched in a tumbling fountain high above her quivering stern. But back she went, and so gave the burly freighter room to blunder by in.

There was just time to note her high bulwarks, two or three suspicious-looking superstructures (which one's pa.s.sing acquaintance with "Q" boats suggested as possibly masking guns), and a folded seaplane housed on the p.o.o.p, before the menacing apparition thinned and melted into the fog as suddenly as it had appeared.

"I think that ship is the _Wolf_," volunteered the pilot, watching with side-cast eyes the effects of the announcement. "You will perhaps remember it as the great raider of the Indian Ocean."

The captain looked up quickly from the chart as though about to say something; then thought better of it, and, with a wistful smile, turned back to his study of the channel. I had seen him smile resignedly like that a few days previously off the Elbe estuary when a speeding widgeon, whose line of flight had promised to carry it right over the forecastle, had sheered off without giving him a shot. What he had said on that occasion was, "Hang the blighter; another chance missed!"

Going aft to breakfast, I was hailed by Korvettenkapitan M---- (the officer commanding all Baltic air stations who was accompanying us to Warnemunde and Rugen), warming himself at the engine-room hatchway, and informed that the ship just sighted was "the famous raider, _Moewe_, that has been so many times through the English blockade." It was he that was correct, as it turned out. We found the _Moewe_ anch.o.r.ed three or four cables' lengths on the port bow of the _Hercules_ when we returned to Kiel the following evening.

They were two thoroughly typical specimens of their kind, the pilot and the flight commander, so much so that either would have been pounced on with delight by a cartoonist looking for a model for a figure of "Hun Brutality." The former claimed to have served most of the war in U-boats, and from the fact that he was only a "one-striper," one reckoned that he was a promoted rating of some kind. He was tall, dark, and powerful of build, with hard black eyes glowering from under bushy brows. He talked of his submarine exploits with the greatest gusto, among these being (according to his claim) the launching of the torpedo which damaged the _Suss.e.x_. It is possible that he was quite as useful a U-boat officer as he said he was (for he looked fully capable of doing a number of the things one had heard of U-boat officers doing); but he turned out, as the sequel proved, only an indifferent pilot.

The flight officer is easiest described by saying that he was like what one would imagine Hindenburg to have been at thirty-five or thereabouts.

The resemblance to the great Field-Marshal was physical only, for the anti-type, far from having the "bluff, blunt fighter" air of the former, was a subtle intriguer of the highest order. Just how "subtle"