VIII. The Theory
DAVIES leaned back and gave a deep sigh, as though he still felt therelief from some tension. I did the same, and felt the same relief.The chart, freed from the pressure of our fingers, rolled up with aflip, as though to say, 'What do you think of that?' I havestraightened out his sentences a little, for in the excitement of hisstory they had grown more and more jerky and elliptical.
'What about Dollmann?' I asked.
'Of course,' said Davies, 'what about him? I didn't get at much thatnight. It was all so sudden. The only thing I could have sworn tofrom the first was that he had purposely left me in the lurch thatday. I pieced out the rest in the next few days, which I'll justfinish with as shortly as I can. Bartels came aboard next morning,and though it was blowing hard still we managed to shift the_Dulcibella_ to a place where she dried safely at the midday lowwater, and we could get at her rudder. The lower screw-plate on thestern post had wrenched out, and we botched it up roughly as amakeshift. There were other little breakages, but nothing to matter,and the loss of the jib was nothing, as I had two spare ones. Thedinghy was past repair just then, and I lashed it on deck.
'It turned out that Bartels was carrying apples from Bremen toKappeln (in this fiord), and had run into that channel in the sandsfor shelter from the weather. To-day he was bound for the EiderRiver, whence, as I told you, you can get through (by river andcanal) into the Baltic. Of course the Elbe route, by the new KaiserWilhelm ship canal, is the shortest. The Eider route is the old one,but he hoped to get rid of some of his apples at T?nning, the town atits mouth. Both routes touch the Baltic at Kiel. As you know, I hadbeen running for the Elbe, but yesterday's muck-up put me off, and Ichanged my mind--I'll tell you why presently--and decided to sail tothe Eider along with the 'Johannes' and get through that way. Itcleared from the east next day, and I raced him there, winning handsdown, left him at T?nning, and in three days was in the Baltic. Itwas just a week after I ran ashore that I wired to you. You see, Ihad come to the conclusion that _that chap was a spy_.'
In the end it came out quite quietly and suddenly, and left me inprofound amazement. 'I wired to you--that chap was a spy.' It was theclose association of these two ideas that hit me hardest at themoment. For a second I was back in the dreary splendour of the Londonclub-room, spelling out that crabbed scrawl from Davies, andfastidiously criticizing its proposal in the light of a holiday.Holiday! What was to be its issue? Chilling and opaque as the fogthat filtered through the skylight there flooded my imagination amist of doubt and fear.
'A spy!' I repeated blankly. 'What do you mean? Why did you wire tome? A spy of what--of whom?'
'I'll tell you how I worked it out,' said Davies. 'I don't think"spy" is the right word; but I mean something pretty bad.
'He purposely put me ashore. I don't think I'm suspicious by nature,but I know something about boats and the sea. I know he could havekept close to me if he had chosen, and I saw the whole place at lowwater when we left those sands on the second day. Look at the chartagain. Here's the Hohenh?rn bank that I showed you as blocking theroad. _[See Chart A]_ It's in two pieces--first the west and then theeast. You see the Telte channel dividing into two branches andcurving round it. Both branches are broad and deep, as channels go inthose waters. Now, in sailing in I was nowhere near either of them.When I last saw Dollmann he must have been steering straight for thebank itself, at a point somewhere _here_, quite a mile from thenorthern arm of the channel, and two from the southern. I followed bycompass, as you know, and found nothing but breakers ahead. How did Iget through? That's where the luck came in. I spoke of only twochannels, that is, _round_ the bank--one to the north, the other tothe south. But look closely and you'll see that right through thecentre of the West Hohenh?rn runs another, a very narrow and windingone, so small that I hadn't even noticed it the night before, when Iwas going over the chart. That was the one I stumbled into in thattailor's fashion, as I was groping along the edge of the surf in adesperate effort to gain time. I bolted down it blindly, came outinto this strip of open water, crossed that aimlessly, and brought upon the edge of the _East_ Hohenh?rn, _here_. It was more than Ideserved. I can see now that it was a hundred to one in favour of mystriking on a bad place outside, where I should have gone to piecesin three minutes.'
'And how did Dollmann go?' I asked.
'It's as clear as possible,' Davies answered. 'He doubled back intothe northern channel when he had misled me enough. Do you remember mysaying that when I last saw him I _thought_ he had luffed and showedhis broadside? I had another bit of luck in that. He was luffingtowards the north--so it struck me through the blur--and when I in myturn came up to the bank, and had to turn one way or the other toavoid it, I think I should naturally have turned north too, as he haddone. In that case I should have been done for, for I should have hada mile of the bank to skirt before reaching the north channel, andshould have driven ashore long before I got there. But as a matter offact I turned south.'
'Why?'
'Couldn't help it. I was running on the starboard tack--boom over toport; to turn north would have meant a jibe, and as things were Icouldn't risk one. It was blowing like fits; if anything had carriedaway I should have been on shore in a jiffy. I scarcely thought aboutit at all, but put the helm down and turned her south. Though I knewnothing about it, that little central channel was now on my porthand, distant about two cables. The whole thing was luck frombeginning to end.'
Helped by pluck, I thought to myself, as I tried with my landsman'sfancy to conjure up that perilous scene. As to the truth of theaffair, the chart and Davies's version were easy enough to follow,but I felt only half convinced. The 'spy', as Davies strangely calledhis pilot, might have honestly mistaken the course himself,outstripped his convoy inadvertently, and escaped disaster asnarrowly as she did. I suggested this on the spur of the moment, butDavies was impatient.
'Wait till you hear the whole thing,' he said. 'I must go back towhen I first met him. I told you that on that first evening he beganby being as rude as a bear and as cold as stone, and then becamesuddenly friendly. I can see now that in the talk that followed hewas pumping me hard. It was an easy game to play, for I hadn't seen agentleman since Morrison left me, I was tremendously keen about myvoyage, and I thought the chap was a good sportsman, even if he was abit dark about the ducks. I talked quite freely--at least, as freelyas I could with my bad German--about my last fortnight's sailing; howI had been smelling out all the channels in and out of the islands,how interested I had been in the whole business, puzzling out theeffect of the winds on the tides, the set of the currents, and so on.I talked about my difficulties, too; the changes in the buoys, theprehistoric rottenness of the English charts. He drew me out as muchas he could, and in the light of what followed I can see the point ofscores of his questions.
'The next day and the next I saw a good deal of him, and the samething went on. And then there were my plans for the future. My ideawas, as I told you, to go on exploring the German coast just as I hadthe Dutch. His idea--Heavens, how plainly I see it now!--was to chokeme off, get me to clear out altogether from that part of the coast.That was why he said there were no ducks. That was why he cracked upthe Baltic as a cruising-ground and shooting-ground. And that was whyhe broached and stuck to that plan of sailing in company direct tothe Elbe. It was to _see_ me clear.
'He improved on that.'
'Yes, but after that, it's guess-work. I mean that I can't tell when hefirst decided to go one better and drown me. He couldn't count forcertain on bad weather, though he held my nose to it when it came. But,granted that he wanted to get rid of me altogether, he got a magnificentchance on that trip to the Elbe lightship. I expect it struck himsuddenly, and he acted on the impulse. Left to myself I was all right;but the short cut was a grand idea of his. Everything was in itsfavour--wind, sea, sand, tide. He thinks I'm dead.'
'But the crew?' I said; 'what about the crew?'
'That's another thing. When he first hove to, waiting for me, ofcourse the
y were on deck (two of them, I think) hauling at sheets.But by the time I had drawn up level the 'Medusa' had worn round againon her course, and no one was on deck but Dollmann at the wheel. Noone overheard what he said.'
'Wouldn't they have _seen_ you again?'
'Very likely not; the weather was very thick, and the 'Dulce' is verysmall.'
The incongruity of the whole business was striking me. Why shouldanyone want to kill Davies, and why should Davies, the soul ofmodesty and simplicity, imagine that anyone wanted to kill him? Hemust have cogent reasons, for he was the last man to give way to amorbid fancy.
'Go on,' I said. 'What was his motive? A German finds an Englishmanexploring a bit of German coast, determines to stop him, and even toget rid of him. It looks so far as if you were thought to be the spy.
Davies winced. '_But he's not a German_,' he said, hotly. 'He's anEnglishman.'
'An Englishman?'
'Yes, I'm sure of it. Not that I've much to go on. He professed toknow very little English, and never spoke it, except a word or twonow and then to help me out of a sentence; and as to his German, heseemed to me to speak it like a native; but, of course, I'm nojudge.' Davies sighed. 'That's where I wanted someone like you. Youwould have spotted him at once, if he wasn't German. I go more bya--what do you call it?--a----'
'General impression,' I suggested.
'Yes, that's what I mean. It was something in his looks and manner;you know how different we are from foreigners. And it wasn't onlyhimself, it was the way he talked--I mean about cruising and the sea,especially. It's true he let me do most of the talking; but, all thesame--how can I explain it? I felt we understood one another, in away that two foreigners wouldn't.
'He pretended to think me a bit crazy for coming so far in a smallboat, but I could swear he knew as much about the game as I did; forlots of little questions he asked had the right ring in them. Mindyou, all this is an afterthought. I should never have bothered aboutit--I'm not cut out for a Sherlock Holmes--if it hadn't been for whatfollowed.'
'It's rather vague,' I said. 'Have you no more definite reason forthinking him English?'
'There were one or two things rather more definite,' said Davies,slowly. 'You know when he hove to and hailed me, proposing the shortcut, I told you roughly what he said. I forget the exact words, but"abschneiden" came in--"durch Watten" and "abschneiden" (they callthe banks "watts", you know); they were simple words, and he shoutedthem loud, so as to carry through the wind. I understood what hemeant, but, as I told you, I hesitated before consenting. I supposehe thought I didn't understand, for just as he was drawing aheadagain he pointed to the suth'ard, and then shouted through his handsas a trumpet "Verstehen Sie? short-cut through sands: follow me!" thelast two sentences in downright English. I can hear those words now,and I'll swear they were in his native tongue. Of course I thoughtnothing of it at the time. I was quite aware that he knew a fewEnglish words, though he had always mispronounced them; an easytrick when your hearer suspects nothing. But I needn't say that justthen I was observant of trifles. I don't pretend to be able tounravel a plot and steer a small boat before a heavy sea at the samemoment.'
'And if he was piloting you into the next world he could afford tocommit himself before you parted! Was there anything else? By theway, how did the daughter strike you? Did she look English too?'
Two men cannot discuss a woman freely without a deep foundation ofintimacy, and, until this day, the subject had never arisen betweenus in any form. It was the last that was likely to, for I could havedivined that Davies would have met it with an armour of reserve. Hewas busy putting on this armour now; yet I could not help feeling alittle brutal as I saw how badly he jointed his clumsy suit of mail.Our ages were the same, but I laugh now to think how old and _blas?_I felt as the flush warmed his brown skin, and he slowly propoundedthe verdict, 'Yes, I think she did.'
'She _talked_ nothing but German, I suppose?'
'Oh, of course.'
'Did you see much of her?'
'A good deal.'
'Was she----,' (how frame it?) 'Did she want you to sail to the Elbewith them?'
'She seemed to,' admitted Davies, reluctantly, clutching at his ally,the match-box. 'But, hang it, don't dream that she knew what wascoming,' he added, with sudden fire.
I pondered and wondered, shrinking from further inquisition, easy asit would have been with so truthful a victim, and banishing allthought of ill-timed chaff. There was a cross-current in this strangeaffair, whose depth and strength I was beginning to gauge withincreasing seriousness. I did not know my man yet, and I did not knowmyself. A conviction that events in the near future would force usinto complete mutual confidence withheld me from pressing him toofar. I returned to the main question; who was Dollmann, and what washis motive? Davies struggled out of his armour.
'I'm convinced,' he said, 'that he's an Englishman in German service.He must be in German service, for he had evidently been in thosewaters a long time, and knew every inch of them; of course, it's avery lonely part of the world, but he has a house on NorderneyIsland; and he, and all about him, must be well known to a certainnumber of people. One of his friends I happened to meet; what do youthink he was? A naval officer. It was on the afternoon of the thirdday, and we were having coffee on the deck of the 'Medusa', and talkingabout next day's trip, when a little launch came buzzing up fromseaward, drew alongside, and this chap I'm speaking of came on board,shook hands with Dollmann, and stared hard at me. Dollmann introducedus, calling him Commander von Br?ning, in command of the torpedogunboat _Blitz_. He pointed towards Norderney, and I saw her--a low,grey rat of a vessel--anchored in the Roads about two miles away. Itturned out that she was doing the work of fishery guardship on thatpart of the coast.
'I must say I took to him at once. He looked a real good sort, and asplendid officer, too--just the sort of chap I should have liked tobe. You know I always wanted--but that's an old story, and can wait.I had some talk with him, and we got on capitally as far as we went,but that wasn't far, for I left pretty soon, guessing that theywanted to be alone.'
'_Were_ they alone then?' I asked, innocently.
'Oh, Fr?ulein Dollmann was there, of course,' explained Davies,feeling for his armour again.
'Did he seem to know them well?' I pursued, inconsequently.
'Oh, yes, very well.'
Scenting a faint clue, I felt the need of feminine weapons for mysensitive antagonist. But the opportunity passed.
'That was the last I saw of him,' he said. 'We sailed, as I told you,at daybreak next morning. Now, have you got any idea what I'm drivingat?'
'A rough idea,' I answered. 'Go ahead.'
Davies sat up to the table, unrolled the chart with a vigorous sweepof his two hands, and took up his parable with new zest.
'I start with two certainties,' he said. 'One is that I was "movedon" from that coast, because I was too inquisitive. The other is thatDollmann is at some devil's work there which is worth finding out.Now'--he paused in a gasping effort to be logical and articulate.'Now--well, look at the chart. No, better still, look first at thismap of Germany. It's on a small scale, and you can see the wholething.' He snatched down a pocket-map from the shelf and unfolded it._[See Map A]_ 'Here's this huge empire, stretching half over centralEurope--an empire growing like wildfire, I believe, in people, andwealth, and everything. They've licked the French, and the Austrians,and are the greatest military power in Europe. I wish I knew moreabout all that, but what I'm concerned with is their sea-power. It'sa new thing with them, but it's going strong, and that Emperor oftheirs is running it for all it's worth. He's a splendid chap, andanyone can see he's right. They've got no colonies to speak of, and_must_ have them, like us. They can't get them and keep them, andthey can't protect their huge commerce without naval strength. Thecommand of the sea is _the_ thing nowadays, isn't it? I say, don'tthink these are my ideas,' he added, na?vely. 'It's all out of Mahanand those fellows. Well, the Germans have got a small fleet atpresent, but it's a thunderin
g good one, and they're building hard.There's the----and the----.' He broke off into a digression on armamentsand speeds in which I could not follow him. He seemed to know everyship by heart. I had to recall him to the point. 'Well, think ofGermany as a new sea-power,' he resumed. 'The next thing is, what isher coast-line? It's a very queer one, as you know, split clean intwo by Denmark, most of it lying east of that and looking on theBaltic, which is practically an inland sea, with its entrance blockedby Danish islands. It was to evade that block that William built theship canal from Kiel to the Elbe, but that could be easily smashed inwar-time. Far the most important bit of coast-line is that which lies_west_ of Denmark and looks on the North Sea. It's there that Germanygets her head out into the open, so to speak. It's there that shefronts us and France, the two great sea-powers of Western Europe, andit's there that her greatest ports are and her richest commerce.
'Now it must strike you at once that it's ridiculously short comparedwith the huge country behind it. From Borkum to the Elbe, as the crowflies, is only seventy miles. Add to that the west coast ofSchleswig, say 120 miles. Total, say, two hundred. Compare that withthe seaboard of France and England. Doesn't it stand to reason thatevery inch of it is important? Now what _sort_ of coast is it? Evenon this small map you can see at once, by all those wavy lines,shoals and sand everywhere, blocking nine-tenths of the landaltogether, and doing their best to block the other tenth where thegreat rivers run in. Now let's take it bit by bit. You see it dividesitself into three. Beginning from the west the _first piece_ is fromBorkum to Wangeroog--fifty odd miles. What's that like? A string ofsandy islands backed by sand; the Ems river at the western end, onthe Dutch border, leading to Emden--not much of a place. Otherwise,no coast towns at all. _Second piece:_ a deep sort of bay consistingof the three great estuaries--the Jade, the Weser and theElbe--leading to Wilhelmshaven (their North Sea naval base), Bremen,and Hamburg; total breadth of bay, twenty odd miles only; sandbankslittered about all through it. _Third piece:_ the Schleswig coast,hopelessly fenced in behind a six to eight mile fringe of sand. Nobig towns; one moderate river, the Eider. Let's leave that thirdpiece aside. I may be wrong, but, in thinking this business out, I'vepegged away chiefly at the other two, the seventy-mile stretch fromBorkum to the Elbe--half of it estuaries, and half islands. It wasthere that I found the 'Medusa', and it's that stretch that, thanks tohim, I missed exploring.'
I made an obvious conjecture. 'I suppose there are forts and coastdefences? Perhaps he thought you would see too much. By the way, hesaw your naval books, of course?'
'Exactly. Of course that was my first idea; but it can't be that. Itdoesn't explain things in the least. To begin with, there _are_ noforts and can be none in that first division, where the islands are.There might be something on Borkum to defend the Ems; but it's veryunlikely, and, anyway, I had passed Borkum and was at Norderney.There's nothing else to defend. Of course it's different in thesecond division, where the big rivers are. There are probably hostsof forts and mines round Wilhelmshaven and Bremerhaven, and atCuxhaven just at the mouth of the Elbe. Not that I should ever dreamof bothering about them; every steamer that goes in would see as muchas me. Personally, I much prefer to stay on board, and don't often goon shore. And, good Heavens!' (Davies leant back and laughedjoyously) 'do I _look_ like that kind of spy?'
I figured to myself one of those romantic gentlemen that one reads ofin sixpenny magazines, with a Kodak in his tie-pin, a sketch-book inthe lining of his coat, and a selection of disguises in his handluggage. Little disposed for merriment as I was, I could not helpsmiling, too.
'About this coast,' resumed Davies. 'In the event of war it seems tome that every inch of it would be important, _sand and all._ Take thebig estuaries first, which, of course, might be attacked or blockadedby an enemy. At first sight you would say that their main channelswere the only things that mattered. Now, in time of peace there's nosecrecy about the navigation of these. They're buoyed and lightedlike streets, open to the whole world, and taking an immense traffic;well charted, too, as millions of pounds in commerce depend on them.But now look at the sands they run through, intersected, as I showedyou, by threads of channels, tidal for the most part, and probablyonly known to smacks and shallow coasters, like that galliot ofBartels.
'It strikes me that in a war a lot might depend on these, both indefence and attack, for there's plenty of water in them at the righttide for patrol-boats and small torpedo craft, though I can see theytake a lot of knowing. Now, say _we_ were at war with Germany--bothsides could use them as lines between the three estuaries; and totake our own case, a small torpedo-boat (not a destroyer, mind you)could on a dark night cut clean through from the Jade to the Elbe andplay the deuce with the shipping there. But the trouble is that Idoubt if there's a soul in our fleet who knows those channels. _We_haven't coasters there; and, as to yachts, it's a most unlikely gamefor an English yacht to play at; but it does so happen that I have afancy for that sort of thing and would have explored those channelsin the ordinary course.' I began to see his drift.
'Now for the islands. I was rather stumped there at first, I grant,because, though there are lashings of sand behind them, and the samesort of intersecting channels, yet there seems nothing important toguard or attack.
'Why shouldn't a stranger ramble as he pleases through them? StillDollmann had his headquarters there, and I was sure that had somemeaning. Then it struck me that the same point held good, for thatstrip of Frisian coast adjoins the estuaries, and would also form asplendid base for raiding midgets, which could travel unseen rightthrough from the Ems to the Jade, and so to the Elbe, as by a coveredway between a line of forts.
'Now here again it's an unknown land to us. Plenty of local galliotstravel it, but strangers never, I should say. Perhaps at the most anoccasional foreign yacht gropes in at one of the gaps between theislands for shelter from bad weather, and is precious lucky to get insafe. Once again, it was my fad to like such places, and Dollmanncleared me out. He's not a German, but he's in with Germans, andnaval Germans too. He's established on that coast, and knows it byheart. And he tried to drown me. Now what do you think?' He gazed atme long and anxiously.
The Riddle of the Sands Page 9
