But we couldn't get on the steamer at once. For some reason or other
there were Customs delays and everything we possessed had to be examined
before we were allowed to leave the country, but--and we hailed them
with delight--under the goods sheds were set out little tables where we
could buy coffee and rolls and butter and eggs. It was autumn now, and
for all the sunshine here in such high latitudes there was a nip in the
air and the hot coffee was welcome. We met, too, our friend of the night
before, the Scots Finn, but the glamour had departed from him and we
paid no attention to his suggestion that the _Goathied_, the Swedish
steamer, was very much smaller than the _Uleaborg_ and that there was
a wind getting up and we would all be deadly sick. We said we preferred
being sick to being captured by the Germans. And he laughed at us. There
was no need to fear the Germans in the Baltic so far north.
It was midday before we were allowed on board the little white ship,
but still she lingered. I was weary, weary, even the waiting seemed a
weariness so anxious was I to end my long journeying and get home. And
then suddenly I felt very near it, for my ears were greeted by the good
broad Doric of Scotland, and there came trooping on board five and fifty
men, part of the crews of four English ships that had been caught by the
tide of war and laid up at Petrograd and Kronstadt. An opportunity had
been found and they were going back by way of Sweden, leaving their
ships behind till after the war. We did not think the war _could_ last
very long on board that steamer.
The Scotsmen had evidently been expected, for on the deck in the bows
of the little steamer--she was only about three hundred tons--were laid
long tables spread with ample supplies of boiled sausages, suet pudding
and potatoes, and very appetising it looked, though in all my wanderings
I had never met boiled sausages before. Down to the feast sat the
sailor-men, and our Yiddish friend voiced aloud my feelings.
“Anglisky,” said she unexpectedly, “nice Anglisky boys. Guten appetite,
nice Anglisky boys!”
They were very cheery, poor boys, and though they were not accustomed to
her sort in Leith, they received her remarks with appreciative grins.
As we started the captain came down upon me.
“Who does that dog belong to?” he asked angrily. Everyone on board spoke
English. And before I could answer--I wasn't particularly anxious to
answer--he added: “He can't be landed in Sweden.”
My heart sank. What would they do to my poor little dog? I was
determined they shouldn't harm him unless they harmed me first, and if
he had to go back to Russia--well, I would go too; but the thought of
going back made me very miserable, and I made solemn vows to myself
that if I by some miracle got through safely, never, never again would I
travel with a dog.
And while I was thinking about it there came along a junior officer,
mate, purser, he might have been the cook for all I know, and he said:
“If you have bought this dog in Finland, or even on board the steamer,
he can land.”
It was light in darkness, and I do not mind stating that where my dog is
concerned I have absolutely no morals, if it is to save him from
pain. He had been my close companion for over a year and I knew he was
perfectly healthy.
“I will give you a good price for him,” said I. “He is a pretty little
dog.”
“Wait,” he said, “wait. By and by I see.”
Just as we got out of the bay the captain announced that he was not
going to Stockholm at all, but to Gefle, farther north. Why, he did not
know. Such were his orders. In ordinary times to find yourself being
landed at Liverpool, say, when you had booked for London might be
upsetting, but in war time it is all in the day's work, and sailors and
crowded passengers only laughed.
“Let's awa',” said the sailors. “Let's awa'.”
The air was clear and clean, clean as if every speck of dust had been
washed away by the rain of the preceding night; the little islands at
the mouth of the bay stood out green and fresh in the blue sea, but the
head wind broke it up into little waves, and the ship was empty of cargo
and tossed about like a cork. The blue sea and snow-white clouds, the
sunlight on the dancing waves mattered not to us; all we wanted, those
of us who were not in favour of drowning at once and so ending
our misery, was to land in Sweden. Buchanan sat up looking at me
reproachfully, then he too subsided and was violently sick, and I
watched the passengers go one by one below to hide their misery, even
those who had vowed they never were sea-sick. I stayed on deck because I
felt I was happier there in the fresh air, and so I watched the sunset.
It was a gorgeous sunset; the clouds piled themselves one upon the other
and the red sun stained them deepest crimson. It was so striking that I
forgot my sea-sick qualms.
And then suddenly I became aware there were more ships upon the sea
than ours, one in particular, a black, low-lying craft, was steaming
all round us, sending out defiant hoots. There were three other ships
farther off, and I went to the rail to look over the darkening sea.
Between us and the sunset was the low-lying craft, so close I could see
the gaiters of a man in uniform who stood on a platform a little higher
than his fellows; the little decks were crowded with men and a long gun
was pointed at us. It was all black, clean-cut, silhouetted against the
crimson sunset.
We were slowed down, barely moving, the waves slop-slopped against our
sides, and the passengers came scrambling up.
“Germans! Yarmans!” they cried, and from the torpedo boat came a voice
through a megaphone.
“What are you doing with all those fine young men on board?” it asked in
excellent English, the language of the sea.
The black torpedo boat was lying up against us.
Sea-sickness was forgotten, and the violinist came to me.
“They are going to take the young men,” he said, and he was sorry and
yet pleased, because all the time he had been full of the might of the
Germans.
I thought of the Oxford man in the very prime of his manhood.
“Have you told him?”
“Guess I didn't dare,” said he.
“Well, I think you'd better, or I'll go myself. They are going to search
the ship and he won't like being taken unawares.”
So he went down, and presently they came up together. The Oxford man
had been very sea-sick and he thought all the row was caused by the ship
having struck a mine, and he felt so ill that if things were to end
that way he was accepting it calmly, but being captured by Germans was
a different matter. He was the only Englishman in the first class, and
when we heard they were coming for the young men we felt sure he would
have to go.
Leaning over the rail of the _Goathied_, we could look down upon the
black decks of the torpedo boat, blacker than ever now in the dusk of
the evening, for the sun sank and the darkness was coming quickly. A
rope ladder was flung over and up came a couple of German officers. They
spoke perfect English, and they talked English all the time. They went
below, demanded the passenger list and studied it carefully.
“We must take those Englishmen,” said the leader, and then he went
through every cabin to see that none was concealed.
The captain made remonstrance, as much remonstrance as an unarmed
man can make with three cruisers looking on and a torpedo boat close
alongside.
“It is war,” said the German curtly, and in the dusk he ranged the
sailor-men along the decks, all fifty-five of them, and picked out
those between the ages of nineteen and forty. Indeed one luckless lad of
seventeen was taken, but he was a strapping fellow and they said if he
was not twenty-one he looked it.
It was tragic. Of course there must have been treachery at work or how
should the German squadron have known that the Englishmen were crossing
at this very hour? But a few moments before they had been counting
on getting home and now they were bound for a German prison! In the
gathering darkness they stood on the decks, and the short, choppy sea
beat the iron torpedo boat against the ship's side, and the captain
in the light from a lantern hung against the little house looked the
picture of despair.
“She cannot stand it! She cannot stand it much longer!”
Crash! Crash! Crash!
“She cannot stand it! She was never built for it! And she is old now!”
But the German paid no attention. The possible destruction of
a passenger ship was as nothing weighed in the balance with the
acquirement of six and thirty fighting men.
They were so quiet. They handed letters and small bundles and sometimes
some of their pay to their comrades or to the passengers looking on and
they dropped down that ladder. No one but a sailor could have gone down,
for the ships heaved up and down, and sometimes they were bumping and
sometimes there was a wide belt of heaving dark water between them,
bridged only by that frail ladder. One by one they went, landing on the
hostile deck, and were greeted with what were manifestly jeers at their
misfortune. The getting down was difficult and more than once a bundle
was dropped into the sea and there went up a sigh that was like a wail,
for the passengers looking on thought the man was gone, and I do not
think there would have been any hope for him between the ships.
Darker and darker it grew. On the _Goathied_ there were the lighted
decks, but below on the torpedo boat the men were dim figures, German
and English undiscernible in the gloom. On the horizon loomed the sombre
bulk of the cruisers, eaeh with a bright light aloft, and all around
was the heaving sea, the white tops of the choppy waves showing sinister
against the darker hollows.
“Anglisky boys! Anglisky boys!” wailed the Yiddish woman, and her voice
cut into the waiting silence. It was their dirge, the dirge for the
long, long months of imprisonment that lay before them. And we were
hoping for a short war! I could hear the Oxford man drawing a long
breath occasionally, steeling himself against the moment when his turn
would come.
It never came. Why, I do not know. Perhaps they did not realise his
nationality, for being a Scotsman he had entered himself as “British” on
the passenger list, and “British” was not such a well-known word as the
sons of Britain gathering from all corners of the earth to fight the
common foe have made it to-day.
“Puir chappies! Puir chappies! A'm losin' guid comrades,” sighed an
elderly man leaning over the side and shouting a farewell to “Andra'.”
I murmured something about “after the war,” but he cut me short sternly.
The general opinion was that they would be put to stoke German warships
and as the British were sure to beat them they would go down and be
ingloriously lost. The thought must have been a bitter one to the men on
that torpedo boat. And they took it like heroes.
The last man was gone, and as the torpedo boat drew away a sort of
moan went up from the bereft passenger ship and we went on our way, the
captain relieved that we were free before a hole had been knocked in our
side.
He was so thankful that no worse thing had befallen him that he became
quite communicative.
“They are gone to take the _Uleaborg_,” he said, “and they will blow her
up and before to-morrow morning Raumo will be in flames!”
In those days Sweden had great faith in the might of Germany. I hope
that faith is getting a little shaken at last. Still that captain
declared his intention of warning all the ships he could. There were two
Finnish ships of which he knew that he said were coming out of Stockholm
that night and he was going to look for them and warn them.
And so the night was alive with brilliant electric light signals and
wild hootings from the steam siren, and he found them at last, all
honour to him for a kindly sailor-man, and the Finnish ships were warned
and went back to Sweden.
But no matter how sorry one is for the sufferings of others, the feeling
does not in any way tend to lessen one's own private woes. Rather are
they deepened because sympathy and help is not so easily come by when
men's thoughts are occupied by more--to them more--important matters.
And so I could not go to sleep because of my anxiety about my little
dog. Only for the moment did the taking of the men and my pity for them
drive the thought of his predicament from my mind.
We were nearing Sweden, every moment was bringing us closer, and as yet
I had made no arrangements for his safety. He lay curled up on the seat,
hiding his little snub nose and his little white paws with his bushy
tail, for the autumn night was chilly, and I lay fearing a prison for
him too, when he would think his mistress whom he had trusted had failed
him. All the crew were so excited over the kidnapping of the men that my
meditated nefarious transaction was thrust into the background. It was
hopeless to think that any one of them would give ear to the woes of
a little dog, so at last, very reluctantly, I gave him, much to his
surprise, a sulphonal tablet. I dozed a little and when by my watch it
was four o'clock Buchanan was as lively as a cricket. Sulphonal did not
seem to have affected him in any way. I gave him another, and he said it
was extremely nasty and he was surprised at my conduct, but otherwise it
made no difference to him.
In the grey of the early morning we drew up to the wharf and were
told to get all our belongings on to the lower deck for the Customs to
examine them, and Buchanan was as cheerful and as wide awake as if he
had not swallowed two sulphonal tablets. With a sinking heart I gave him
another, put him in his basket and, carrying it down to the appointed
place, threw a rug over it and piled my two suit-cases on top of it. How
thankful I was there was such a noisy crowd, going over and over again
in many tongues the events of the night. They wrangled too about their
luggage and about their places, and above all their din I could hear
poor little James Buchanan whining and whimpering and asking why his
mistress was treating him so badly.
Then came the Customs officer and my heart stood still. He poked an
investigatory hand into my suit-case and asked me--I understood him
quite well--to show him what was underneath. I could hear Buchanan if he
could not, and I pretended that I thought he wanted to know what was at
the bottom of my suit-case and I turned over the things again and again.
He grew impatient, but luckily so did all the people round, and as a
woman dragged him away by force to look at her things so that she could
get them ashore I noticed with immense relief that the sailors were
beginning to take the things to the wharf. Luckily I had taken care the
night before to get some Swedish money--I was taking no chances--and a
little palm oil made that sailor prompt to attend to my wants. Blessings
on the confusion that reigned around! Two minutes later on Swedish
soil I was piling my gear on a little hand-cart with a lot of luggage
belonging to the people with whom I had come across Finland and it was
bound to the railway station.
“You have left your umbrella,” cried the violinist.
“I don't care,” said I. I had lost my only remaining hat for that
matter, goodness knows what had become of it, but I was not going to put
myself within range of those Customs men again. What did I care about
appearances! I had passed the very worst milestone on my journey when I
got James Buchanan into Sweden; I had awakened from the nightmare that
had haunted me ever since I had taken my ticket in Petrograd, and I
breathed freely.
At the railway station we left our luggage, but I got Buchanan's basket,
and we all went across the road to a restaurant just waking to business,
for we badly wanted breakfast. I loved those passengers. I shall always
think of them with gratitude. They were all so kind and sympathetic and
the restaurant folks, who were full of the seizing of the Englishmen on
a Swedish ship--so are joys and sorrows mingled--must have thought
we were a little mad when we all stood round and, before ordering
breakfast, opened a basket and let out a pretty little black and white
dog.
And then I'm sorry to say we laughed, even I laughed, laughed with
relief, though I there and then took a vow never again to drug a dog,
for poor little James Buchanan was drunk. He wobbled as he walked, and
he could not make up his mind to lie down like a sensible dog and sleep
if off; he was conversational and silly and had to be restrained. Poor
little James Buchanan! But he was a Swedish dog, and I ate my breakfast
with appetite, and we all speculated as to what had become of the Scots
Finn who had failed me.
Gefle reminded me of Hans Andersen even more than Finland had done. It
had neat streets and neat houses and neat trees and neat and fair-haired
women, and Gefle was seething with excitement because the _Goathied_
had been stopped. It was early days then, and Sweden had not become
accustomed to the filibustering ways of the German, so every poster had
the tale writ large upon it, in every place they were talking about it,
and we, the passengers who walked about the streets, were the observed
of all observers.
I was nearing the end of my long journey, very near now, and it did not
seem to me to matter much what I did. We were all--the new friends I had
made on the way from Petrograd--pretty untidy and travel-stained, and
if I wore a lace veil on my hair, the violinist had a huge rent in his
shoe, and, having no money to buy more, he went into a shoe-shop and had
it mended. I, with Buchanan a little recovered, sat beside him while it
was done.
And in the afternoon we went by train through the neat and tidy country,
Selma Lagerlof's country, to Stockholm. I felt as if I were resting,
rested, because I was anxious no longer about Buchanan, who slumbered
peacefully on my knee; and if anybody thinks I am making an absurd fuss
about a little dog, let them remember he had been my faithful companion
and friend in far corners of the earth when there were none but
alien faces around me, and had stood many a time between me and utter
loneliness and depression.
We discussed these sturdy Swedes. The Chicago woman's daughter, with the
pertness and aptness of the American flapper, summed them up quickly.
“The men are handsome,” she said, looking round, “but the women--well,
the women lack something--I call them tame.”
And I knew she had hit them off to a “T.” After that I never looked at
a neat and tidy Swedish woman with her hair, that was fair without that
touch of red that makes for gold--gives life--coiled at the back of
her head and her mild eyes looking out placidly on the world around her
without feeling that I too call her tame.
Stockholm for the most of us was the parting of the ways. The American
consul took charge of the people who had come across Finland with us
and the Oxford man and I alone went to the Continental Hotel, which, I
believe, is the best hotel in that city. We had an evening meal together
in a room that reminded me very much of the sort of places we used to
call coffee palaces in Melbourne when I was a girl, and I met here again
for the first time for many a long day tea served in cups with milk and
cream. It was excellent, and I felt I was indeed nearing home. Things
were getting commonplace and the adventure was going out of life. But I
was tired and I didn't want adventure any more. There comes a time when
we have a surfeit of it.
I remember my sister once writing from her home somewhere in the Malay
jungle that her husband was away and it was awkward because every night
a leopard came and took up his position under the house, and though she
believed he was only after the fowls she didn't like it because of the
children. If ever she complains that she hasn't had enough adventure
in her life I remind her of that and she says that is not the sort of
adventure she has craved. That is always the way. The adventure is
not always in the form we want. I seemed to have had plenty, but I was
weary. I wanted to sit in a comfortable English garden in the autumn
sunshine and forget that such things as trains and ships--perish the
thought of a mule litter--existed. I counted the hours. It couldn't be
long now. We came down into the hall to find that I had been entered on
the board containing the names of the hotel guests as the Oxford man's
wife. Poor young man! It was a little rough on him, for I hadn't even a
hat, and I felt I looked dilapidated.
I was too. That night in the sleeper crossing to Christiania the woman
who had the bottom berth spoke excellent English. She was going to some
baths and she gave some advice.
“You are very ill, Madame,” said she, “very ill.”
I said no, I was only a little tired.
“I think,” she went on, “you are very ill, and if you are wise when you
get to Christiania you will go to the Hotel Victoria and go to bed.”
I was horrified. Because I felt I must go to England as quickly as
possible, and I said so.
“The train does not go to Bergen till night,” said she. “Stay in bed all
day.” And then as we crossed the border a Customs officer came into the
carriage. Now I could easily have hidden Buchanan, but I thought as
a Swedish dog all his troubles were over, and he sat up there looking
pertly at the uniformed man and saying “What are you doing here?”
“Have you got a certificate of health for that dog?” asked the man
sternly.
I said “No,” remembering how very carefully I had kept him out of the
way of anybody likely to be interested in his health.
“Then,” said he, “you must telegraph to the police at Christiania. They
will meet you and take him to a veterinary surgeon.”
“And after?” I asked, trembling, my Swedish friend translating.
“If his health is good they give him back to you. You take a room at
a hotel and if his health is good he will be allowed to skip about the
streets.”
I felt pretty sure he would be allowed to skip about the streets and
I took a room at the Victoria, the Oxford man kindly seeing us
through--they put us down as Mr and Mrs Gaunt here--and James Buchanan,
who had been taken possession of by the police at the station, came back
to me, accompanied by a Norwegian policeman who demanded five shillings
and gave me a certificate that he was a perfectly healthy little dog.
I want to go back to Norway when I am not tired and fed up with
travelling, for Christiania struck me as a dear little home-like town
that one could love; and the railway journey across the Dovrefield and
even the breakfast baskets that came in in the early morning were things
to be remembered. I saw snow up in those mountains, whether the first
snow of the coming winter or snow left over from the winter before, I
do not know, but the views were lovely, and I asked myself why I went
wandering in far-away places when there were places like this so close
at home and so easily reached. So near home. We were so near home. I
could think of nothing else. I told Buchanan about it and he licked my
hand sympathetically and told me always to remember that wherever I was
was good enough for him. And then we arrived at Bergen, a little wooden
city set at the head of a fiord among the hills, and we went on board
the _Haakon VII._, bound for Newcastle-on-Tyne.
And then the most memorable thing happened, the most memorable thing
in what for me was a wondrous journey. All across the Old World we had
come, almost from the very farthest corner of the Old World, a wonderful
journey not to be lightly undertaken nor soon forgotten. And yet as I
went on board that ship I felt what a very little thing it was. I have
been feeling it ever since. A Norwegian who spoke good English was
there, going back to London, and, talking to another man, he mentioned
in a casual manner something about the English contingent that had
landed on the Continent.
It startled me. Not in my lifetime, nor in the lifetime of my father,
indeed I think my grandfathers must have been very little boys when the
last English troops landed in France.
“English troops!” I cried in astonishment.
The Norwegian turned to me, smiling.
“Yes,” he said. “But of course they are only evidence of good will.
Their use is negligible!”
And I agreed. I actually agreed. Britain's rôle, it seemed to me, was on
the sea!
And in four years I have seen Britain grow into a mighty military power.
I have seen the men of my own people come crowding across the ocean to
help the Motherland; I have seen my sister's young son pleased to be a
soldier in that army, just one of the proud and humble crowd that go to
uphold Britain's might. And all this has grown since I stood there at
the head of the Norwegian fiord with the western sun sparkling on the
little wavelets and heard a friendly foreigner talk about the little
army that was “negligible.”
I was tired. I envied those who could work and exert themselves, but I
could do nothing. If the future of the nation had depended on me I could
have done nothing. I was coming back to strenuous times and I longed
for rest. I wanted a house of my own; I wanted a seat in the garden; I
wanted to see the flowers grow, to listen to the birds singing in the
trees. All that our men are fighting for to keep sacred and safe, I
longed for.
And I have had it, thanks to those fighting men who have sacrificed
themselves for me, I have had it. It is good to sit in the garden
where the faithful little friend I shall never forget has his last
resting-place; it is good to see the roses grow, to listen to the lark
and the cuckoo and the thrush; but there is something in our race that
cannot keep still for long, the something, I suppose, that sent my
grandfather to the sea, my father to Australia, and scattered his sons
and daughters all over the world. I had a letter from a soldier brother
the other day. The war holds him, of course, but nevertheless he wrote,
quoting:
“Salt with desire of travel
Are my lips; and the wind's wild singing
Lifts my heart to the ocean
And the sight of the great ships swinging.”
And my heart echoed: “And I too! And I too!”
End of Project Gutenberg's A Broken Journey, Illustrated, by Mary Gaunt