The Secret Service Submarine Part 9

It did me good to see Sam's nut-brown face hardening into resolve, and the excitement in his eyes. d.i.c.kson was put to bed in an attic of the rambling old inn and the door was locked.

Before it was light that morning my brother stole out, walked five miles in the opposite direction to Blankington-on-Sea, caught the fish train from a village in the neighbourhood of Cromer, and was in London at the Admiralty by mid-day. He returned in a fast motor car that night. The car was housed in the garage of the Lieutenant of Coastguards at c.o.c.kthorpe, four miles away. It was to be ready for any emergency, and by eleven o'clock my brother was back at the Morstone Arms.

On the morning of that day, I indeed went to Norwich on my snorter. She seemed to rise to the occasion, for she did the forty miles to Norwich in two hours and without any mishap. I interviewed the Rev. Harold d.i.c.kson and swore him to secrecy, and I never saw a parson more delighted. His sons were true chips of the old block, and after lunch at the "Maiden's Head" the clergyman almost cursed his age and cloth that he was not also available for the service of his country.

Finally, and this provision of my brother was extraordinarily wise, as it afterwards appeared--though he could have had no idea of what we were to discover at that moment--three of the crew of his own submarine, all recovering from wounds, but all taught and handy men, were, even now, upon their way from Harwich to lodge un.o.btrusively at the coastguard station at c.o.c.kthorpe, where they could await Bernard's orders.

I went through the Sea Wood, towards the inn. This was a place that had been planted to shelter the cultivated fields behind from the keen marsh winds. As one advanced into it from the coast side, the furze, among which innumerable rabbits played, gave way to elders and other hardy shrubs. It was about a quarter of a mile long and not more than two hundred yards in breadth. The timber was all stunted and bushy, the undergrowth was rank and thick. The trees led a life of conflict; they were accustomed to swing there all night long in fierce winter tempests; it was a remote and savage place, where even the pheasants of Lord Blankington hardly ever came.

I pressed through the narrow path until I came to a little open s.p.a.ce, a cup or hollow through which a sluggish stream wound its way on to the marsh. Here, the bushes were thicker than ever and the stream widened into a pool covered with innumerable water-hen that made cheeping noises in the night. It was covered with them as I came up noiselessly; one could see the little black dots upon the livid, leaden expanse.

I sat down, looked at my watch--I had a fowlers' watch with what is called the "radium dial" that showed the time in any darkness--and found it was just half-past nine. Waiting till a gust of wind had died away, I whistled the first three bars of "It's a long way to Tipperary." There was no response and I whistled again. The last note had hardly s.h.i.+vered away when I felt a hand upon my shoulder and I jumped like a shot man.

"It's only me, sir," sounded in my ear with a triumphant chuckle; "I stalked you pretty well, didn't I, sir?"

"You young devil!" I replied, "you nearly frightened me out of my life!"

"I thought I would try and see what I could do, sir," said d.i.c.kson max.

He was in a black suit. I fear it was his Sunday-best. He wore no collar and his face and hands were covered with burnt cork--a grimy, sooty apparition the young imp looked, but, nevertheless, one couldn't have seen him a yard away.

"You've done very well," I said. "Stick to it. The Doctor isn't such a marshman as I am, and if you come up to him like that--well, you won't have a difficult task. You know where I and my brother will be?"

"Yes, sir," he whispered--"in the gun-pit at the head of Garstrike."

"Right you are. Now out along as quickly as possible and bring us news by midnight if you can."

"I am going to lie in the rhododendrons in the Doctor's garden," he said. "He's sure to come out by his private door, and I'll follow him to Heligoland if necessary."

I gave him a pat on the back, and as I looked round he had already melted noiselessly into the dark and I was alone.

In the inn I found my brother. The kitchen was full of labourers drinking their last pint before closing hour at ten. In the private bar old Pugmire was babbling over his gin, but in the sitting-room beyond, with curtains drawn, Bernard was all ready for the enterprise, dressed just as I was.

"Well?" he asked.

"It's all serene. I've met d.i.c.kson and he is watching the Doctor now. In about three-quarters of an hour the inn will be closed and all the men gone home. Then we can set out."

Mrs. Wordingham came in with two bottles of that famous strong ale which is kept for twenty years and which is the best antidote against the cold of the marshes known to the wild-fowler--only an amateur takes spirits upon the saltings.

We drank it in silence.

"I don't know what is going to turn up to-night," said Bernard. "I trust to your knowledge of the marshes implicitly. But remember this, old soul, it is not a lark of any sort. We shall be in the gravest danger. I cannot exaggerate the importance of what we are doing. The Admiralty itself is waiting for news. I am not dramatic in any way, Heaven knows!

but I'll let myself go for a minute. I believe, John, that it may well be that we two, and the others who are helping us, hold the destinies of England in our hands. G.o.d grant that we shall be successful!"

"I think we shall."

"I believe we are on the right track. But there is one thing I want to say. Supposing, just supposing, that one of us does not come back to-night, and a.s.suming it is me"--here Bernard hesitated and looked at me rather ferociously.

"Well?"

"Well, just give this to Miss Marjorie Joyce, will you?" He pulled a signet-ring from his little finger, a ring that had been our governor's.

I told him to keep his hair on and that I would.

At a quarter past ten we slipped out of the big door of the inn, skirted the Sea Wood without entering it, and went down upon the foresh.o.r.e. It is necessary that I should give you some idea of the famous Morstone marshes, and to the description I will add a rough-drawn map which will help to make things clear.[1]

[Footnote 1: See Frontispiece.]

If you look at the map of England, you will see Wells marked at the top right-hand corner of the Wash. Then comes a long, blank s.p.a.ce till you get to Sheringham and finally to Cromer. Blankington-on-Sea was the next town to Wells on the west. Then five miles east of it comes Morstone. So much for our geographical position.

Looking north, there was nothing between us and Iceland; looking a little north-east, we were only three hundred miles from Cuxhaven, about three hundred and twenty miles to Heligoland, and nothing like that to the Frisian Islands just below the mouth of the Kiel Ca.n.a.l. So much for that, and now to be more local.

From the foresh.o.r.e, it was about a mile and a half over the marshes to the sea at low tide. At ordinary high tide it was about a mile. With spring tides and a rare off-sea wind blowing due north, the marshes were covered right up to the foresh.o.r.e. This happened about twice in the year, and then they were only covered for a depth of about five or six feet, if that. The foresh.o.r.e, as it is called, is a somewhat misleading term. It did not in the least resemble what one generally a.s.sociates with the word. It was simply a gra.s.sy bank covered with furze bushes and with a gra.s.s road going right along it. The coa.r.s.e gra.s.s sloped down till the mud was met. Now this mud was a sort of turfy peat on the surface, covered with marrum gra.s.s. One could walk on it with perfect safety, it was as hard as an ordinary field, but it was everywhere intersected with creeks of varying depth. Some of these were little runnels a foot deep, some of them had steep sides of ten or twelve feet and were crossed by narrow planks in permanent position. The sides were of mud as black as a truffle--I have really no other simile which so exactly fits the case--and at the bottom was two or three feet of water covering softer and more dangerous mud.

At high tide these deeper creeks had seven or eight feet of water in them. Then, at various points upon the marsh, were creeks which were really like tidal rivers, only that they ended at the foresh.o.r.e, as a railway line ends at a terminus. These were huge trenches, wider than the widest ca.n.a.l, some of them seventy or eighty yards across. The walls of mud were precipitous, twenty and even thirty feet high. The largest of these had many feet of water in them at all states of the ebb and flow, but when the tide was full they were almost br.i.m.m.i.n.g and could have floated a fair-sized s.h.i.+p.

Anything more utterly desolate and forlorn, even on a bright, sunlit day, than these sullen, winding waterways, so far from the habitations of man, can hardly be conceived. They were the haunt of innumerable fowl. Herons stood on the brink and transfixed flat-fish with their long, spear-like beaks. The wild duck gathered in the little bays and estuaries formed by their convolutions. The red-shank and the green-shank whistled over them at all hours.

The two largest creeks of all were known as Garstrike and Thirty Main.

It was from the heads of these waters that the gun-punts started on their dangerous nightly mission, following this or that creek in and out, wherever there was water. Garstrike had always ten feet of water in it at low tide, but Thirty Main was the largest by far. It stretched straight away from the sea to the foresh.o.r.e. There was always at least thirty feet of water in its black, evil-looking depths. At high tide, sixty would have been nearer the mark. It wound among the marsh, the centre of endless smaller creeks which ran into it, the great ganglion of the whole system of nerves.

It was the study of months to know the marsh. Death had come to many fowlers there who did not know its complexities and who omitted to carry an illuminated compa.s.s for night work. Many men had been cut off on an island of mud covered with the purple sea-thistles, the bronze-green marrum gra.s.s, and the rank vegetation of the saltings. And some had been waiting in a minor creek when the tide came fast and swift through all the intricate waterways, who were unable to climb the steep sides of slippery mud, and so met their fate.

We crossed the foresh.o.r.e in a minute and a half and came down upon the mud. The frozen gra.s.s crackled under our boots like little rods of gla.s.s. The shallow pools were all frozen over as we made our way round the curving sh.o.r.e of Garstrike.

We were on the right bank, and here and there we had to go along some of the smaller creeks that flowed into it. It is no joke to walk over a twelve-inch plank in the pitch dark with a ten-foot ditch of mud and water below. As an old marshman, I was used to it, though I had known many new-comers give these bridges a miss at the first start off. But Bernard skipped over like a bird, and after a quarter of a mile or more of slow progress, aided by my illuminated compa.s.s and a faint, ghostly light from the rising moon, we got to the gun-pit marked upon the map.

Immediately to our left was a low punt-house dug into the steep mud-bank of Garstrike and entered at the sh.o.r.e end by a rough ladder. The pit was five feet deep; there was a rough board for a seat and there was about a foot of water in the bottom--rain-water, which had fallen during the last few days. This, however, was nothing, and we scrambled in and sat down.

I had taken my ten-bore to the Morstone Arms, but Bernard had told me to leave it there. He had given me a heavy Service pistol, which fired ten shots in as many seconds, together with an extra clip of cartridges for the magazine. He had another in the pocket of his coat.

So we sat and waited. Bent on more pleasant business, we should have had our guns ready in our hands, waiting for the sound of birds flighting overhead as the moon rose, coming from the sand-banks out at sea inland to the stubbles. But now our ears were tuned to a different music, and I am not ashamed to say that I heard some artery within me beating like a drum.

It was a solemn hour and strange indeed was the business we were upon.

The whole marsh was alive with voices. There was the long, hushed roar of the sea, the fifing of the wind, and then the countless cries of the night-birds. A great heron flapped away somewhere over Thirty Main, with its hoa.r.s.e "frank, frank"; there was a rustling whistle far overhead as a company of widgeon flashed by at thirty miles an hour; a paddle of duck were quacking somewhere on the other side of the creek; and then, faint at first, but growing nearer and nearer, came that sound which, to the wild-fowler, is the finest in the world and which many and many a man and woman has said to be the strangest sound in nature.

The wild geese were coming. I can never think of that sound without a tightening of the muscles, almost a lump in the throat. It is like a vast pack of ghostly hounds up in the sky, which cuts into the night like nothing else can do, and instinctively I felt for my gun. But it was not to be that night. They pa.s.sed over us not more than eighty yards high--well within the range of a heavy gun--and the noise was deafening in our ears as the great wedge-shaped formation sped by.

"By Jove, that's good!" I heard Bernard whisper.

It was the one chance of the night. No more geese worked our way, and for an hour we sat motionless, growing colder and colder, but patient still.

Then, at last, there was a low whistle and a crouching figure appeared on the edge of the pit.

"I've followed him, sir. He came out of the school with his gun and went straight on to the foresh.o.r.e. He walked for nearly a mile towards c.o.c.kthorpe. I crouched behind the furze bushes and he never saw me. He was walking very fast. He pa.s.sed the head of Thirty Main and then went down on to the mud, following the bank until he came to the Hulk. The bridge was out and he went on board. Then he pulled it up--and there he is now. I saw a light struck and a candle lit from one of the windows in the side. Then something was pulled over it, and I came away here as fast as I could."

"The Hulk!" I said. "Of course, I might have thought of that before!"