This is the true inside story of the invasion of England in 1911 by the
Germans, and why it failed. I got my data from Baron von Gottlieb, at
the time military attaché of the German Government with the Russian
army in the second Russian-Japanese War, when Russia drove Japan out of
Manchuria, and reduced her to a third-rate power. He told me of his
part in the invasion as we sat, after the bombardment of Tokio, on the
ramparts of the Emperor's palace, watching the walls of the paper houses
below us glowing and smoking like the ashes of a prairie fire.
Two years before, at the time of the invasion, von Gottlieb had been
Carl Schultz, the head-waiter at the East Cliff Hotel at Cromer, and a
spy.
The other end of the story came to me through Lester Ford, the London
correspondent of the New York Republic. They gave me permission to tell
it in any fashion I pleased, and it is here set down for the first time.
In telling the story, my conscience is not in the least disturbed, for I
have yet to find any one who will believe it.
What led directly to the invasion was that some week-end guest of
the East Cliff Hotel left a copy of “The Riddle of the Sands” in
the coffee-room, where von Gottlieb found it; and the fact that Ford
attended the Shakespeare Ball. Had neither of these events taken place,
the German flag might now be flying over Buckingham Palace. And, then
again, it might not.
As every German knows, “The Riddle of the Sands” is a novel written by a
very clever Englishman in which is disclosed a plan for the invasion
of his country. According to this plan an army of infantry was to
be embarked in lighters, towed by shallow-draft, sea-going tugs, and
despatched simultaneously from the seven rivers that form the Frisian
Isles. From there they were to be convoyed by battle-ships two hundred
and forty miles through the North Sea, and thrown upon the coast of
Norfolk somewhere between the Wash and Mundesley. The fact that this
coast is low-lying and bordered by sand flats which at low water are
dry, that England maintains no North Sea squadron, and that her nearest
naval base is at Chatham, seem to point to it as the spot best adapted
for such a raid.
What von Gottlieb thought was evidenced by the fact that as soon as he
read the book he mailed it to the German Ambassador in London, and
under separate cover sent him a letter. In this he said: “I suggest your
Excellency bring this book to the notice of a certain royal personage,
and of the Strategy Board. General Bolivar said, 'When you want arms,
take them from the enemy.' Does not this also follow when you want
ideas?”
What the Strategy Board thought of the plan is a matter of history. This
was in 1910. A year later, during the coronation week, Lester Ford
went to Clarkson's to rent a monk's robe in which to appear at the
Shakespeare Ball, and while the assistant departed in search of the
robe, Ford was left alone in a small room hung with full-length mirrors
and shelves, and packed with the uniforms that Clarkson rents for Covent
Garden balls and amateur theatricals. While waiting, Ford gratified a
long, secretly cherished desire to behold himself as a military man, by
trying on all the uniforms on the lower shelves; and as a result, when
the assistant returned, instead of finding a young American in English
clothes and a high hat, he was confronted by a German officer in a
spiked helmet fighting a duel with himself in the mirror. The
assistant retreated precipitately, and Ford, conscious that he appeared
ridiculous, tried to turn the tables by saying, “Does a German uniform
always affect a Territorial like that?”
The assistant laughed good-naturedly.
“It did give me quite a turn,” he said. “It's this talk of invasion, I
fancy. But for a fact, sir, if I was a Coast Guard, and you came along
the beach dressed like that, I'd take a shot at you, just on the chance,
anyway.”
“And, quite right, too!” said Ford.
He was wondering when the invasion did come whether he would stick at
his post in London and dutifully forward the news to his paper, or play
truant and as a war correspondent watch the news in the making. So the
words of Mr. Clarkson's assistant did not sink in. But a few weeks later
young Major Bellew recalled them. Bellew was giving a dinner on the
terrace of the Savoy Restaurant. His guests were his nephew, young
Herbert, who was only five years younger than his uncle, and Herbert's
friend Birrell, an Irishman, both in their third term at the university.
After five years' service in India, Bellew had spent the last “Eights”
week at Oxford, and was complaining bitterly that since his day the
undergraduate had deteriorated. He had found him serious, given to
study, far too well behaved. Instead of Jorrocks, he read Galsworthy;
instead of “wines” he found pleasure in debating clubs where he
discussed socialism. Ragging, practical jokes, ingenious hoaxes,
that once were wont to set England in a roar, were a lost art. His
undergraduate guests combated these charges fiercely. His criticisms
they declared unjust and without intelligence.
“You're talking rot!” said his dutiful nephew. “Take Phil here, for
example. I've roomed with him three years and I can testify that he has
never opened a book. He never heard of Galsworthy until you spoke of
him. And you can see for yourself his table manners are quite as bad as
yours!”
“Worse!” assented Birrell loyally.
“And as for ragging! What rags, in your day, were as good as ours;
as the Carrie Nation rag, for instance, when five hundred people sat
through a temperance lecture and never guessed they were listening to a
man from Balliol?”
“And the Abyssinian Ambassador rag!” cried Herbert. “What price that?
When the DREADNOUGHT manned the yards for him and gave him seventeen
guns. That was an Oxford rag, and carried through by Oxford men. The
country hasn't stopped laughing yet. You give us a rag!” challenged
Herbert. “Make it as hard as you like; something risky, something that
will make the country sit up, something that will send us all to jail,
and Phil and I will put it through whether it takes one man or a dozen.
Go on,” he persisted, “And I bet we can get fifty volunteers right here
in town and all of them undergraduates.”
“Give you the idea, yes!” mocked Bellew, trying to gain time. “That's
just what I say. You boys to-day are so dull. You lack initiative. It's
the idea that counts. Anybody can do the acting. That's just amateur
theatricals!”
“Is it!” snorted Herbert. “If you want to know what stage fright is,
just go on board a British battle-ship with your face covered with burnt
cork and insist on being treated like an ambassador. You'll find it's a
little different from a first night with the Simla Thespians!”
Ford had no part in the debate. He had been smoking comfortably and
with well-timed nods, impartially encouraging each disputant. But now
he suddenly laid his cigar upon his plate, and, after glancing quickly
about him, leaned eagerly forward. They were at the corner table of
the terrace, and, as it was now past nine o'clock, the other diners had
departed to the theatres and they were quite alone. Below them, outside
the open windows, were the trees of the embankment, and beyond, the
Thames, blocked to the west by the great shadows of the Houses of
Parliament, lit only by the flame in the tower that showed the Lower
House was still sitting.
“I'LL give you an idea for a rag,” whispered Ford. “One that is risky,
that will make the country sit up, that ought to land you in Jail? Have
you read 'The Riddle of the Sands'?”
Bellew and Herbert nodded; Birrell made no sign.
“Don't mind him,” exclaimed Herbert impatiently. “HE never reads
anything! Go on!”
“It's the book most talked about,” explained Ford. “And what else is
most talked about?” He answered his own question. “The landing of the
Germans in Morocco and the chance of war. Now, I ask you, with that book
in everybody's mind, and the war scare in everybody's mind, what would
happen if German soldiers appeared to-night on the Norfolk coast just
where the book says they will appear? Not one soldier, but dozens of
soldiers; not in one place, but in twenty places?”
“What would happen?” roared Major Bellew loyally. “The Boy Scouts would
fall out of bed and kick them into the sea!”
“Shut up!” snapped his nephew irreverently. He shook Ford by the arm.
“How?” he demanded breathlessly. “How are we to do it? It would take
hundreds of men.”
“Two men,” corrected Ford, “And a third man to drive the car. I
thought it out one day at Clarkson's when I came across a lot of German
uniforms. I thought of it as a newspaper story, as a trick to find out
how prepared you people are to meet invasion. And when you said just now
that you wanted a chance to go to jail--”
“What's your plan?” interrupted Birrell.
“We would start just before dawn--” began Ford.
“We?” demanded Herbert. “Are you in this?”
“Am I in it?” cried Ford indignantly. “It's my own private invasion! I'm
letting you boys in on the ground floor. If I don't go, there won t be
any invasion!”
The two pink-cheeked youths glanced at each other inquiringly and then
nodded.
“We accept your services, sir,” said Birrell gravely. “What's your
plan?”
In astonishment Major Bellew glanced from one to the other and then
slapped the table with his open palm. His voice shook with righteous
indignation.
“Of all the preposterous, outrageous--Are you mad?” he demanded. “Do you
suppose for one minute I will allow--”
His nephew shrugged his shoulders and, rising, pushed back his chair.
“Oh, you go to the devil!” he exclaimed cheerfully. “Come on, Ford,” he
said. “We'll find some place where uncle can't hear us.”
Two days later a touring car carrying three young men, in the twenty-one
miles between Wells and Cromer, broke down eleven times. Each time this
misfortune befell them one young man scattered tools in the road and
on his knees hammered ostentatiously at the tin hood; and the other two
occupants of the car sauntered to the beach. There they chucked pebbles
at the waves and then slowly retraced their steps. Each time the route
by which they returned was different from the one by which they had set
forth. Sometimes they followed the beaten path down the cliff or, as it
chanced to be, across the marshes; sometimes they slid down the face of
the cliff; sometimes they lost themselves behind the hedges and in the
lanes of the villages. But when they again reached the car the procedure
of each was alike--each produced a pencil and on the face of his “Half
Inch” road map traced strange, fantastic signs.
At lunch-time they stopped at the East Cliff Hotel at Cromer and made
numerous and trivial inquiries about the Cromer golf links. They had
come, they volunteered, from Ely for a day of sea-bathing and golf; they
were returning after dinner. The head-waiter of the East Cliff
Hotel gave them the information they desired. He was an intelligent
head-waiter, young, and of pleasant, not to say distinguished, bearing.
In a frock coat he might easily have been mistaken for something even
more important than a head-waiter--for a German riding-master, a leader
of a Hungarian band, a manager of a Ritz hotel. But he was not above his
station. He even assisted the porter in carrying the coats and golf
bags of the gentlemen from the car to the coffee-room where, with the
intuition of the homing pigeon, the three strangers had, unaided, found
their way. As Carl Schultz followed, carrying the dust-coats, a road map
fell from the pocket of one of them to the floor. Carl Schultz picked
it up, and was about to replace it, when his eyes were held by notes
scrawled roughly in pencil. With an expression that no longer was that
of a head-waiter, Carl cast one swift glance about him and then slipped
into the empty coat-room and locked the door. Five minutes later, with
a smile that played uneasily over a face grown gray with anxiety, Carl
presented the map to the tallest of the three strangers. It was open so
that the pencil marks were most obvious. By his accent it was evident
the tallest of the three strangers was an American.
“What the devil!” he protested; “which of you boys has been playing hob
with my map?”
For just an instant the two pink-cheeked ones regarded him with
disfavor; until, for just an instant, his eyebrows rose and, with a
glance, he signified the waiter.
“Oh, that!” exclaimed the younger one. “The Automobile Club asked us
to mark down petrol stations. Those marks mean that's where you can buy
petrol.”
The head-waiter breathed deeply. With an assured and happy countenance,
he departed and, for the two-hundredth time that day, looked from the
windows of the dining-room out over the tumbling breakers to the gray
stretch of sea. As though fearful that his face would expose his secret,
he glanced carefully about him and then, assured he was alone, leaned
eagerly forward, scanning the empty, tossing waters.
In his mind's eye he beheld rolling tug-boats straining against long
lines of scows, against the dead weight of field-guns, against the pull
of thousands of motionless, silent figures, each in khaki, each in a
black leather helmet, each with one hundred and fifty rounds.
In his own language Carl Schultz reproved himself.
“Patience,” he muttered; “patience! By ten to-night all will be dark.
There will be no stars. There will be no moon. The very heavens fight
for us, and by sunrise our outposts will be twenty miles inland!”
At lunch-time Carl Schultz carefully, obsequiously waited upon the
three strangers. He gave them their choice of soup, thick or clear,
of gooseberry pie or Half-Pay pudding. He accepted their shillings
gratefully, and when they departed for the links he bowed them on their
way. And as their car turned up Jetty Street, for one instant, he
again allowed his eyes to sweep the dull gray ocean. Brown-sailed
fishing-boats were beating in toward Cromer. On the horizon line a
Norwegian tramp was drawing a lengthening scarf of smoke. Save for these
the sea was empty.
By gracious permission of the manageress Carl had obtained an afternoon
off, and, changing his coat, he mounted his bicycle and set forth toward
Overstrand. On his way he nodded to the local constable, to the postman
on his rounds, to the driver of the char à banc. He had been a year in
Cromer and was well known and well liked.
Three miles from Cromer, at the top of the highest hill in Overstrand,
the chimneys of a house showed above a thick tangle of fir-trees.
Between the trees and the road rose a wall, high, compact, forbidding.
Carl opened the gate in the wall and pushed his bicycle up a winding
path hemmed in by bushes. At the sound of his feet on the gravel the
bushes new apart, and a man sprang into the walk and confronted him.
But, at sight of the head-waiter, the legs of the man became rigid, his
heels clicked together, his hand went sharply to his visor.
Behind the house, surrounded on every side by trees, was a tiny lawn.
In the centre of the lawn, where once had been a tennis court, there
now stood a slim mast. From this mast dangled tiny wires that ran to a
kitchen table. On the table, its brass work shining in the sun, was a
new and perfectly good wireless outfit, and beside it, with his hand on
the key, was a heavily built, heavily bearded German. In his turn, Carl
drew his legs together, his heels clicked, his hand stuck to his visor.
“I have been in constant communication,” said the man with the beard.
“They will be here just before the dawn. Return to Cromer and openly
from the post-office telegraph your cousin in London: 'Will meet you
to-morrow at the Crystal Palace.' On receipt of that, in the last
edition of all of this afternoon's papers, he will insert the final
advertisement. Thirty thousand of our own people will read it. They will
know the moment has come!”
As Carl coasted back to Cromer he flashed past many pretty gardens
where, upon the lawns, men in flannels were busy at tennis or, with
pretty ladies, deeply occupied in drinking tea. Carl smiled grimly. High
above him on the sky-line of the cliff he saw the three strangers he had
served at luncheon. They were driving before them three innocuous golf
balls.
“A nation of wasters,” muttered the German, “sleeping at their posts.
They are fiddling while England falls!”
Mr. Shutliffe, of Stiffkey, had led his cow in from the marsh, and was
about to close the cow-barn door, when three soldiers appeared suddenly
around the wall of the village church. They ran directly toward him. It
was nine o'clock, but the twilight still held. The uniforms the men wore
were unfamiliar, but in his day Mr. Shutliffe had seen many uniforms,
and to him all uniforms looked alike. The tallest soldier snapped at Mr.
Shutliffe fiercely in a strange tongue.
“Du bist gefangen!” he announced. “Das Dorf ist besetzt. Wo sind unsere
Leute?” he demanded.
“You'll 'ave to excuse me, sir,” said Mr. Shutliffe, “but I am a trifle
'ard of 'earing.”
The soldier addressed him in English.
“What is the name of this village?” he demanded.
Mr. Shuttiffe, having lived in the village upward of eighty years,
recalled its name with difficulty.
“Have you seen any of our people?”
With another painful effort of memory Mr. Shutliffe shook his head.
“Go indoors!” commanded the soldier, “And put out all lights, and remain
indoors. We have taken this village. We are Germans. You are a prisoner!
Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir, thank'ee, sir, kindly,” stammered Mr. Shutliffe. “May I lock
in the pigs first, sir?”
One of the soldiers coughed explosively, and ran away, and the two
others trotted after him. When they looked back, Mr. Shutliffe was still
standing uncertainly in the dusk, mildly concerned as to whether he
should lock up the pigs or obey the German gentleman.
The three soldiers halted behind the church wall.
“That was a fine start!” mocked Herbert. “Of course, you had to pick out
the Village Idiot. If they are all going to take it like that, we had
better pack up and go home.”
“The village inn is still open,” said Ford. “We'll close It.”
They entered with fixed bayonets and dropped the butts of their rifles
on the sanded floor. A man in gaiters choked over his ale and two
fishermen removed their clay pipes and stared. The bar-maid alone arose
to the occasion.
“Now, then,” she exclaimed briskly, “What way is that to come tumbling
into a respectable place? None of your tea-garden tricks in here, young
fellow, my lad, or--”
The tallest of the three intruders, in deep guttural accents,
interrupted her sharply.
“We are Germans!” he declared. “This village is captured. You are
prisoners of war. Those lights you will out put, and yourselves lock in.
If you into the street go, we will shoot!”
He gave a command in a strange language; so strange, indeed, that
the soldiers with him failed to entirely grasp his meaning, and one
shouldered his rifle, while the other brought his politely to a salute.
“You ass!” muttered the tall German. “Get out!”
As they charged into the street, they heard behind them a wild feminine
shriek, then a crash of pottery and glass, then silence, and an instant
later the Ship Inn was buried in darkness.
“That will hold Stiffkey for a while!” said Ford. “Now, back to the
car.”
But between them and the car loomed suddenly a tall and impressive
figure. His helmet and his measured tread upon the deserted
cobble-stones proclaimed his calling.
“The constable!” whispered Herbert. “He must see us, but he mustn't
speak to us.”
For a moment the three men showed themselves in the middle of the
street, and then, as though at sight of the policeman they had taken
alarm, disappeared through an opening between two houses. Five minutes
later a motor-car, with its canvas top concealing its occupants, rode
slowly into Stiffkey's main street and halted before the constable. The
driver of the car wore a leather skull-cap and goggles. From his neck to
his heels he was covered by a raincoat.
“Mr. Policeman,” he began; “when I turned in here three soldiers stepped
in front of my car and pointed rifles at me. Then they ran off toward
the beach. What's the idea--manoeuvres? Because, they've no right to--”
“Yes, sir,” the policeman assured him promptly; “I saw them. It's
manoeuvres, sir. Territorials.”
“They didn't look like Territorials,” objected the chauffeur. “They
looked like Germans.”
Protected by the deepening dusk, the constable made no effort to conceal
a grin.
“Just Territorials, sir,” he protested soothingly; “skylarking maybe,
but meaning no harm. Still, I'll have a look round, and warn 'em.”
A voice from beneath the canvas broke in angrily:
“I tell you, they were Germans. It's either a silly joke, or it's
serious, and you ought to report it. It's your duty to warn the Coast
Guard.”
The constable considered deeply.
“I wouldn't take it on myself to wake the Coast Guard,” he protested;
“not at this time of the night. But if any Germans' been annoying you,
gentlemen, and you wish to lodge a complaint against them, you give me
your cards--”
“Ye gods!” cried the man in the rear of the car. “Go on!” he commanded.
As the car sped out of Stiffkey, Herbert exclaimed with disgust:
“What's the use!” he protested. “You couldn't wake these people with
dynamite! I vote we chuck it and go home.”
“They little know of England who only Stiffkey know,” chanted the
chauffeur reprovingly. “Why, we haven't begun yet. Wait till we meet a
live wire!”
Two miles farther along the road to Cromer, young Bradshaw, the
job-master's son at Blakeney, was leading his bicycle up the hill. Ahead
of him something heavy flopped from the bank into the road--and in the
light of his acetylene lamp he saw a soldier. The soldier dodged across
the road and scrambled through the hedge on the bank opposite. He was
followed by another soldier, and then by a third. The last man halted.
“Put out that light,” he commanded. “Go to your home and tell no one
what you have seen. If you attempt to give an alarm you will be shot.
Our sentries are placed every fifty yards along this road.”
The soldier disappeared from in front of the ray of light and followed
his comrades, and an instant later young Bradshaw heard them sliding
over the cliff's edge and the pebbles clattering to the beach below.
Young Bradshaw stood quite still. In his heart was much fear--fear of
laughter, of ridicule, of failure. But of no other kind of fear. Softly,
silently he turned his bicycle so that it faced down the long hill he
had just climbed. Then he snapped off the light. He had been reliably
informed that in ambush at every fifty yards along the road to Blakeney,
sentries were waiting to fire on him. And he proposed to run the
gauntlet. He saw that it was for this moment that, first as a volunteer
and later as a Territorial, he had drilled in the town hall, practiced
on the rifle range, and in mixed manoeuvres slept in six inches of mud.
As he threw his leg across his bicycle, Herbert, from the motor-car
farther up the hill, fired two shots over his head. These, he explained
to Ford, were intended to give “verisimilitude to an otherwise bald
and unconvincing narrative.” And the sighing of the bullets gave young
Bradshaw exactly what he wanted--the assurance that he was not the
victim of a practical joke. He threw his weight forward and, lifting his
feet, coasted downhill at forty miles an hour into the main street of
Blakeney. Ten minutes later, when the car followed, a mob of men so
completely blocked the water-front that Ford was forced to stop. His
head-lights illuminated hundreds of faces, anxious, sceptical, eager.
A gentleman with a white mustache and a look of a retired army officer
pushed his way toward Ford, the crowd making room for him, and then
closing in his wake.
“Have you seen any--any soldiers?” he demanded.
“German soldiers!” Ford answered. “They tried to catch us, but when I
saw who they were, I ran through them to warn you. They fired and--”
“How many--and where?”
“A half-company at Stiffkey and a half-mile farther on a regiment. We
didn't know then they were Germans, not until they stopped us. You'd
better telephone the garrison, and--”
“Thank you!” snapped the elderly gentleman. “I happen to be in command
of this district. What are your names?”
Ford pushed the car forward, parting the crowd.
“I've no time for that!” he called. “We've got to warn every coast town
in Norfolk. You take my tip and get London on the long distance!”
As they ran through the night Ford spoke over his shoulder.
“We've got them guessing,” he said. “Now, what we want is a live wire,
some one with imagination, some one with authority who will wake the
countryside.”
“Looks ahead there,” said Birrell, “as though it hadn't gone to bed.”
Before them, as on a Mafeking night, every window in Cley shone with
lights. In the main street were fishermen, shopkeepers, “trippers”
in flannels, summer residents. The women had turned out as though to
witness a display of fireworks. Girls were clinging to the arms of their
escorts, shivering in delighted terror. The proprietor of the Red Lion
sprang in front of the car and waved his arms.
“What's this tale about Germans?” he demanded jocularly.
“You can see their lights from the beach,” said Ford. “They've landed
two regiments between here and Wells. Stiffkey is taken, and they've cut
all the wires south.”
The proprietor refused to be “had.”
“Let 'em all come!” he mocked.
“All right,” returned Ford. “Let 'em come, but don't take it lying down!
Get those women off the streets, and go down to the beach, and drive the
Germans back! Gangway,” he shouted, and the car shot forward. “We warned
you,” he called, “And it's up to you to--”
His words were lost in the distance. But behind him a man's voice rose
with a roar like a rocket and was met with a savage, deep-throated
cheer.
Outside the village Ford brought the car to a halt and swung in his
seat.
“This thing is going to fail!” he cried petulantly. “They don't believe
us. We've got to show ourselves--many times--in a dozen places.”
“The British mind moves slowly,” said Birrell, the Irishman. “Now, if
this had happened in my native land--”
He was interrupted by the screech of a siren, and a demon car that
spurned the road, that splattered them with pebbles, tore past
and disappeared in the darkness. As it fled down the lane of their
head-lights, they saw that men in khaki clung to its sides, were packed
in its tonneau, were swaying from its running boards. Before they could
find their voices a motor cycle, driven as though the angel of death
were at the wheel, shaved their mud-guard and, in its turn, vanished
into the night.
“Things are looking up!” said Ford. “Where is our next stop? As I said
before, what we want is a live one.”
Herbert pressed his electric torch against his road map.
“We are next billed to appear,” he said, “about a quarter of a mile from
here, at the signal-tower of the Great Eastern Railroad, where we visit
the night telegraph operator and give him the surprise party of his
life.”
The three men had mounted the steps of the signal-tower so quietly that,
when the operator heard them, they already surrounded him. He saw
three German soldiers with fierce upturned mustaches, with flat, squat
helmets, with long brown rifles. They saw an anæmic, pale-faced youth
without a coat or collar, for the night was warm, who sank back limply
in his chair and gazed speechless with wide-bulging eyes.
In harsh, guttural tones Ford addressed him. “You are a prisoner,” he
said. “We take over this office in the name of the German Emperor. Get
out!”
As though instinctively seeking his only weapon of defence, the hand of
the boy operator moved across the table to the key of his instrument.
Ford flung his rifle upon it.
“No, you don't!” he growled. “Get out!”
With eyes still bulging, the boy lifted himself into a sitting posture.
“My pay--my month's pay?” he stammered. “Can I take It?”
The expression on the face of the conqueror relaxed.
“Take it and get out,” Ford commanded.
With eyes still fixed in fascinated terror upon the invader, the boy
pulled open the drawer of the table before him and fumbled with the
papers inside.
“Quick!” cried Ford.
The boy was very quick. His hand leaped from the drawer like a snake,
and Ford found himself looking into a revolver of the largest calibre
issued by a civilized people. Birrell fell upon the boy's shoulders,
Herbert twisted the gun from his fingers and hurled it through the
window, and almost as quickly hurled himself down the steps of the
tower. Birrell leaped after him. Ford remained only long enough to
shout: “Don't touch that instrument! If you attempt to send a message
through, we will shoot. We go to cut the wires!”
For a minute, the boy in the tower sat rigid, his ears strained, his
heart beating in sharp, suffocating stabs. Then, with his left arm
raised to guard his face, he sank to his knees and, leaning forward
across the table, inviting as he believed his death, he opened the
circuit and through the night flashed out a warning to his people.
When they had taken their places in the car, Herbert touched Ford on the
shoulder.
“Your last remark,” he said, “was that what we wanted was a live one.”
“Don't mention it!” said Ford. “He jammed that gun half down my throat.
I can taste it still. Where do we go from here?”
“According to the route we mapped out this afternoon,” said Herbert, “We
are now scheduled to give exhibitions at the coast towns of Salthouse
and Weybourne, but--”
“Not with me!” exclaimed Birrell fiercely. “Those towns have been tipped
off by now by Blakeney and Cley, and the Boy Scouts would club us to
death. I vote we take the back roads to Morston, and drop in on a lonely
Coast Guard. If a Coast Guard sees us, the authorities will have to
believe him, and they'll call out the navy.”
Herbert consulted his map.
“There is a Coast Guard,” he said, “stationed just the other side of
Morston. And,” he added fervently, “let us hope he's lonely.”
They lost their way in the back roads, and when they again reached the
coast an hour had passed. It was now quite dark. There were no stars,
nor moon, but after they had left the car in a side lane and had stepped
out upon the cliff, they saw for miles along the coast great beacon
fires burning fiercely.
Herbert came to an abrupt halt.
“Since seeing those fires,” he explained, “I feel a strange reluctance
about showing myself in this uniform to a Coast Guard.”
“Coast Guards don't shoot!” mocked Birrell. “They only look at the
clouds through a telescope. Three Germans with rifles ought to be able
to frighten one Coast Guard with a telescope.”
The whitewashed cabin of the Coast Guard was perched on the edge of the
cliff. Behind it the downs ran back to meet the road. The door of the
cabin was open and from it a shaft of light cut across a tiny garden and
showed the white fence and the walk of shells.
“We must pass in single file in front of that light,” whispered Ford,
“And then, after we are sure he has seen us, we must run like the
devil!”
“I'm on in that last scene,” growled Herbert.
“Only,” repeated Ford with emphasis, “We must be sure he has seen us.”
Not twenty feet from them came a bursting roar, a flash, many roars,
many flashes, many bullets.
“He's seen us!” yelled Birrell.
After the light from his open door had shown him one German soldier
fully armed, the Coast Guard had seen nothing further. But judging from
the shrieks of terror and the sounds of falling bodies that followed
his first shot, he was convinced he was hemmed in by an army, and he
proceeded to sell his life dearly. Clip after clip of cartridges he
emptied into the night, now to the front, now to the rear, now out to
sea, now at his own shadow in the lamp-light. To the people a quarter of
a mile away at Morston it sounded like a battle.
After running half a mile, Ford, bruised and breathless, fell at full
length on the grass beside the car. Near it, tearing from his person the
last vestiges of a German uniform, he found Birrell. He also was puffing
painfully.
“What happened to Herbert?” panted Ford.
“I don't know,” gasped Birrell, “When I saw him last he was diving over
the cliff into the sea. How many times did you die?”
“About twenty!” groaned the American, “And, besides being dead, I am
severely wounded. Every time he fired, I fell on my face, and each time
I hit a rock!”
A scarecrow of a figure appeared suddenly in the rays of the
head-lights. It was Herbert, scratched, bleeding, dripping with water,
and clad simply in a shirt and trousers. He dragged out his kit bag and
fell into his golf clothes.
“Anybody who wants a perfectly good German uniform,” he cried, “can have
mine. I left it in the first row of breakers. It didn't fit me, anyway.”
The other two uniforms were hidden in the seat of the car. The rifles
and helmets, to lend color to the invasion, were dropped in the open
road, and five minutes later three gentlemen in inconspicuous Harris
tweeds, and with golf clubs protruding from every part of their car,
turned into the shore road to Cromer. What they saw brought swift terror
to their guilty souls and the car to an abrupt halt. Before them was a
regiment of regulars advancing in column of fours, at the “double.” An
officer sprang to the front of the car and seated himself beside Ford.
“I'll have to commandeer this,” he said. “Run back to Cromer. Don't
crush my men, but go like the devil!”
“We heard firing here,” explained the officer at the Coast Guard
station. “The Guard drove them back to the sea. He counted over a dozen.
They made pretty poor practice, for he isn't wounded, but his gravel
walk looks as though some one had drawn a harrow over it. I wonder,”
exclaimed the officer suddenly, “if you are the three gentlemen who
first gave the alarm to Colonel Raglan and then went on to warn the
other coast towns. Because, if you are, he wants your names.”
Ford considered rapidly. If he gave false names and that fact were
discovered, they would be suspected and investigated, and the worst
might happen. So he replied that his friends and himself probably
were the men to whom the officer referred. He explained they had been
returning from Cromer, where they had gone to play golf, when they had
been held up by the Germans.
“You were lucky to escape,” said the officer “And in keeping on to give
warning you were taking chances. If I may say so, we think you behaved
extremely well.”
Ford could not answer. His guilty conscience shamed him into silence.
With his siren shrieking and his horn tooting, he was forcing the car
through lanes of armed men. They packed each side of the road. They were
banked behind the hedges. Their camp-fires blazed from every hill-top.
“Your regiment seems to have turned out to a man!” exclaimed Ford
admiringly.
“MY regiment!” snorted the officer. “You've passed through five
regiments already, and there are as many more in the dark places.
They're everywhere!” he cried jubilantly.
“And I thought they were only where you see the camp-fires,” exclaimed
Ford.
“That's what the Germans think,” said the officer. “It's working like
a clock,” he cried happily. “There hasn't been a hitch. As soon as they
got your warning to Colonel Raglan, they came down to the coast like a
wave, on foot, by trains, by motors, and at nine o'clock the Government
took over all the railroads. The county regiments, regulars, yeomanry,
territorials, have been spread along this shore for thirty miles. Down
in London the Guards started to Dover and Brighton two hours ago. The
Automobile Club in the first hour collected two hundred cars and turned
them over to the Guards in Bird Cage Walk. Cody and Grahame-White and
eight of his air men left Hendon an hour ago to reconnoitre the south
coast. Admiral Beatty has started with the Channel Squadron to head off
the German convoy in the North Sea, and the torpedo destroyers have been
sent to lie outside of Heligoland. We'll get that back by daylight. And
on land every one of the three services is under arms. On this coast
alone before sunrise we'll have one hundred thousand men, and from
Colchester the brigade division of artillery, from Ipswich the R. H.
A.'s with siege-guns, field-guns, quick-firing-guns, all kinds of guns
spread out over every foot of ground from here to Hunstanton. They
thought they'd give us a surprise party. They will never give us another
surprise party!”
On the top of the hill at Overstrand, the headwaiter of the East Cliff
Hotel and the bearded German stood in the garden back of the house with
the forbidding walls. From the road in front came unceasingly the tramp
and shuffle of thousands of marching feet, the rumble of heavy cannon,
the clanking of their chains, the voices of men trained to command
raised in sharp, confident orders. The sky was illuminated by countless
fires. Every window of every cottage and hotel blazed with lights. The
night had been turned into day. The eyes of the two Germans were like
the eyes of those who had passed through an earthquake, of those who
looked upon the burning of San Francisco, upon the destruction of
Messina.
“We were betrayed, general,” whispered the head-waiter.
“We were betrayed, baron,” replied the bearded one.
“But you were in time to warn the flotilla.”
With a sigh, the older man nodded.
“The last message I received over the wireless,” he said, “before I
destroyed it, read, 'Your message understood. We are returning. Our
movements will be explained as manoeuvres. And,” added the general, “The
English, having driven us back, will be willing to officially accept
that explanation. As manoeuvres, this night will go down into history.
Return to the hotel,” he commanded, “And in two months you can rejoin
your regiment.”
On the morning after the invasion the New York Republic published a map
of Great Britain that covered three columns and a wood-cut of Ford that
was spread over five. Beneath it was printed: “Lester Ford, our London
correspondent, captured by the Germans; he escapes and is the first to
warn the English people.”
On the same morning, In an editorial in The Times of London, appeared
this paragraph:
“The Germans were first seen by the Hon. Arthur Herbert, the eldest son
of Lord Cinaris; Mr. Patrick Headford Birrell--both of Balliol College,
Oxford; and Mr. Lester Ford, the correspondent of the New York Republic.
These gentlemen escaped from the landing party that tried to make them
prisoners, and at great risk proceeded in their motor-car over roads
infested by the Germans to all the coast towns of Norfolk, warning the
authorities. Should the war office fail to recognize their services, the
people of Great Britain will prove that they are not ungrateful.”
A week later three young men sat at dinner on the terrace of the Savoy.
“Shall we, or shall we not,” asked Herbert, “tell my uncle that we
three, and we three alone, were the invaders?”
“That's hardly correct,” said Ford, “as we now know there were two
hundred thousand invaders. We were the only three who got ashore.”
“I vote we don't tell him,” said Birrell. “Let him think with everybody
else that the Germans blundered; that an advance party landed too soon
and gave the show away. If we talk,” he argued, “We'll get credit for a
successful hoax. If we keep quiet, everybody will continue to think we
saved England. I'm content to let it go at that.”