The Riddle of the Sands

by Erskine Childers

  X. His Chance

  'I SAY, Davies,' I said, 'how long do you think this trip will last?I've only got a month's leave.'

  We were standing at slanting desks in the Kiel post-office, Daviesscratching diligently at his letter-card, and I staring feebly atmine.

  'By Jove!' said Davies, with a start of dismay; 'that's only threeweeks more; I never thought of that. You couldn't manage to get anextension, could you?'

  'I can write to the chief,' I admitted; 'but where's the answer tocome to? We're better without an address, I suppose.'

  'There's Cuxhaven,' reflected Davies; 'but that's too near, andthere's--but we don't want to be tied down to landing anywhere. Itell you what: say "Post Office, Norderney", just your name, not theyacht's. We _may_ get there and be able to call for letters.' Thecasual character of our adventure never struck me more strongly thanthen.

  'Is that what _you're_ doing?' I asked.

  'Oh, I shan't be having important letters like you.'

  'But what are you saying?'

  'Oh, just that we're having a splendid cruise, and are on our wayhome.'

  The notion tickled me, and I said the same in my home letter, addingthat we were looking for a friend of Davies's who would be able toshow us some sport. I wrote a line, too, to my chief (unaware of thegravity of the step I was taking) saying it was possible that I mighthave to apply for longer leave, as I had important business totransact in Germany, and asking him kindly to write to the sameaddress. Then we shouldered our parcels and resumed our business.

  Two full dinghy-loads of stores we ferried to the _Dulcibella_, chiefamong which were two immense cans of petroleum, constituting ourreserves of heat and light, and a sack of flour. There were spareropes and blocks, too; German charts of excellent quality; cigars andmany weird brands of sausage and tinned meats, besides a miscellanyof oddments, some of which only served in the end to slake mycompanion's craving for jettison. Clothes were my own chief care,for, freely as I had purged it at Flensburg, my wardrobe was stillvery unsuitable, and I had already irretrievably damaged twofaultless pairs of white flannels. ('We shall be able to throw themoverboard,' said Davies, hopefully.) So I bought a great pair ofseaboots of the country, felt-lined and wooden-soled, and both of usgot a number of rough woollen garments (as worn by the localfishermen), breeches, jerseys, helmets, gloves; all of a colourchosen to harmonize with paraffin stains and anchor mud.

  The same evening we were taking our last look at the Baltic, sailingpast warships and groups of idle yachts battened down for theirwinter's sleep; while the noble shores of the fiord, with its villasembowered in copper foliage, grew dark and dim above us.

  We rounded the last headland, steered for a galaxy of colouredlights, tumbled down our sails, and came to under the colossal gatesof the Holtenau lock. That these would open to such an infinitesimalsuppliant seemed inconceivable. But open they did, with ponderousmajesty, and our tiny hull was lost in the womb of a lock designed tofloat the largest battleships. I thought of Boulter's on a hot AugustSunday, and wondered if I really was the same peevish dandy who hadjostled and sweltered there with the noisy cockney throng a monthago. There was a blaze of electricity overhead, but utter silencetill a solitary cloaked figure hailed us and called for the captain.Davies ran up a ladder, disappeared with the cloaked figure, andreturned crumpling a paper into his pocket. It lies before me now,and sets forth, under the stamp of the K?nigliches Zollamt, that, inconsideration of the sum of ten marks for dues and four for tonnage,an imperial tug would tow the vessel _Dulcibella_ (master A. H. Davies)through the Kaiser Wilhelm canal from Holtenau to Brunsb?ttel.Magnificent condescension! I blush when I look at this yellowdocument and remember the stately courtesy of the great lock-gates;for the sleepy officials of the K?nigliches Zollamt little knew whatan insidious little viper they were admitting into the imperial bosomat the light toll of fourteen shillings.

  'Seems cheap,' said Davies, joining me, 'doesn't it? They've aregular tariff on tonnage, same for yachts as for liners. We start atfour to-morrow with a lot of other boats. I wonder if Bartels ishere.'

  The same silence reigned, but invisible forces were at work. Theinner gates opened and we prised ourselves through into a capaciousbasin, where lay moored side by side a flotilla of sailing vessels ofvarious sizes. Having made fast alongside a vacant space of quay, wehad our dinner, and then strolled out with cigars to look for the'Johannes'. We found her wedged among a stack of galliots, and herskipper sitting primly below before a blazing stove, reading hisBible through spectacles. He produced a bottle of schnapps and somevery small and hard pears, while Davies twitted him mercilessly abouthis false predictions.

  'The sky was not good,' was all he said, beaming indulgently at hisincorrigible young friend.

  Before parting for the night it was arranged that next morning weshould lash alongside the 'Johannes' when the flotilla was marshalledfor the tow through the canal.

  'Karl shall steer for us both,' he said, 'and we will stay warm inthe cabin.'

  The scheme was carried out, not without much confusion and loss ofpaint, in the small hours of a dark and drizzling morning. Boisterouslittle tugs sorted us into parties, and half lost under the massivebulwarks of the 'Johannes' we were carried off into a black inane. Ifany doubt remained as to the significance of our change ofcruising-grounds, dawn dispelled it. View there was none from thedeck of the _Dulcibella_; it was only by standing on the mainboom thatyou could see over the embankments to the vast plain of Holstein,grey and monotonous under a pall of mist. The soft scenery of theSchleswig coast was a baseless dream of the past, and a coldpenetrating rain added the last touch of dramatic completeness to thestaging of the new act.

  For two days we travelled slowly up the mighty waterway that is thestrategic link between the two seas of Germany. Broad and straight,massively embanked, lit by electricity at night till it is lighterthan many a great London street; traversed by great war vessels, richmerchantmen, and humble coasters alike, it is a symbol of the new andmighty force which, controlled by the genius of statesmen andengineers, is thrusting the empire irresistibly forward to the goalof maritime greatness.

  'Isn't it splendid?' said Davies. 'He's a fine fellow, that emperor.'

  Karl was the shock-headed, stout-limbed boy of about sixteen, whoconstituted the whole crew of the 'Johannes', and was as dirty as hismaster was clean. I felt a certain envious reverence for thisunprepossessing youth, seeing in him a much more efficientcounterpart of myself; but how he and his little master ever managedto work their ungainly vessel was a miracle I never understood.Phlegmatically impervious to rain and cold, he steered the 'Johannes'down the long grey reaches in the wake of the tug, while we andBartels held snug gatherings down below, sometimes in his cabin,sometimes in ours. The heating arrangements of the latter began to bea subject of serious concern. We finally did the only logical thing,and brought the kitchen-range into the parlour, fixing theRippingille stove on the forward end of the cabin table, where itcould warm as well as cook for us. As an ornament it was monstrous,and the taint of oil which it introduced was a disgusting drawback;but, after all, the great thing--as Davies said--is to becomfortable, and after that to be clean.

  Davies held long consultations with Bartels, who was thoroughly athome in the navigation of the sands we were bound for, his own boatbeing a type of the very craft which ply in them. I shall not forgetthe moment when it first dawned on him that his young friend'scuriosity was practical; for he had thought that our goal was his ownbeloved Hamburg, queen of cities, a place to see and die.

  'It is too late,' he wailed. 'You do not know the Nord See as I do.'

  'Oh, nonsense, Bartels, it's quite safe.'

  'Safe! And have I not found you fast on Hohenh?rn, in a storm, withyour rudder broken? God was good to you then, my son.'

  'Yes, but it wasn't my f----' Davies checked himself. 'We're goinghome. There's nothing in that.' Bartels became sadly resigned.

  'It is good that you have a friend,' was his last
word on thesubject; but all the same he always glanced at me with a ratherdoubtful eye. As to Davies and myself, our friendship developedquickly on certain limited lines, the chief obstacle, as I well knownow, being his reluctance to talk about the personal side of ourquest.

  On the other hand, I spoke about my own life and interests, with anunsparing discernment, of which I should have been incapable a monthago, and in return I gained the key to his own character. It wasdevotion to the sea, wedded to a fire of pent-up patriotismstruggling incessantly for an outlet in strenuous physicalexpression; a humanity, born of acute sensitiveness to his ownlimitations, only adding fuel to the flame. I learnt for the firsttime now that in early youth he had failed for the navy, the first ofseveral failures in his career. 'And I can't settle down to anythingelse,' he said. 'I read no end about it, and yet I am a uselessoutsider. 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'llnot understand how I feel about it; but at last, for once in a way, Isee a chance of being useful.'

  'There ought to be chances for chaps like you,' I said, 'without theaccident 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 manymyself--who know our coasts like a book--shoals, creeks, tides,rocks; there's nothing in it, it's only practice. They ought to makesome use of us as a naval reserve. They tried to once, but it fizzledout, and nobody really cares. And what's the result? Using every manof what reserves we've got, there's about enough to man the fleet ona war footing, and no more. They've tinkered with fishermen, andmerchant sailors, and yachting hands, but everyone of them ought tobe got hold of; and the colonies, too. Is there the ghost of a doubtthat if war broke out there'd be wild appeals for volunteers, aimlesscadging, hurry, confusion, waste? My own idea is that we ought to gomuch further, and train every able-bodied man for a couple of yearsas 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 topeople talk you'd think it really mattered as the Navy matters. We'rea maritime nation--we've grown by the sea and live by it; if we losecommand of it we starve. We're unique in that way, just as our hugeempire, only linked by the sea, is unique. And yet, read Brassey,Dilke, and those _Naval Annuals_, and see what mountains of apathyand 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 whatwe owe it to. But there's no excuse for those blockheads ofstatesmen, as they call themselves, who are paid to see things asthey are. They have to go to an American to learn their A B C, andit's only when kicked and punched by civilian agitators, a merehandful 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 theyget another kick. By Jove! we want a man like this Kaiser, whodoesn't wait to be kicked, but works like a nigger 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 wearen't ready. They talk of a two-power standard----' He plunged awayinto regions where space forbids me to follow him. This is only asample of many similar conversations that we afterwards held, alwaysculminating in the burning question of Germany. Far from including meand the Foreign Office among his targets for vague invective, he hada profound respect for my sagacity and experience as a member of thatinstitution; a respect which embarrassed me not a little when Ithought of my _pr?cis_ writing and cigarette-smoking, my dancing, andmy dining. But I did know something of Germany, and could satisfy histireless questioning with a certain authority. He used to listen raptwhile I described her marvellous awakening in the last generation,under the strength and wisdom of her rulers; her intense patrioticardour; her seething industrial activity, and, most potent of all,the forces that are moulding modern Europe, her dream of a colonialempire, entailing her transformation from a land-power to asea-power. Impregnably based on vast territorial resources which wecannot molest, the dim instincts of her people, not merely directedbut anticipated by the genius of her ruling house, our great traderivals of the present, our great naval rival of the future, shegrows, and strengthens, and waits, an ever more formidable factor inthe future of our delicate network of empire, sensitive as gossamerto external shocks, and radiating from an island whose commerce isits life, and which depends even for its daily ration of bread on thefree passage of the seas.

  'And we aren't ready for her,' Davies would say; 'we don't look herway. 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 asses enough to give her Heligoland, whichcommands 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 thePan-Germanic party, and its ceaseless intrigues to promote theabsorption of Austria, Switzerland, and--a direct and flagrant menaceto ourselves--of Holland.

  'I don't blame them,' said Davies, who, for all his patriotism, hadnot a particle of racial spleen in his composition. 'I don't blamethem; their Rhine ceases to be German just when it begins to be mostvaluable. The mouth is Dutch, and would give them magnificent portsjust opposite British shores. _We_ can't talk about conquest andgrabbing. We've collared a fine share of the world, and they've everyright to be jealous. Let them hate us, and say so; it'll teach us tobuck up; and that's what really matters.'

  In these talks there occurred a singular contact of minds. It wasvery well for me to spin sonorous generalities, but I had never tillnow dreamed of being so vulgar as to translate them into practice. Ihad always detested the meddlesome alarmist, who veils ignoranceunder noisiness, and for ever wails his chant of lugubriouspessimism. To be thrown with Davies was to receive a shock ofenlightenment; for here, at least, was a specimen of the breed whoexacted respect. It is true he made use of the usual jargon,interlarding his stammering sentences (sometimes, when he wasexcited, with the oddest effect) with the conventional catchwords ofthe journalist and platform speaker. But these were but accidents;for he seemed to have caught his innermost conviction from the verysoul of the sea itself. An armchair critic is one thing, but asunburnt, brine-burnt zealot smarting under a personal discontent,athirst for a means, however tortuous, of contributing his effort tothe great cause, the maritime supremacy of Britain, that was quiteanother thing. He drew inspiration from the very wind and spray. Hecommuned with his tiller, I believe, and marshalled his figures withits help. To hear him talk was to feel a current of clarifying airblustering into a close club-room, where men bandy ineffectualplatitudes, 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 ourfancy took extravagant flights sometimes. In plain fact we weremerely two young gentlemen in a seven-ton pleasure boat, with a tastefor amateur hydrography and police duty combined. Not that Daviesever doubted. Once set on the road he gripped his purpose withchild-like faith and tenacity. It was his 'chance'.