44 
LAND & WATER 
August 10, 1916 
{Continued from page 42) 
chocolate. Pray take it for your use. And here is some 
money to buy Christmas fare for the httle ones." And I 
gave lier some of the (ierman notes. 
After that my recollection became dim. She helped me u]) 
a ladder to tlie garret, undressed me. and gave me a thick 
coarse nightgown. I seem to remember that she kissed 
my liand and that she was crying. " The good Lord has sent 
you," she said. " Now the little ones will have their prayers 
answered and the Christkind will not pass by our door." 
CHAPTER VIII 
The Essen Barges 
I LAY for four days like a log in that garret bed. The 
storm died down, the thaw set in, and the snow melted. 
The children plavcd about the doors and told stories 
at night round" the lire. Stumm's myrmidons no 
doubt beset every road and troubled the lives of innocent 
wayfarers. But no one came near the cottage, and the fever 
worked itself out while 1 lay in peace. 
It was a bad bout, but on the fifth day it left me, and I lay, 
as weak as a kitten, staring at the rafters and the little sky- 
' light. It was a leaky, draughty old place, but the woman 
of the cottage had heaped deerskins and blankets on my bed 
and kept me warm. She came in now and then, and once 
she brought me a brew of some bitter herbs which greatly 
refreshed me. A little thin porridge was all the food 1 could 
eat, and some chocolate made from the slabs in my ruck sack. 
I lay and dozed through the day, hearing the faint chatter 
of children below, and getting stronger hourly. Malaria 
passes as ciuickly as it comes and leaves a man little the worse, 
though this was one of the sharpest turns I ever had. As 
I lay I thought, and my thoughts followed curious hues. One 
queer thing was that Stumm and his doings seemed to have 
been shot back into a lumber-room of my brain and the door 
locked. I thought a good deal about my battalion and the 
comedy of my present position. You see 1 was getting better, 
for I called it comedy now, not tragedy. 
But chiefly I thought of my mission. All that wild day 
in the snow it had seemed the merest farce. The three words 
Harry BuUivant had scribbled had danced through my head 
in a crazy fandango. They were present to me noW, but 
coolly and sanely in all their meagreness. 
I remember that I took each one separately and chewed on 
it for hours. Kasredin — there was nothing to be got out of 
that. Cancer — there were too many meanings, all blind. 
i; /.—that was the worst gibberish of all. 
Before this I had always taken the I. as the letter of the 
alphabet. I had thought the V. must stand for von, and 
I had considered the German names beginning with I— Ingol- 
stadt, Ingeburg, Ingenohl, and all the rest of them. I had 
made a list at the British Museum before I left London. 
Now I suddenly found myself taking the I as the numeral 
One. Idly, not thinking what I was doing, 1 put it into German. 
Then l" nearly fell out of the bed. Von Zsmcw— the name I 
had heard at Gaudian's house, the name Stumm had spoken 
behind his hand, the name to which Hilda was probably the 
prefix. It was a tremendous discovery — the first real bit of 
light I had found. Harry BuUivant knew that some man or 
woman called A'^on Einem was at the heart of the mystery. 
Stumm had spoken of the same personage with respect, and 
in connection with the work I proposed to do in raising the 
Moslem Africans. If I found Von Einem I would be getting 
very warm. What was the word Stumm had whispered to Gau- 
dian and scared that worthy ? It had sounded like Unmantle. 
If I could only get that clear, I would solve the riddle. 
I think that discovery completed my cure. At any rate, 
on the evening of the fifth day — it was Wednesday, December 
2gth — I was well enough to get up. When the dark had 
fallen and it was too late to fear a visitor, I came downstairs 
and, wrapped in my green cape, took a seat by the fire. 
As we sat there in the firehght, with the three-white-headed 
children staring at me with saucer eyes, and smiling when I 
looked their way, the woman talked. Her man had gone 
to tiie wars on the Eastern front, and the last she had heard 
from him he was in a Polish bog longing for his dry native wood- 
lands. The struggle meant little to her. It was an act of 
God, a thunderbolt out of the sky, which had taken a husband 
from her, and might soon make her a widow and her children 
fatherless. She knew nothing of its causes and purposes, 
andthought of the Russians as a gigantic nation of savages, 
heathens who had never been converted, and who would eat 
up German homes if the good Lord and the brave German 
soldiers did not stop them. I tried hard to find out if she 
had any notion of affairs in the West, but she hadn't, beyond 
the fact that there was trouble with the French. I doubt if 
she knew of England's share in it. She was a decent soul, 
with no bitterness against anybody, not even the Russians 
if thev would spare her man, 
That night I realised the crazy folly of war. When I saw 
the splintered shell of Ypres and heard hideous tales of 
(ierman doings, I used to want to see the whole land of the 
Boches given up to fire and sword. I thought we could never 
end the war properly without giving the Huns some of their 
own medicine. I^ut that woodcutter's cottage cured me of 
such nightmares. I was for punishing the guihy but letting 
the innocent go free. It was our business to thank Goil 
and keep our hands clean from the ugly blunders to which 
Germany's madness had driven her. What good would it do 
Christian folk to burn poor huts like this and leave children's 
bodies by the wayside ? To be able to laugh and to be merci- 
ful are the only things that make man better than the beasts. 
The place, as I have said, was desperately poor. The 
woman's face had the skin stretched tight over the bones, 
and that transparency which means under-feeding. 1 fancied 
she did not have the lavish allowance that soldier's wives 
get in England. The children looked better nourished, but 
it was by their mother's sacrifice. 1 did my best to cheer them 
up. I told them long yarns about .Mrica and lions and tigers, 
and I got some pieces of wood and whittled them into toys. 
I am fairly good with a knife, and I carved hkenesses of a 
monkey, a springbok, and a rhinoceros. The children went 
to bed hugging the first toys I e.xpect they ever possessed. 
It was pretty clear to me that 1 must leave as soon as 
possible. I had to get on with my business, and besides it 
was not fair to the woman. .\ny moment I might be found 
here, and she would get into trouble for harbouring me. 1 
asked her if she knew where the Danube was, and her answer 
surprised me. " ^'ou will reach it in an hour's walk, " she 
said. '■ The track through the wood runs straight to the 
ferry." 
Next morning after breakfast I took my departure. It 
was drizzling weather, and I was feeling very lean. Before 
going I presented my hostess and the children with two 
sovereigns apiece. " It is English gold," I said, " for I 
have to travel among our enemies and use our enemies' money. 
But the gold is good, and if you go to any town they will 
change it for you. But I advise you to put it'in your stocking- 
foot and use it only if all else" fails. You must keep your 
home going, for some day there will be peace and your man 
will come back from the wars." 
I kissed the children, shook the woman's hand, and went 
oft down the clearing. They had cried " Auf wiedcrsehen," 
but it wasn't likely I would ever see them again. 
The snow had all gone, except in patches in the deep hollows. 
The ground was like a full sponge, and a cold rain drifted in 
my eyes, .\fter an hour's steady trudge the trees thinned, 
arid presently I came out on a knuckle of open ground cloaked 
in dwarf junipers. And there before me lay the plain, and 
a mile off a broad brimming river. 
I sat down and looked dismally at the prospect. The 
exhilaration of my discovery the day before had gone. I 
had stumbled on a worthless piece of knowledge, for I could 
not use it. Hilda von Einem, if such a person existed and 
possessed the great secret, was probably living in some big 
house in Berlin, and I was about as likely to get anything out 
of her as to be asked to dine with the Kaiser. Blenkiron 
might do something, but where on earth was Blenkiron ? 
I daresay Sir Walter would value the information, but I could 
not get "to Sir Walter. I was to go on to Constantinople, 
running away from the people who really pulled the ropes. 
But if I stayed 1 could do nothing, and I could not stay. I 
must go on and 1 didn't see how I could go on. Every course 
seemed shut on me, and 1 was in as pretty a tangle as any 
man ever stumbled into. 
For I was mortally certain that Stumm would not let the 
thing drop. I knew" too much, and, besides, I had outraged 
his pride. He would beat the countryside till he got me, 
and he undoubtedly would get me if I waited much longer. 
But how was I to get o\er the border ? My passport would 
be no good, for the number of that pass would long ere this 
have been wired to everv police-station in Germany, and to 
produce it would be to ask for trouble. Without it 1 could 
not cross the borders by any railway. My studies of the 
Tourists' Guide had suggested that once 1 was in Austria 
I might find things slacker and move abouf easier. I thought 
of having a try at the Tyrol and I also thought of Bohemia. 
But these were a long way off, and there were several thou- 
sand chances each day that I would be caught on the road. 
This was Thursday, December 30th. the second last day 
of the year. I was' due in Constantinople on the 17th of 
January. I had thought myself a long way from it in 
Berlin, but now it seemed as distant as the moon. 
But that big sullen river in front of me led to it. And as 
I looked my attention was caught by a curious sight. On the 
far eastern horizon, where the water slipped round a corner of 
hill, there was a long trail of smoke. The streamers thinned 
out and seemed to come from some boat well round the corner, 
{Continued on t^age 46) 
