Chapter Nine. The Return of the Straggler

Greenmantle

by John Buchan

Before I turned in that evening I had done some good 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 ship-building yard. They were civil fellows, both
of them consumptive, who did what I told them and said little. By
bedtime, if you had seen me in my blue jumper, 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 the
Zambesi, when the proper engineer got drunk and fell overboard 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, and didn't 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 could see that he would have been far more
in his element smelling his way through the shoals of the Ems mouth,
or beating against a northeaster in the shallow Baltic. He had six
barges in tow, but the heavy flood of the Danube made it an easy job
except when it came to going slow. There 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 the next
and get a lift in that barge's dinghy, and so forth. Six men would
appear in the dinghy of the barge nearest us and carry off supplies
for the rest. The men were mostly Frisians, slow-spoken,
sandy-haired lads, very like the breed you strike on the Essex
coast.

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 you, I do not
like Germans.'

Peter gazed lovingly at the little bleak farms which dotted the
Hungarian plain.

'All night I lay in tronk with no food. In the morning they fed
me, and took me hundreds of miles in a train to a place which I think
is called Neuburg. It was a great prison, full of English officers
... I asked myself many times on the journey what was the reason of
this treatment, for I could see no sense in it. If they wanted to
punish me for insulting them they had the chance to send me off to
the trenches. No one could have objected. If they thought me
useless they could have turned me back to Holland. I could not have
stopped them. But they treated me as if I were a dangerous man,
whereas all their conduct hitherto had shown that they thought me a
fool. I could not understand it.

'But I had not been one night in that Neuburg place before I
thought of the reason. They wanted to keep me under observation as a
check upon you, Cornelis. I figured it out this way. They had given
you some very important work which required them to let you into some
big secret. So far, good. They evidently thought much of you, even
yon Stumm man, though he was as rude as a buffalo. But they did not
know you fully, and they wanted to check on you. That check they
found in Peter Pienaar. Peter was a fool, and if there was anything
to blab, sooner or later Peter would blab it. Then they would
stretch out a long arm and nip you short, wherever you were.
Therefore they must keep old Peter under their eye.'

'That sounds likely enough,' I said.

'It was God's truth,' said Peter. 'And when it was all clear to
me I settled that I must escape. Partly because I am a free man and
do not like to be in prison, but mostly because I was not sure of
myself. Some day my temper would go again, and I might say foolish
things for which Cornelis would suffer. So it was very certain that
I must escape.

'Now, Cornelis, I noticed pretty soon that there were two kinds
among the prisoners. There were the real prisoners, mostly English
and French, and there were humbugs. The humbugs were treated,
apparently, like the others, but not really, as I soon perceived.
There was one man who passed as an English officer, another as a
French Canadian, and the others called themselves Russians. None of
the honest men suspected them, but they were there as spies to hatch
plots for escape and get the poor devils caught in the act, and to
worm out confidences which might be of value. That is the German
notion of good business. I am not a British soldier to think all men
are gentlemen. I know that amongst men there are desperate skellums,
so I soon picked up this game. It made me very angry, but it was a
good thing for my plan. I made my resolution to escape the day I
arrived at Neuburg, and on Christmas Day I had a plan made.'

'Peter, you're an old marvel. Do you mean to say you were quite
certain of getting away whenever you wanted?'

'Quite certain, Cornelis. You see, I have been wicked in my
time and know something about the inside of prisons. You may build
them like great castles, or they may be like a backveld tronk, only
mud and corrugated iron, but there is always a key and a man who
keeps it, and that man can be bested. I knew I could get away, but I
did not think it would be so easy. That was due to the bogus
prisoners, my friends, the spies.

'I made great pals with them. On Christmas night we were very
jolly together. I think I spotted every one of them the first day.
I bragged about my past and all I had done, and I told them I was
going to escape. They backed me up and promised to help. Next
morning I had a plan. In the afternoon, just after dinner, I had to
go to the commandant's room. They treated me a little differently
from the others, for I was not a prisoner of war, and I went there to
be asked questions and to be cursed as a stupid Dutchman. There was
no strict guard kept there, for the place was on the second floor,
and distant by many yards from any staircase. In the corridor
outside the commandant's room there was a window which had no bars,
and four feet from the window the limb of a great tree. A man might
reach that limb, and if he were active as a monkey might descend to
the ground. Beyond that I knew nothing, but I am a good climber,
Cornelis.

'I told the others of my plan. They said it was good, but no
one offered to come with me. They were very noble; they declared
that the scheme was mine and I should have the fruit of it, for if
more than one tried, detection was certain. I agreed and thanked
them - thanked them with tears in my eyes. Then one of them very
secretly produced a map. We planned out my road, for I was going
straight to Holland. It was a long road, and I had no money, for
they had taken all my sovereigns when I was arrested, but they
promised to get a subscription up among themselves to start me.
Again I wept tears of gratitude. This was on Sunday, the day after
Christmas, and I settled to make the attempt on the Wednesday
afternoon.

'Now, Cornelis, when the lieutenant took us to see the British
prisoners, you remember, he told us many things about the ways of
prisons. He told us how they loved to catch a man in the act of
escape, so that they could use him harshly with a clear conscience.
I thought of that, and calculated that now my friends would have told
everything to the commandant, and that they would be waiting to
bottle me on the Wednesday. Till then I reckoned I would be slackly
guarded, for they would look on me as safe in the net ...

'So I went out of the window next day. It was the Monday
afternoon ...'

'That was a bold stroke,' I said admiringly.

'The plan was bold, but it was not skilful,' said Peter
modestly. 'I had no money beyond seven marks, and I had but one
stick of chocolate. I had no overcoat, and it was snowing hard.
Further, I could not get down the tree, which had a trunk as smooth
and branchless as a blue gum. For a little I thought I should be
compelled to give in, and I was not happy.

'But I had leisure, for I did not think I would be missed before
nightfall, and given time a man can do most things. 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 rather swim the Limpopo, Cornelis,
among all the crocodiles than that icy river. 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 I would be sought on the northern roads, as I had told my
friends, for no one could 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 I 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 compared 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. [Peter meant a Polish-Jew
pedlar.] 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 heavily.'

'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 suspiciously I went up to them at once and
talked. I told a sad tale, and all believed it. I was a poor
Dutchman travelling home on foot to see a dying mother, and I had
been told that by 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 baffle them. They are a most diligent
people. They will think of all likely difficulties, but not of all
possible ones. They have not much 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, which means that they are always
peering.'

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
belief, and I had a kind of hope in the business now which had been
wanting before. That afternoon, too, I got another fillip. I came on
deck for a breath of air and found it pretty cold after the heat of
the engine-room. So I called to one of the deck hands to fetch me up
my cloak from the cabin - the same I had bought that first morning in
the Greif village.

'Der grune 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 abstractedly over the bulwarks.

His tone had awakened a chord of memory, or, to be accurate,
they 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 'Uhnmantl,' and
could make nothing of it. Now I was as certain of those words as of
my own existence. They had been 'Grune mantel'. Grune mantel,
whatever it might be, was the name which Stumm had not meant me to
hear, which was some talisman for the task I had proposed, and which
was connected in some way with the mysterious von Einem.

This discovery put me in high fettle. I 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 on 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
hills. 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 had 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 this monstrous bloody juggernaut that was crushing
the life out of the little 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 English.

'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
realize 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.