August 
17, 1916 
LAND & WATHK 
21 
By and by I found a branch which led beyond the outer 
wall of the yard and hung above the river. This I followed 
and then dropped from it into the stream. It was a drop of 
some yards and the water was very swift so that I nearly 
drowned. I would rathei; swim the Limpopo, Cornelis, 
among all the crocodiles, than that icy water. Yet I managed 
to reach the shore and get my breath lying in the bushes. 
" After that it was plain going, though I was very cold. I 
knew that 1 would be sought on the northern roads, as I had 
told my friends, for no one would dream of an ignorant 
Dutchman going south away from his kinsfolk. But I had 
learned enough from the map to know that our road lay south- 
east and I had marked this big river." 
" Did you hope to pick me up ? " I asked. 
" No, Cornelis. I thought you would be travelling in first 
class carriages while I should be plodding on foot. But I 
was set on getting to the place you spoke of — how do you call 
it ? — Constant Nople — where our big business lay. I thought 
I might be in time for that." 
" You're an old Trojan, Peter, " I said, " but go on. How 
did you get to that landing-stage where 1 found you ? " 
" It was a hard journey," he said, meditatively, " It waS 
not easy to get beyond the barbed wire entanglements which 
surrounded Neuburg — yes, even across the river. But in 
time I reached the woods and was safe, for I did not think 
any German could equal me in wild country. The best of 
them, even their foresters, are but babes in veldcraft com- 
pared with such as me. ... My troubles came only 
from hunger and cold. Then I met a Peruvian smouse,* and 
sold him my clothes and bought from him these. I did not 
want to part with my own, which were better, but he gave 
me ten marks on the' deal. After that I went into a village 
and ate heartily." 
" Were you pursued ? " I asked. 
" I do not think so. They had gone north, as I expected, 
and were looking for me at the railway stations which my 
friends had marked for me. I walked happily and put a 
bold face on it. If I saw a man or woman look at me sus- 
piciously I went up to them at once and talked. I told a sad 
tale and all believed it. I was a poor Dutchman travelUng 
home on foot to see a dying mother, and had been told that 
bv the Danube I should find the main railway to take me to 
Holland. There were kind people who gave me food, and 
one woman gave me half a mark, and wished me God speed 
. . . Then on the last day of the year I came to the river 
and found many drunkards." 
" Was that when you resolved to get on one of the river 
boats ? 
" Ja, Cornelis. As soon as I heard of the boats I saw where 
my chance lay. But you might have knocked me over with 
a straw when I saw you come on shore. That was good 
fortune, my friend. ... I have been thinking much 
about the Germans and I will tell you the truth. It is only 
boldness that can baflle them. They are a most dihgent 
people. They will think of all likely difficulties, but not of 
all possible ones. They have no imagination. They are 
like steam engines which must keep to prepared tracks. 
There they will hunt any man down, but let him trek for 
open country and they will be at a loss. Therefore boldness, 
my friend, for ever boldness. Remember as a nation they 
wear spectacles, wliich means that they are always peering." 
■J-Peter broke off to gloat over the wedges of geese and the 
strings of wild swans that were always winging across those 
plains. His tale had bucked me up wonderfully. Our 
luck had held beyond all behef, and I had a kind of hope m 
the business now that had been wanting before. That 
afternoon, too, I got another fiUip. 
I came on deck for a breath of air and found it pretty cold 
after the heat of the furnace room. So I called to one of the 
deck hands to fetch me up my cloak from the cabm— the 
same I had bought that first morning in the Grief village. 
" Der griin mantel ■ " the man shouted up, and I cried 
" Yes." But the words seemed to echo in my ears, and long 
after he had given me the garment I stood staring abstract- 
edly over the JDulwarks. 
His tone had awakened a chord of memory, or, to be 
accurate, it had given emphasis to what before had been 
only blurred and vague. For he had spoken the words 
which Stumm had uttered behind his hand to Gaudian. I 
had heard something like " Unmantle," and could make 
nothing of it. Now I was as certain of those words as of my 
own existence. They had • been " Griin mantel " Griin 
mantel, whatever it might be, was the name which Stumm 
had not meant me to hear, which was some talisman for the 
task 1 had proposed, and which was connected in some way 
with the mysterious von Einem. 
♦Peter meaat a Polish- Jew pedlar. 
This discovery put me in high fettle. 1 told myself that, 
considering the difficulties, I had managed to find out a 
wonderful amount in a very few days. It only shows what 
a man can do with the slenderest evidence if he keeps chewing 
and chewing it. . . . 
Two mornings later we lay alongside the quays at Belgrade 
and I took the opportunity of stretching my legs. Peter 
had come ashore for a smoke, and we wandered among the 
battered riverside streets, and looked at the broken arches of 
the great railway bridge which the Germans were working at 
like beavers. There was a big temporary pontoon affair 
to take the railway across, but I calculated that the main 
bridge would be ready inside a month. It was a clear, cold, 
blue day, and as one looked south one saw ridge after ridge 
of snowy hiUs. The upper streets of the city were still 
fairly whole, and there were shops open where food could 
be got. I remember hearing English spoken, and seeing some 
Red Cross nurses in the custody of Austrian soldiers coming 
from the railway station. 
It would have done me a lot of good to have had a word 
with them. I thought of the gallant people whose capital this 
has been, how three times they had flung the Austrians back 
over the Danube, and then had only been beaten by the black 
treachery of their so-called allies. Somehow that morning 
in Belgrade gave both Peter and me a new purpose in our task. 
It was our business to put a spoke in the wheel of ttiis mon 
strous bloody Juggernaut that was crushing out the Uttle 
heroic nations. 
We were just getting ready to cast off when a distinguished 
party arrived at the quay. There were all kinds of uniforms 
— German, Austrian and Bulgarian, and amid them one stout 
gentleman in a fur coat and a black felt hat. They watched 
the barges up anchor, and before we began to jerk into line 
I could hear their conversation. The fur coat was talking 
Enghsh. 
" I reckon that's pretty good noos. General," it said, 
"If the English have run away from Gally-poly we can use 
these noo consignments for the bigger game. I guess it 
won't be long before we see the British Lion moving out of 
Egypt with sore paws." 
They all laughed. " The privilege of that spectacle may 
soon be ours," was the reply. 
I did not pay much attention to the talk, indeed I did not 
reahse till weeks later that that was the first tidings of the 
great evacuation of Cape Helles. What rejoiced me was the 
sight of Blenkiron, as bland as a barber among those swells. 
Here were two of the missionaries within reasonable distance 
of their goal. ^ 
(_To be contihued) 
The Real Mexico 
Mrs. Nelson O'Shaughnessy, whose husband was in charge 
of the American Embassy in Mexico City from October, 1913, 
to April, 1914, tells a stirring tale in A Diplotnat's Wife in 
Mexico (Harper and Brothers, New York and London). The 
book consists of a series of letters, describing very intimately 
not only hfe as it went at the Embassy, but also the life of 
the city and the Mexican people, whom the writer evidently 
regarded with real affection. 
The central figure of the story — if such a tangled story as 
that of Mexico in these troubled days can be said to have 
a central figure — is that of Victoriano Huerta, who shows 
in a different hght from that in which he is g:enerally regarded. 
An autographed portrait which is included in the book shows 
him as a clever, strong, and not unkindly figure, and so the 
text describes him. The story is one long record of fear and 
uncertainty — would America intervene, and when ? is the 
note of nearly every page, up to the time when Admiral 
Fletcher's men landed at Vera Cruz and produced a transitory 
and illusory settlement. The story of the landing of the 
American force is one that has already been told many times. 
One's main interest in this book is in the unsettled and some- 
times dangerous days that preceded the landing. 
Certain figures that have since become historic came in 
contact with the writer, among them Admiral Cradock, who. 
two years or more before his death, off the coast of Chile, 
dined at the American Embassy in Mexico City, as is here 
recorded. But the writer has accomplished more than a 
mere record ; she has made her places and people real to 
the reader, and has given an intimate and vivid account of 
Mexico of to-day. H-Tsympithies with people of the country 
and her habit of looking at both sides of a question, give to 
this series of letters a very human appeal ; whether she is 
writing of a bull-fight in Mexico City, of the desert fighting 
about Chihuahua, or a dinner at the Embassy, she preserves 
the same attitude, and thus informs her pages with dramatic 
simplicity. 
