August 17, igi6 
LAND & WATER 
Greenmantle 
By John Buchan 
A Sequel to " The Thirty-Nine Steps " 
19 
Synopsis : Richard Hannay, who obtained a commission 
in the new army and was wounded at Loos is asked by 
Sir Walter Bullivai^it of the Foreign Office, to undertake 
n mission to unearth a secret connected with Turkey and 
Germany. The only clue is a scrap of paper bearing 
the words, Kasredin — cancer — v.I. This was handed 
1.0 the British headquarters in Mesopotamia by an 
officer — Sir Walter's son — wounded to death in obtaining it. 
Hannay undertakes the mission, his friend Sandy (the Hon. 
L. G. Arbiithnot) agrees to help him. Sir Walter intro- 
duces him to an American gentleman, John S. Blenkiron. 
a strong fro-. illy, who also joins them On November lyih 
the three dine together at a London flat, and agree to meet 
in a cafe tn a back street of Constantinople two months 
later^n January ijth. Sandy goes to Constantinople, 
disguised as a Turk, by way of Cairo. Blenkirnn drops into 
Germany by way of Scandinavia. Hannay, who in South 
Africa was a mining engineer, and can speak Dutch perfectly, 
enters Germany through Holland as a Boer from Western 
Cape Colony. Hannay sails for Lisbon ivhere he finds 
a steamer fust arrived from Angola : boarding it he meets 
his old Rhodcsian friend, Peter Pienaar, to whom he un-'- 
folds his pltins. Peter agrees to be his companion. Thev 
go -on to Germany and find their way to Berlin. Here 
they have an interview with two Government high offiicials,; 
one. Colonel von Stumm, had been in German South West 
Africa, fighting the Here os. The Colonel is a huge man 
" as hideous as a hippopotamus." Stumm takes them in 
charge, interested by Hannay's plans for an uprising n 
Africa. He leaves Pienaar in Berlin, but brings Hannay 
by railway and motor car to a big house in the country, 
where he is introduced to Herr Gaudian, " one of the biggest 
railway engineers in the world." Stumm takes him on to 
his castle, in Bavaria. On the way Hannay has an 
intervieia with the Kaiser. Stumm's castle is deserted by 
nil except one old servant. In the evening Stumm grossly 
insults Hannay who knocks him out and makes a bolt for 
it. He hides in the forest, and stricken with malaria lies 
perdu for some days in a woodcutter' s hut. Finally he 
r -aches the Dant.b: and gets taken on as an engineer on 
b )ard a steamer that is tugging b.irges of munitions from 
Essen to Rustchuk. 
CHAPTER IX 
The Return of the Straggler 
BEFORE I turned in that evening I had done some 
f^ood hours' work in the engine-room. The boat was 
oil-fired, and in very fair order, so my duties did 
not look as if they would be heavy. There was 
nobody who could be properly called an engineer ; only 
besides the furnace-men a couple of lads from Hamburg who 
had been a year ago apprentices in a shipbuilding yard. They 
were civil fellows, both of them consumptive, who did what 
1 told them and said little. By bed-time if you had seen me 
in my blue jumpers, a pair of carpet slippers and a flat cap — 
all the property of the deceased Walter — you would have 
sworn I had been bred to the firing of river-boats, whereas I 
had acquired most of my knowledge on one run down tlie 
Zambesi, when the proper engineer got drunk and fell over- 
board among the crocodiles. 
The Captain — they called him Schenk — was out of his 
bearings in the job. He was a Frisian and a first-class deep- 
water seaman,- but, since he knew the Rhine delta, and 
because the German mercantile marine was laid on the 
ice till the end of war, they had turned him on to this show. 
He was bored by the business, you could see, and did not 
understand it very well. The river charts puzzled him, and 
though it was pretty plain going for hundreds of miles, yet 
he was in a perpetual fidget about the pilotage. You coull 
see that he would have been far more in his element smellinc; 
his way through the shoals of the Ems mouth or beating 
against a north-easter in the shallow Baltic. He had six 
barges in fow, but the heavy flood of the Danube made it an 
easy job except when it came to going slow. Tliere were two 
men on each barge, who came aboard every morning to draw 
rations. That was a funny business, for we never lay to if 
we could help it. There was a dinghy belonging to each 
barge, and the men used to row to tiie ne.\t to get a lift in 
that barge's dinghy, and so forth. Si.x men would appear 
in the dingiiy of the barge nearest to us and carry off supplies 
for the rest. The men were mostly Frisians, slow-spoken, sandy- 
haired lads very like tiie breed you strike on the Fsie.x coas't. 
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 wiUing to take a hint, so before 
I had been twenty-four hours on board, he was telling me all 
his (liliiculties 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, wa*s quite clear that the men must have per- 
mission for some kind of beano. Just before darkness we 
came abreast a fair-sized town whose name I never discovered, 
and decided to he to for tiie night. The arrangement was 
tliat one man should be left on guard in each barge, and the 
other get four hours' leave ashore. Then he should return 
and reUeve 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, jjut Schenk took 
this Sylvester abend business so seriously that I would have 
risked a row if I had tried to escape. 
The upshot was what I expected. We got the first batch 
aboard about midnight, blind to the world, and the otliers 
straggled in at all hours next morning. I stuck to the boat for 
ol)vious reasons, but ne.xt 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 fanfcy 
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 gees3 going overhead, and wished I could get a 
shot at them. I told one fellow — he was the most trouble- 
some — 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 smok- 
ing peacefully, looking out upon the river and the boats and us 
noisy fellows with meek philosojjhical 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 witiiout 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 trcnk," said Peter, " and I ran away. 
I am tired, Cornells, 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 
