Chapter Four. Adventures of Two Dutchmen on the Loose

Greenmantle

by John Buchan

The Germans, as Peter said, are a careful people. A man met us on
the quay at Rotterdam. I was a bit afraid that something might have
turned up in Lisbon to discredit us, and that our little friend might
have warned his pals by telegram. But apparently all was serene.

Peter and I had made our plans pretty carefully on the voyage.
We had talked nothing but Dutch, and had kept up between ourselves
the role of Maritz's men, which Peter said was the only way to play a
part well. Upon my soul, before we got to Holland I was not very
clear in my own mind what my past had been. Indeed the danger was
that the other side of my mind, which should be busy with the great
problem, would get atrophied, and that I should soon be mentally on a
par with the ordinary backveld desperado.

We had agreed that it would be best to get into Germany at once,
and when the agent on the quay told us of a train at midday we
decided to take it.

I had another fit of cold feet before we got over the frontier.
At the station there was a King's Messenger whom I had seen in
France, and a war correspondent who had been trotting round our part
of the front before Loos. I heard a woman speaking pretty clean-cut
English, which amid the hoarse Dutch jabber sounded like a lark among
crows. There were copies of the English papers for sale, and English
cheap editions. I felt pretty bad about the whole business, and
wondered if I should ever see these homely sights again.

But the mood passed when the train started. It was a clear
blowing day, and as we crawled through the flat pastures of Holland
my time was taken up answering Peter's questions. He had never been
in Europe before, and formed a high opinion of the farming. He said
he reckoned that such land would carry four sheep a morgen. We were
thick in talk when we reached the frontier station and jolted over a
canal bridge into Germany.

I had expected a big barricade with barbed wire and
entrenchments. But there was nothing to see on the German side but
half a dozen sentries in the field-grey I had hunted at Loos. An
under- officer, with the black-and-gold button of the Landsturm,
hoicked us out of the train, and we were all shepherded into a big
bare waiting-room where a large stove burned. They took us two at a
time into an inner room for examination. I had explained to Peter
all about this formality, but I was glad we went in together, for
they made us strip to the skin, and I had to curse him pretty
seriously to make him keep quiet. The men who did the job were
fairly civil, but they were mighty thorough. They took down a list
of all we had in our pockets and bags, and all the details from the
passports the Rotterdam agent had given us.

We were dressing when a man in a lieutenant's uniform came in
with a paper in his hand. He was a fresh-faced lad of about twenty,
with short-sighted spectacled eyes.

'Herr Brandt,' he called out.

I nodded.

'And this is Herr Pienaar?' he asked in Dutch.

He saluted. 'Gentlemen, I apologize. I am late because of the
slowness of the Herr Commandant's motor-car. Had I been in time you
would not have been required to go through this ceremony. We have
been advised of your coming, and I am instructed to attend you on
your journey. The train for Berlin leaves in half an hour. Pray do
me the honour to join me in a bock.'

With a feeling of distinction we stalked out of the ordinary
ruck of passengers and followed the lieutenant to the station
restaurant. He plunged at once into conversation, talking the Dutch
of Holland, which Peter, who had forgotten his school-days, found a
bit hard to follow. He was unfit for active service, because of his
eyes and a weak heart, but he was a desperate fire-eater in that
stuffy restaurant. By his way of it Germany could gobble up the
French and the Russians whenever she cared, but she was aiming at
getting all the Middle East in her hands first, so that she could
come out conqueror with the practical control of half the world.

'Your friends the English,' he said grinning, 'will come last.
When we have starved them and destroyed their commerce with our
under-sea boats we will show them what our navy can do. For a year
they have been wasting their time in brag and politics, and we have
been building great ships - oh, so many! My cousin at Kiel -' and he
looked over his shoulder.

But we never heard about that cousin at Kiel. A short sunburnt
man came in and our friend sprang up and saluted, clicking his heels
like a pair of tongs.

'These are the South African Dutch, Herr Captain,' he said.

The new-comer looked us over with bright intelligent eyes, and
started questioning Peter in the taal. It was well that we had taken
some pains with our story, for this man had been years in German
South West, and knew every mile of the borders. Zorn was his name,
and both Peter and I thought we remembered hearing him spoken of.

I am thankful to say that we both showed up pretty well. Peter
told his story to perfection, not pitching it too high, and asking me
now and then for a name or to verify some detail. Captain Zorn
looked satisfied.

'You seem the right kind of fellows,' he said. 'But remember' -
and he bent his brows on us - 'we do not understand slimness in this
land. If you are honest you will be rewarded, but if you dare to
play a double game you will be shot like dogs. Your race has
produced over many traitors for my taste.' 'I ask no reward,' I said
gruffly. 'We are not Germans or Germany's slaves. But so long as
she fights against England we will fight for her.'

'Bold words,' he said; 'but you must bow your stiff necks to
discipline first. Discipline has been the weak point of you Boers,
and you have suffered for it. You are no more a nation. In Germany
we put discipline first and last, and therefore we will conquer the
world. Off with you now. Your train starts in three minutes. We
will see what von Stumm will make of you.'

That fellow gave me the best 'feel' of any German I had yet met.
He was a white man and I could have worked with him. I liked his
stiff chin and steady blue eyes.

My chief recollection of our journey to Berlin was its
commonplaceness. The spectacled lieutenant fell asleep, and for the
most part we had the carriage to ourselves. Now and again a soldier
on leave would drop in, most of them tired men with heavy eyes. No
wonder, poor devils, for they were coming back from the Yser or the
Ypres salient. I would have liked to talk to them, but officially of
course I knew no German, and the conversation I overheard did not
signify much. It was mostly about regimental details, though one
chap, who was in better spirits than the rest, observed that this was
the last Christmas of misery, and that next year he would be
holidaying at home with full pockets. The others assented, but
without much conviction.

The winter day was short, and most of the journey was made in
the dark. I could see from the window the lights of little villages,
and now and then the blaze of ironworks and forges. We stopped at a
town for dinner, where the platform was crowded with drafts waiting
to go westward. We saw no signs of any scarcity of food, such as the
English newspapers wrote about. We had an excellent dinner at the
station restaurant, which, with a bottle of white wine, cost just
three shillings apiece. The bread, to be sure, was poor, but I can
put up with the absence of bread if I get a juicy fillet of beef and
as good vegetables as you will see in the Savoy.

I was a little afraid of our giving ourselves away in our sleep,
but I need have had no fear, for our escort slumbered like a hog with
his mouth wide open. As we roared through the darkness I kept
pinching myself to make myself feel that I was in the enemy's land on
a wild mission. The rain came on, and we passed through dripping
towns, with the lights shining from the wet streets. As we went
eastward the lighting seemed to grow more generous. After the murk
of London it was queer to slip through garish stations with a hundred
arc lights glowing, and to see long lines of lamps running to the
horizon. Peter dropped off early, but I kept awake till midnight,
trying to focus thoughts that persistently strayed. Then I, too,
dozed and did not awake till about five in the morning, when we ran
into a great busy terminus as bright as midday. It was the easiest
and most unsuspicious journey I ever made.

The lieutenant stretched himself and smoothed his rumpled
uniform. We carried our scanty luggage to a droschke, for there
seemed to be no porters. Our escort gave the address of some hotel
and we rumbled out into brightly lit empty streets.

'A mighty dorp,' said Peter. 'Of a truth the Germans are a
great people.'

The lieutenant nodded good-humouredly.

'The greatest people on earth,' he said, 'as their enemies will
soon bear witness.'

I would have given a lot for a bath, but I felt that it would be
outside my part, and Peter was not of the washing persuasion. But we
had a very good breakfast of coffee and eggs, and then the lieutenant
started on the telephone. He began by being dictatorial, then he
seemed to be switched on to higher authorities, for he grew more
polite, and at the end he fairly crawled. He made some arrangements,
for he informed us that in the afternoon we would see some fellow
whose title he could not translate into Dutch. I judged he was a
great swell, for his voice became reverential at the mention of
him.

He took us for a walk that morning after Peter and I had
attended to our toilets. We were an odd pair of scallywags to look
at, but as South African as a wait-a-bit bush. Both of us had ready-
made tweed suits, grey flannel shirts with flannel collars, and felt
hats with broader brims than they like in Europe. I had strong-
nailed brown boots, Peter a pair of those mustard-coloured
abominations which the Portuguese affect and which made him hobble
like a Chinese lady. He had a scarlet satin tie which you could hear
a mile off. My beard had grown to quite a respectable length, and I
trimmed it like General Smuts'. Peter's was the kind of loose
flapping thing the taakhaar loves, which has scarcely ever been
shaved, and is combed once in a blue moon. I must say we made a
pretty solid pair. Any South African would have set us down as a
Boer from the back-veld who had bought a suit of clothes in the
nearest store, and his cousin from some one-horse dorp who had been
to school and thought himself the devil of a fellow. We fairly
reeked of the sub-continent, as the papers call it.

It was a fine morning after the rain, and we wandered about in
the streets for a couple of hours. They were busy enough, and the
shops looked rich and bright with their Christmas goods, and one big
store where I went to buy a pocket-knife was packed with customers.
One didn't see very many young men, and most of the women wore
mourning. Uniforms were everywhere, but their wearers generally
looked like dug-outs or office fellows. We had a glimpse of the
squat building which housed the General Staff and took off our hats
to it. Then we stared at the Marinamt, and I wondered what plots
were hatching there behind old Tirpitz's whiskers. The capital gave
one an impression of ugly cleanness and a sort of dreary
effectiveness. And yet I found it depressing - more depressing than
London. I don't know how to put it, but the whole big concern seemed
to have no soul in it, to be like a big factory instead of a city.
You won't make a factory look like a house, though you decorate its
front and plant rose-bushes all round it. The place depressed and yet
cheered me. It somehow made the German people seem smaller.

At three o'clock the lieutenant took us to a plain white
building in a side street with sentries at the door. A young staff
officer met us and made us wait for five minutes in an ante-room.
Then we were ushered into a big room with a polished floor on which
Peter nearly sat down. There was a log fire burning, and seated at a
table was a little man in spectacles with his hair brushed back from
his brow like a popular violinist. He was the boss, for the
lieutenant saluted him and announced our names. Then he disappeared,
and the man at the table motioned us to sit down in two chairs before
him.

'Herr Brandt and Herr Pienaar?' he asked, looking over his
glasses.

But it was the other man that caught my eye. He stood with his
back to the fire leaning his elbows on the mantelpiece. He was a
perfect mountain of a fellow, six and a half feet if he was an inch,
with shoulders on him like a shorthorn bull. He was in uniform and
the black-and-white ribbon of the Iron Cross showed at a buttonhole.
His tunic was all wrinkled and strained as if it could scarcely
contain his huge chest, and mighty hands were clasped over his
stomach. That man must have had the length of reach of a gorilla.
He had a great, lazy, smiling face, with a square cleft chin which
stuck out beyond the rest. His brow retreated and the stubby back of
his head ran forward to meet it, while his neck below bulged out over
his collar. His head was exactly the shape of a pear with the sharp
end topmost.

He stared at me with his small bright eyes and I stared back. I
had struck something I had been looking for for a long time, and till
that moment I wasn't sure that it existed. Here was the German of
caricature, the real German, the fellow we were up against. He was
as hideous as a hippopotamus, but effective. Every bristle on his
odd head was effective.

The man at the table was speaking. I took him to be a civilian
official of sorts, pretty high up from his surroundings, perhaps an
Under-Secretary. His Dutch was slow and careful, but good - too good
for Peter. He had a paper before him and was asking us questions
from it. They did not amount to much, being pretty well a repetition
of those Zorn had asked us at the frontier. I answered fluently, for
I had all our lies by heart.

Then the man on the hearthrug broke in. 'I'll talk to them,
Excellency,' he said in German. 'You are too academic for those
outland swine.'

He began in the taal, with the thick guttural accent that you
get in German South West. 'You have heard of me,' he said. 'I am
the Colonel von Stumm who fought the Hereros.'

Peter pricked up his ears. 'Ja, Baas, you cut off the chief
Baviaan's head and sent it in pickle about the country. I have seen
it.'

The big man laughed. 'You see I am not forgotten,' he said to
his friend, and then to us: 'So I treat my enemies, and so will
Germany treat hers. You, too, if you fail me by a fraction of an
inch.' And he laughed loud again.

There was something horrible in that boisterousness. Peter was
watching him from below his eyelids, as I have seen him watch a lion
about to charge.

He flung himself on a chair, put his elbows on the table, and
thrust his face forward.

'You have come from a damned muddled show. If I had Maritz in
my power I would have him flogged at a wagon's end. Fools and
pig-dogs, they had the game in their hands and they flung it away. We
could have raised a fire that would have burned the English into the
sea, and for lack of fuel they let it die down. Then they try to fan
it when the ashes are cold.'

He rolled a paper pellet and flicked it into the air. 'That is
what I think of your idiot general,' he said, 'and of all you Dutch.
As slow as a fat vrouw and as greedy as an aasvogel.'

We looked very glum and sullen.

'A pair of dumb dogs,' he cried. 'A thousand Brandenburgers
would have won in a fortnight. Seitz hadn't much to boast of, mostly
clerks and farmers and half-castes, and no soldier worth the name to
lead them, but it took Botha and Smuts and a dozen generals to hunt
him down. But Maritz!' His scorn came like a gust of wind.

'Maritz did all the fighting there was,' said Peter sulkily.
'At any rate he wasn't afraid of the sight of the khaki like your
lot.'

'Maybe he wasn't,' said the giant in a cooing voice; 'maybe he
had his reasons for that. You Dutchmen have always a feather-bed to
fall on. You can always turn traitor. Maritz now calls himself
Robinson, and has a pension from his friend Botha.'

'That,' said Peter, 'is a very damned lie.'

'I asked for information,' said Stumm with a sudden politeness.
'But that is all past and done with. Maritz matters no more than
your old Cronjes and Krugers. The show is over, and you are looking
for safety. For a new master perhaps? But, man, what can you bring?
What can you offer? You and your Dutch are lying in the dust with
the yoke on your necks. The Pretoria lawyers have talked you round.
You see that map,' and he pointed to a big one on the wall. 'South
Africa is coloured green. Not red for the English, or yellow for the
Germans. Some day it will be yellow, but for a little it will be
green - the colour of neutrals, of nothings, of boys and young ladies
and chicken-hearts.'

I kept wondering what he was playing at.

Then he fixed his eyes on Peter. 'What do you come here for?
The game's up in your own country. What can you offer us Germans?
If we gave you ten million marks and sent you back you could do
nothing. Stir up a village row, perhaps, and shoot a policeman.
South Africa is counted out in this war. Botha is a cleverish man
and has beaten you calves'-heads of rebels. Can you deny it?'

Peter couldn't. He was terribly honest in some things, and
these were for certain his opinions.

'No,' he said, 'that is true, Baas.'

'Then what in God's name can you do?' shouted Stumm.

Peter mumbled some foolishness about nobbling Angola for Germany
and starting a revolution among the natives. Stumm flung up his arms
and cursed, and the Under-Secretary laughed.

It was high time for me to chip in. I was beginning to see the
kind of fellow this Stumm was, and as he talked I thought of my
mission, which had got overlaid by my Boer past. It looked as if he
might be useful.

'Let me speak,' I said. 'My friend is a great hunter, but he
fights better than he talks. He is no politician. You speak truth.
South Africa is a closed door for the present, and the key to it is
elsewhere. Here in Europe, and in the east, and in other parts of
Africa. We have come to help you to find the key.'

Stumm was listening. 'Go on, my little Boer. It will be a new
thing to hear a taakhaar on world-politics.'

'You are fighting,' I said, 'in East Africa; and soon you may
fight in Egypt. All the east coast north of the Zambesi will be your
battle-ground. The English run about the world with little
expeditions. I do not know where the places are, though I read of
them in the papers. But I know my Africa. You want to beat them
here in Europe and on the seas. Therefore, like wise generals, you
try to divide them and have them scattered throughout the globe while
you stick at home. That is your plan?'

'A second Falkenhayn,' said Stumm, laughing.

'Well, England will not let East Africa go. She fears for Egypt
and she fears, too, for India. If you press her there she will send
armies and more armies till she is so weak in Europe that a child can
crush her. That is England's way. She cares more for her Empire
than for what may happen to her allies. So I say press and still
press there, destroy the railway to the Lakes, burn her capital, pen
up every Englishman in Mombasa island. At this moment it is worth
for you a thousand Damaralands.'

The man was really interested and the Under-Secretary, too,
pricked up his ears.

'We can keep our territory,' said the former; 'but as for
pressing, how the devil are we to press? The accursed English hold
the sea. We cannot ship men or guns there. South are the Portuguese
and west the Belgians. You cannot move a mass without a lever.' 'The
lever is there, ready for you,' I said.

'Then for God's sake show it me,' he cried.

I looked at the door to see that it was shut, as if what I had
to say was very secret.

'You need men, and the men are waiting. They are black, but
they are the stuff of warriors. All round your borders you have the
remains of great fighting tribes, the Angoni, the Masai, the
Manyumwezi, and above all the Somalis of the north, and the dwellers
on the upper Nile. The British recruit their black regiments there,
and so do you. But to get recruits is not enough. You must set
whole nations moving, as the Zulu under Tchaka flowed over South
Africa.'

'It cannot be done,' said the Under-Secretary.

'It can be done,' I said quietly. 'We two are here to do
it.'

This kind of talk was jolly difficult for me, chiefly because of
Stumm's asides in German to the official. I had, above all things,
to get the credit of knowing no German, and, if you understand a
language well, it is not very easy when you are interrupted not to
show that you know it, either by a direct answer, or by referring to
the interruption in what you say next. I had to be always on my
guard, and yet it was up to me to be very persuasive and convince
these fellows that I would be useful. Somehow or other I had to get
into their confidence.

'I have been for years up and down in Africa - Uganda and the
Congo and the Upper Nile. I know the ways of the Kaffir as no
Englishman does. We Afrikanders see into the black man's heart, and
though he may hate us he does our will. You Germans are like the
English; you are too big folk to understand plain men. "Civilize,"
you cry. "Educate," say the English. The black man obeys and puts
away his gods, but he worships them all the time in his soul. We
must get his gods on our side, and then he will move mountains. We
must do as John Laputa did with Sheba's necklace.'

'That's all in the air,' said Stumm, but he did not laugh.

'It is sober common sense,' I said. 'But you must begin at the
right end. First find the race that fears its priests. It is
waiting for you - the Mussulmans of Somaliland and the Abyssinian
border and the Blue and White Nile. They would be like dried grasses
to catch fire if you used the flint and steel of their religion.
Look what the English suffered from a crazy Mullah who ruled only a
dozen villages. Once get the flames going and they will lick up the
pagans of the west and south. This is the way of Africa. How many
thousands, think you, were in the Mahdi's army who never heard of the
Prophet till they saw the black flags of the Emirs going into
battle?'

Stumm was smiling. He turned his face to the official and spoke
with his hand over his mouth, but I caught his words. They were:
'This is the man for Hilda.' The other pursed his lips and looked a
little scared.

Stumm rang a bell and the lieutenant came in and clicked his
heels. He nodded towards Peter. 'Take this man away with you. We
have done with him. The other fellow will follow presently.'

Peter went out with a puzzled face and Stumm turned to me.

'You are a dreamer, Brandt,' he said. 'But I do not reject you
on that account. Dreams sometimes come true, when an army follows
the visionary. But who is going to kindle the flame?'

'You,' I said.

'What the devil do you mean?' he asked.

'That is your part. You are the cleverest people in the world.
You have already half the Mussulman lands in your power. It is for
you to show us how to kindle a holy war, for clearly you have the
secret of it. Never fear but we will carry out your order.'

'We have no secret,' he said shortly, and glanced at the
official, who stared out of the window.

I dropped my jaw and looked the picture of disappointment. 'I
do not believe you,' I said slowly. 'You play a game with me. I
have not come six thousand miles to be made a fool of.'

'Discipline, by God,' Stumm cried. 'This is none of your ragged
commandos.' In two strides he was above me and had lifted me out of
my seat. His great hands clutched my shoulders, and his thumbs
gouged my armpits. I felt as if I were in the grip of a big ape.
Then very slowly he shook me so that my teeth seemed loosened and my
head swam. He let me go and I dropped limply back in the chair.

'Now, go! Futsack! And remember that I am your master. I,
Ulric von Stumm, who owns you as a Kaffir owns his mongrel. Germany
may have some use for you, my friend, when you fear me as you never
feared your God.'

As I walked dizzily away the big man was smiling in his horrible
way, and that little official was blinking and smiling too. I had
struck a dashed queer country, so queer that I had had no time to
remember that for the first time in my life I had been bullied
without hitting back. When I realized it I nearly choked with anger.
But I thanked heaven I had shown no temper, for I remembered my
mission. Luck seemed to have brought me into useful company.