It was the fact that Schenk was really a deep-water sailor, and so a novice to the job, that made me get on with him. He was a good fellow and quite willing to take a hint, so before I had been twenty-four hours on board he was telling me all his difficulties, and I was doing my best to cheer him. And difficulties came thick, because the next night was New Year’s Eve.
I knew that that night was a season of gaiety in Scotland, but Scotland wasn’t in it with the Fatherland. Even Schenk, though he was in charge of valuable stores and was voyaging against time, was quite clear that the men must have permission for some kind of beano. just before darkness we came abreast a fair-sized town, whose name I never discovered, and decided to lie to for the night. The arrangement was that one man should be left on guard in each barge, and the other get four hours’ leave ashore. Then he would return and relieve his friend, who should proceed to do the same thing. I foresaw that there would be some fun when the first batch returned, but I did not dare to protest. I was desperately anxious to get past the Austrian frontier, for I had a half-notion we might be searched there, but Schenk took his Sylvesterabend business so seriously that I would have risked a row if I had tried to argue.
The upshot was what I expected. We got the first batch aboard about midnight, blind to the world, and the others straggled in at all hours next morning. I stuck to the boat for obvious reasons, but next day it became too serious, and I had to go ashore with the captain to try and round up the stragglers. We got them all in but two, and I am inclined to think these two had never meant to come back. If I had a soft job like a river-boat I shouldn’t be inclined to run away in the middle of Germany with the certainty that my best fate would be to be scooped up for the trenches, but your Frisian has no more imagination than a haddock. The absentees were both watchmen from the barges, and I fancy the monotony of the life had got on their nerves.
The captain was in a raging temper, for he was short-handed to begin with. He would have started a press-gang, but there was no superfluity of men in that township: nothing but boys and grandfathers. As I was helping to run the trip I was pretty annoyed also, and I sluiced down the drunkards with icy Danube water, using all the worst language I knew in Dutch and German. It was a raw morning, and as we raged through the river-side streets I remember I heard the dry crackle of wild geese going overhead, and wished I could get a shot at them. I told one fellow—he was the most troublesome— that he was a disgrace to a great Empire, and was only fit to fight with the filthy English.
‘God in Heaven!’ said the captain, ‘we can delay no longer. We must make shift the best we can. I can spare one man from the deck hands, and you must give up one from the engine-room.’
That was arranged, and we were tearing back rather short in the wind when I espied a figure sitting on a bench beside the booking-office on the pier. It was a slim figure, in an old suit of khaki: some cast-off duds which had long lost the semblance of a uniform. It had a gentle face, and was smoking peacefully, looking out upon the river and the boats and us noisy fellows with meek philosophical eyes. If I had seen General French sitting there and looking like nothing on earth I couldn’t have been more surprised.
The man stared at me without recognition. He was waiting for his cue.
I spoke rapidly in Sesutu, for I was afraid the captain might know Dutch.
‘Where have you come from?’ I asked.
‘They shut me up in tronk,’ said Peter, ‘and I ran away. I am tired, Cornelis, and want to continue the journey by boat.’
‘Remember you have worked for me in Africa,’ I said. ‘You are just home from Damaraland. You are a German who has lived thirty years away from home. You can tend a furnace and have worked in mines.’
Then I spoke to the captain.
‘Here is a fellow who used to be in my employ, Captain Schenk. It’s almighty luck we’ve struck him. He’s old, and not very strong in the head, but I’ll go bail he’s a good worker. He says he’ll come with us and I can use him in the engine-room.’
‘Stand up,’ said the Captain.
Peter stood up, light and slim and wiry as a leopard. A sailor does not judge men by girth and weight.
‘He’ll do,’ said Schenk, and the next minute he was readjusting his crews and giving the strayed revellers the rough side of his tongue. As it chanced, I couldn’t keep Peter with me, but had to send him to one of the barges, and I had time for no more than five words with him, when I told him to hold his tongue and live up to his reputation as a half-wit. That accursed Sylvesterabend had played havoc with the whole outfit, and the captain and I were weary men before we got things straight.
In one way it turned out well. That afternoon we passed the frontier and I never knew it till I saw a man in a strange uniform come aboard, who copied some figures on a schedule, and brought us a mail. With my dirty face and general air of absorption in duty, I must have been an unsuspicious figure. He took down the names of the men in the barges, and Peter’s name was given as it appeared on the ship’s roll—Anton Blum.
‘You must feel it strange, Herr Brandt,’ said the captain, ‘to be scrutinized by a policeman, you who give orders, I doubt not, to many policemen.’
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘It is my profession. It is my business to go unrecognized often by my own servants.’ I could see that I was becoming rather a figure in the captain’s eyes. He liked the way I kept the men up to their work, for I hadn’t been a nigger-driver for nothing.
Late on that Sunday night we passed through a great city which the captain told me was Vienna. It seemed to last for miles and miles, and to be as brightly lit as a circus. After that, we were in big plains and the air grew perishing cold. Peter had come aboard once for his rations, but usually he left it to his partner, for he was lying very low. But one morning—I think it was the 5th of January, when we had passed Buda and were moving through great sodden flats just sprinkled with snow—the captain took it into his head to get me to overhaul the barge loads. Armed with a mighty type-written list, I made a tour of the barges, beginning with the hindmost. There was a fine old stock of deadly weapons—mostly machine-guns and some field-pieces, and enough shells to blow up the Gallipoli peninsula. All kinds of shell were there, from the big 14-inch crumps to rifle grenades and trench-mortars. It made me fairly sick to see all these good things preparing for our own fellows, and I wondered whether I would not be doing my best service if I engineered a big explosion. Happily I had the common sense to remember my job and my duty and to stick to it.
Peter was in the middle of the convoy, and I found him pretty unhappy, principally through not being allowed to smoke. His companion was an ox-eyed lad, whom I ordered to the look-out while Peter and I went over the lists.
‘Cornelis, my old friend,’ he said, ‘there are some pretty toys here. With a spanner and a couple of clear hours I could make these maxims about as deadly as bicycles. What do you say to a try?’
‘I’ve considered that,’ I said, ‘but it won’t do. We’re on a bigger business than wrecking munition convoys. I want to know how you got here.’
He smiled with that extraordinary Sunday-school docility of his.
‘It was very simple, Cornelis. I was foolish in the cafe—but they have told you of that. You see I was angry and did not reflect. They had separated us, and I could see would treat me as dirt. Therefore, my bad temper came out, for, as I have told