XXVI. The Seven Siels
SELECTING the very humblest _Gasthaus_ I could discover, I laid downmy bundle and called for beer, bread, and _Wurst._ The landlord, as Ihad expected, spoke the Frisian dialect, so that though he was ratherdifficult to understand, he had no doubts about the purity of my ownGerman high accent. He was a worthy fellow, and hospitablyinterested: 'Did I want a bed?' 'No; I was going on to Bensersiel,' Isaid, 'to sleep there, and take the morning _Postschiff_ to LangeoogIsland.' (I had not forgotten our friends the twin giants and theirfunctions.) 'I was not an islander myself?' he asked. 'No, but I hada married sister there; had just returned from a year's voyaging, andwas going to visit her.' 'By the way,' I asked, 'how are they gettingon with the Benser Tief?' My friend shrugged his shoulders; it wasfinished, he believed. 'And the connexion to Wittmund?' 'Underconstruction still.' 'Langeoog would be going ahead then?' 'Oh! hesupposed so, but he did not believe in these new-fangled schemes.''But it was good for trade, I supposed? Esens would benefit insending goods by the "tief"--what was the traffic, by the way?' 'Oh,a few more barge-loads than before of bricks, timber, coals, etc.,but it would come to nothing _he_ knew: _Aktiengesellschaften_(companies) were an invention of the devil. A few speculators gotthem up and made money themselves out of land and contracts, whilethe shareholders they had hoodwinked starved.' 'There's something inthat,' I conceded to this bigoted old conservative; 'my sister atLangeoog rents her lodging-house from a man named Dollmann; they sayhe owns a heap of land about. I saw his yacht once--pink velvet andelectric light inside, they say----'
'That's the name,' said mine host, 'that's one of them--some sort offoreigner, I've heard; runs a salvage concern, too, Juist way.'
'Well, he won't get any of my savings!' I laughed, and soon aftertook my leave, and inquired from a passer-by the road to Dornum.'Follow the railway,' I was told.
With a warm wind in my face from the south-west, fleecy clouds and ahalf-moon overhead, I set out, not for Bensersiel but for BenserTief, which I knew must cross the road to Dornum somewhere. A mile orso of cobbled causeway flanked with ditches and willows, and runningcheek by jowl with the railway track; then a bridge, and below me the'Tief'; which was, in fact, a small canal. A rutty track left theroad, and sloped down to it one side; a rough siding left therailway, and sloped down to it on the other.
I lit a pipe and sat on the parapet for a little. No one wasstirring, so with great circumspection I began to reconnoitre theleft bank to the north. The siding entered a fenced enclosure by alocked gate--a gate I could have easily climbed, but I judged itwiser to go round by the bridge again and look across. The enclosurewas a small coal-store, nothing more; there were gaunt heaps of coalglittering in the moonlight; a barge half loaded lying alongside, anda deserted office building. I skulked along a sandy towpath insolitude. Fens and field were round me, as the map had said; willowsand osier-beds; the dim forms of cattle; the low melody of windroaming unfettered over a plain; once or twice the flutter and quackof a startled wild-duck.
Presently I came to a farmhouse, dark and silent; opposite it, in thecanal, a couple of empty barges. I climbed into one of these, andsounded with my stick on the off-side--barely three feet; and thetorpedo-boat melted out of my speculations. The stream, I observedalso, was only just wide enough for two barges to pass with comfort.Other farms I saw, or thought I saw, and a few more barges lying inside-cuts linked by culverts to the canal, but nothing noteworthy;and mindful that I had to explore the Wittmund side of the railwaytoo, I turned back, already a trifle damped in spirits, but stillkeenly expectant.
Passing under the road and railway, I again followed the tow-path,which, after half a mile, plunged into woods, then entered a clearingand another fenced enclosure; a timber-yard by the look of it. Thistime I stripped from the waist downward, waded over, dressed again,and climbed the paling. (There was a cottage standing back, but itsoccupants evidently slept.) I was in a timber-yard, by the stacks ofwood and the steam saw-mill; but something more than a timber-yard,for as I warily advanced under the shadow of the trees at the edge ofthe clearing I came to a long tin shed which strangely reminded me ofMemmert, and below it, nearer the canal, loomed a dark skeletonframework, which proved to be a half-built vessel on stocks. Close bywas a similar object, only nearly completed--a barge. A paved slipwayled to the water here, and the canal broadened to a siding orback-water in which lay seven or eight more barges in tiers. I scaledanother paling and went on, walking, I should think, three miles bythe side of the canal, till the question of bed and ulterior plansbrought me to a halt. It was past midnight, and I was adding littleto my information. I had encountered a brick-field, but soon afterthat there was increasing proof that the canal was as yet little usedfor traffic. It grew narrower, and there were many signs of recentlabour for its improvement. In one place a dammed-off deviation wasbeing excavated, evidently to abridge an impossible bend. The pathhad become atrocious, and my boots were heavy with clay. Bearing inmind the abruptly-ending blue line on the map, I considered ituseless to go farther, and retraced my steps, trying to concoct astory which would satisfy an irritable Esens inn-keeper that it was arespectable wayfarer, and not a tramp or a lunatic, who knocked himup at half-past one or thereabouts.
But a much more practical resource occurred to me as I approached thetimber-yard; for lodging, free and accessible, lay there ready tohand. I boarded one of the empty barges in the backwater, andsurveyed my quarters for the night. It was of a similar pattern toall the others I had seen; a lighter, strictly, in the sense that ithad no means of self-propulsion, and no separate quarters for a crew,the whole interior of the hull being free for cargo. At both bow andstern there were ten feet or so of deck, garnished with bitts andbollards. The rest was an open well, flanked by waterways ofsubstantial breadth; the whole of stout construction and, for ahumble lighter, of well-proportioned and even graceful design, with amarked forward sheer, and, as I had observed in the specimen on thestocks, easy lines at the stern. In short, it was apparent, even toan ignorant landsman like myself, that she was designed not merelyfor canal work but for rough water; and well she might be, for,though the few miles of sea she had to cross in order to reach theislands were both shallow and sheltered, I knew from experience whata vicious surf they could be whipped into by a sudden gale. It mustnot be supposed that I dwelt on this matter. On limited lines I wasmaking progress, but the wings of imagination still droopednervelessly at my sides. Otherwise I perhaps should have examinedthis lighter more particularly, instead of regarding it mainly as aconvenient hiding-place. Under the stern-deck was stored a massiveroll of tarpaulin, a corner of which made an excellent blanket, andmy bundle a good pillow. It was a descent from the luxury of lastnight; but a spy, I reflected philosophically, cannot expect afeather bed two nights running, and this one was at any rate airierand roomier than the coffin-like bunk of the _Dulcibella_, and not sovery much harder.
When snugly ensconced, I studied the map by intermittent match-light.It had been dawning on me in the last half-hour that this canal wasonly one of several; that in concentrating myself on Esens andBensersiel, I had forgotten that there were other villages ending insiel, also furnished on the chart with corkscrew streams; and,moreover, that B?hme's statistics of depth and distance had beenmarshalled in seven categories, A to G. The very first match broughtfull recollection as to the villages. The suffix _siel_ repeateditself all round the coast-line. Five miles eastward of Bensersielwas Neuharlingersiel, and farther on Carolinensiel. Four mileswestward was Dornumersiel; and farther on Nessmersiel andHilgenriedersiel. That was six on the north coast of the peninsulaalone. On the west coast, facing the Ems, there was only one,Greetsiel, a good way south of Norden. But on the east, facing theJade, there were no less than eight, at very close intervals. Amoment's thought and I disregarded this latter group; they hadnothing to do with Esens, nor had they any imaginable _raison d'?tre_as veins for commerce; differing markedly in this respect from thegroup of six on the north coast, whose outlook was the chain ofis
lands, and whose inland centre, almost exactly, was Esens. I stillwanted one to make seven, and as a working hypothesis added thesolitary Greetsiel. At all seven villages streams debouched, as atBensersiel. From all seven points of issue dotted lines were markedseaward, intersecting the great tidal sands and leading towards theislands. And on the mainland behind the whole sevenfold system ranthe loop of railway. But there were manifold minor points ofdifference. No stream boasted so deep and decisive a blue lintel asdid Benser Tief; none penetrated so far into the Hinterland. Theyvaried in length and sinuosity. Two, those belonging toHilgenriedersiel and Greetsiel, appeared not to reach the railway atall. On the other hand, Carolinensiel, opposite Wangeroog Island, hada branch line all to itself.
Match after match waxed and waned as I puzzled over the mystic seven.In the end I puzzled myself to sleep, with the one fixed idea thatto-morrow, on my way back to Norden, I must see more of these buddingcanals, if such they were. My dreams that night were of a mightychain of redoubts and masked batteries couching _perdus_ among thesand-dunes of desolate islets; built, coral-like, by infinitely slowand secret labour; fed by lethal cargoes borne in lighters and incharge of stealthy mutes who, one and all, bore the likeness ofGrimm.
I was up and away at daylight (the weather mild and showery),meeting some navvies on my way back to the road, who gave me goodmorning and a stare. On the bridge I halted and fell into torments ofindecision. There was so much to do and so little time to do it in.The whole problem seemed to have been multiplied by seven, and thetotal again doubled and redoubled--seven blue lines on land, sevendotted lines on the sea, seven islands in the offing. Once I was neardeciding to put my pretext into practice, and cross to Langeoog; butthat meant missing the rendezvous, and I was loth to do that.
At any rate, I wanted breakfast badly; and the best way to get it,and at the same time to open new ground, was to walk to Dornum. ThenI should find a blue line called the _Neues Tief_ leading toDornumersiel, on the coast. That explored, I could pass on to Nesse,where there was another blue line to Nessmersiel. All this was on theway to Norden, and I should have the railway constantly at my back,to carry me there in the evening. The last train (my time-table toldme) was one reaching Norden at 7.15 p.m. I could catch this at HageStation at 7.5.
A brisk walk of six miles brought me, ravenously hungry, to Dornum.Road and railway had clung together all the time, and about half-wayhad been joined on the left by a third companion in the shape of apuny stream which I knew from the map to be the upper portion ofNeues Tief. Wriggling and doubling like an eel, choked with sedgesand reeds, it had no pretensions to being navigable. At length itlooped away into the fens out of sight, only to reappear again closeto Dornum in a much more dignified guise.
There was no siding where the railway crossed it, but at the townitself, which it skirted on the east, a towpath began, and a piledwharf had been recently constructed. Going on to this was a red-brickbuilding with the look of a warehouse, roofless as yet, and withworkmen on its scaffolds. It sharpened the edge of my appetite.
If I had been wise I should have been content with a snack bought ata counter, but a thirst for hot coffee and clues induced me to repeatthe experiment of Esens and seek a primitive beer-house. I was lesslucky on this occasion. The house I chose was obscure enough, but itsproprietor was no simple Frisian, but an ill-looking rascal withshifty eyes and a debauched complexion, who showed a most unwelcomecuriosity in his customer. As a last fatality, he wore a peaked caplike my own, and turned out to be an ex-sailor. I should have fled atthe sight of him had I had the chance, but I was attended to first bya slatternly girl who, I am sure, called him up to view me. Toexplain my muddy boots and trousers I said I had walked from Esens,and from that I found myself involved in a tangle of impromptu lies.Floundering down an old groove, I placed my sister this time onBaltrum Island, and said I was going to Dornumersiel (which isopposite Baltrum) to cross from there. As this was drawing a bow at aventure, I dared not assume local knowledge, and spoke of the visitas my first. Dornumersiel was a lucky shot; there _was_ aferry-galliot from there to Baltrum; but he knew, or pretended toknow, Baltrum, and had not heard of my sister. I grew the morenervous in that I saw from the first that he took me to be of bettercondition than most merchant seamen; and, to make matters worse, Iwas imprudent enough in pleading haste to pull out from an innerpocket my gold watch with the chain and seals attached. He told methere was no hurry, that I should miss the tide at Dornumersiel, andthen fell to pressing strong waters on me, and asking questions whoseinsinuating grossness gave me the key to his biography. He must havebeen at one stage in his career a dock-side crimp, one of those foulsharks who prey on discharged seamen, and as often as not areex-seamen themselves, versed in the weaknesses of the tribe. He wasnow keeping his hand in with me, who, unhappily, purported to belongto the very class he was used to victimize, and, moreover, had a goldwatch, and, doubtless, a full purse. Nothing more ridiculouslyinopportune could have befallen me, or more dangerous; for his classare as cosmopolitan as waiters and _concierges,_ with as facile agift for language and as unerring a scent for nationality. Sureenough, the fellow recognized mine, and positively challenged me withit in fairly fluent English with a Yankee twang. Encumbered with themythical sister, of course I stuck to my lie, said I had been on anEnglish ship so long that I had picked up the accent, and also gavehim some words in broken English. At the same time I showed I thoughthim an impertinent nuisance, paid my score and walked out--quit ofhim? Not a bit of it! He insisted on showing me the way toDornumersiel, and followed me down the street. Perceiving that he wasin liquor, in spite of the early hour, I dared not risk a quarrelsomescene with a man who already knew so much about me, and might at anymoment elicit more. So I melted, and humoured him; treated him in aginshop in the hope of giving him the slip--a disastrous resource,which was made a precedent for further potations elsewhere. I wouldgladly draw a veil over our scandalous progress through peaceableDornum, of the terrors I experienced when he introduced me as hisfriend, and as his English friend, and of the abasement I felt, too,as, linked arm in arm, we trod the three miles of road coastwards. Itwas his malicious whim that we should talk English; a fortunate whim,as it turned out, because I knew no fo'c'sle German, but had asmattering of fo'c'sle English, gathered from Cutcliffe Hyne andKipling. With these I extemporized a disreputable hybrid, mostlyconsisting of oaths and blasphemies, and so yarned of imaginaryvoyages. Of course he knew every port in the world, but happily wasnone too critical, owing to repeated _schnappsen._
Nevertheless, it was a deplorable _contretemps_ from every point ofview. I was wasting my time, for the road took a different directionto the Neues Tief, so that I had not even the advantage of inspectingthe canal and only met with it when we reached the sea. Here it splitinto two mouths, both furnished with locks, and emptying into twolittle mud-hole harbours, replicas of Bensersiel, each owning itscluster of houses. I made straight for the _Gasthaus_ atDornumersiel, primed my companion well, and asked him to wait while Isaw about a boat in the harbour; but, needless to say, I neverrejoined him. I just took a cursory look at the left-hand harbour,saw a lighter locking through (for the tide was high), and thenwalked as fast as my legs would carry me to the outermost dyke,mounted it, and strode along the sea westwards in the teeth of asmart shower of rain, full of deep apprehensions as to the stir andgossip my disappearance might cause if my odious crimp was soberenough to discover it. As soon as I deemed it safe, I dropped on tothe sand and ran till I could run no more. Then I sat on my bundlewith my back to the dyke in partial shelter from the rain, watchingthe sea recede from the flats and dwindle into slender meres, and theladen clouds fly weeping over the islands till those pale shapes werelost in mist.
The barge I had seen locking through was creeping across towardsLangeoog behind a tug and a wisp of smoke.
No more exploration by daylight! That was my first resolve, for Ifelt as if the country must be ringing with reports of an Englishmanin disguise. I must remain in hiding till dusk, the
n regain therailway and slink into that train to Norden. Now directly I began toresign myself to temporary inaction, and to centre my thoughts on therendezvous, a new doubt assailed me. Nothing had seemed more certainyesterday than that Norden was the scene of the rendezvous, but thatwas before the seven _siels_ had come into prominence. The nameNorden now sounded naked and unconvincing. As I wondered why, itsuddenly occurred to me that _all_ the stations along this northernline, though farther inland than Norden, were equally 'coaststations', in the sense that they were in touch with harbours (of asort) on the coast. Norden had its tidal creek, but Esens and Dornumhad their 'tiefs' or canals. Fool that I had been to put such anarrow and literal construction on the phrase 'the tide serves!'Which was it more likely that my conspirators would visit--Norden,whose intrusion into our theories was purely hypothetical, or one ofthese _siels_ to whose sevenfold systems all my latest observationsgave such transcendent significance?
There was only one answer; and it filled me with profounddiscouragement. Seven possible rendezvous!--eight, counting Norden.Which to make for? Out came the time-table and map, and with themhope. The case was not so bad after all; it demanded no immediatechange of plan, though it imported grave uncertainties and risks.Norden was still the objective, but mainly as a railway junction,only remotely as a seaport. Though the possible rendezvous wereeight, the possible stations were reduced to five--Norden, Hage,Dornum, Esens, Wittmund--all on one single line. Trains from east towest along this line were negligible, because there were none thatcould be called night trains, the latest being the one I had thismorning fixed on to bring me to Norden, where it arrived at 7.15. Oftrains from west to east there was only one that need be considered,the same one that I had travelled by last night, leaving Norden at7.43 and reaching Esens at 8.50, and Wittmund at 9.13. This train, asthe reader who was with me in it knows, was in correspondence withanother from Emden and the south, and also, I now found, withservices from Hanover, Bremen, and Berlin. He will also remember thatI had to wait three-quarters of an hour at Norden, from 7 to 7.43.
The platform at Norden Junction, therefore, between 7.15, when Ishould arrive at it _from_ the east, and 7.43 when B?hme and hisunknown friend should leave it _for_ the east; there, and in thathalf-hour, was my opportunity for recognizing and shadowing two atleast of the conspirators. I must take the train they took, andalight where they alighted. If I could not find them at all I shouldbe thrown back on the rejected view that Norden itself was therendezvous, and should wait there till 10.46.
In the meantime it was all very well to resolve on inaction tilldusk; but after an hour's rest, damp clothes and feet, and theabsence of pursuers, tempted me to take the field again. Avoidingroads and villages as long as it was light, I cut across countrysouth-westwards--a dismal and laborious journey, with oozy fens andknee-deep drains to course, with circuits to be made to pass clear ofpeasants, and many furtive crouchings behind dykes and willows. Whatlittle I learnt was in harmony with previous explorations, for mytrack cut at right angles the line of the Harke Tief, the streamissuing at Nessmersiel. It, too, was in the nature of a canal, butonly in embryo at the point I touched it, south of Nesse. Works on adeviation were in progress, and in a short digression down stream Isighted another lighter-building yard. As for Hilgenriedersiel, thefourth of the seven, I had no time to see anything of it at all. Atseven o'clock I was at Hage Station, very tired, wet, and footsore,after covering nearly twenty miles all told since I left my bed inthe lighter.
From here to Norden it was a run in the train of ten minutes, which Ispent in eating some rye bread and smoked eel, and in scraping themud off my boots and trousers. Fatigue vanished when the train drewup at the station, and the momentous twenty-eight minutes began torun their course. Having donned a bulky muffler and turned up thecollar of my pea-jacket, I crossed over immediately to theup-platform, walked boldly to the booking-office, and at oncesighted--von Br?ning--yes, von Br?ning in mufti; but there was nomistaking his tall athletic figure, pleasant features, and neat brownbeard. He was just leaving the window, gathering up a ticket and somecoins. I joined a _queue_ of three or four persons who were waitingtheir turn, flattened myself between them and the partition till Iheard him walk out. Not having heard what station he had booked for,I took a fourth-class ticket to Wittmund, which covered all chances.Then, with my chin buried in my muffler, I sought the darkest cornerof the ill-lit combination of bar and waiting-room where, by thetiresome custom in Germany, would-be travellers are penned till theirtrain is ready. Von Br?ning I perceived sitting in another corner,with his hat over his eyes and a cigar between his lips. A boybrought me a tankard of tawny Munich beer, and, sipping it, Iwatched. People passed in and out, but nobody spoke to the sailor inmufti. When a quarter of an hour elapsed, a platform door opened, anda raucous voice shouted: 'Hage, Dornum, Esens, Wittmund!' A knot ofpassengers jostled out to the platform, showing their tickets. I wasslow over my beer, and was last of the knot, with von Br?ningimmediately ahead of me, so close that his cigar-smoke curled into myface. I looked over his shoulder at the ticket he showed, missed thename, but caught a muttered double sibilant from the official whochecked it; ran over the stations in my head, and pounced on _Esens._That was as much I wanted to know for the present; so I made my wayto a fourth-class compartment, and lost sight of my quarry, notventuring, till the last door had banged, to look out of the window.When I did so two late arrivals were hurrying up to a carriage--onetall, one of middle height; both in cloaks and comforters. Theirfeatures I could not distinguish, but certainly neither of them wasB?hme. They had not come through the waiting-room door, but, plainly,from the dark end of the platform, where they had been waiting. Aguard, with some surly remonstrances, shut them in, and the trainstarted.
Esens--the name had not surprised me; it fulfilled a presentimentthat had been growing in strength all the afternoon. For the lasttime I referred to the map, pulpy and blurred with the day'sexposure, and tried to etch it into my brain. I marked the road toBensersiel, and how it converged by degrees on the Benser Tief untilthey met at the sea. 'The tide serves!' Longing for Davies to helpme, I reckoned, by the aid of my diary, that high tide at Bensersielwould be about eleven, and for two hours, I remembered (say from tento twelve to-night), there were from five to six feet of water in theharbour.
We should reach Esens at 8.50. Would they drive, as von Br?ning haddone a week ago? I tightened my belt, stamped my mud-burdened boots,and thanked God for the Munich beer. Whither were they going fromBensersiel, and in what; and how was I to follow them? These werenebulous questions, but I was in fettle for anything; boat-stealingwas a bagatelle. Fortune, I thought, smiled; Romance beckoned; eventhe sea looked kind. Ay, and I do not know but that Imagination wasalready beginning to unstiffen and flutter those nerveless wings.