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Of the three galliots out at anchor in the channel yesterday, only one is left ... I took my turn with the breakers this morning and walked to Wangeroog, whose village I found half lost in sand drifts, which are planted with tufts of marram-grass in mathematical rows, to give stability and prevent a catastrophe like that at Pompeii. A friendly grocer told me all there is to know, which is little.
Half an hour later I was on board a fishing-smack, bound for Wangeroog, one of the Frisian Islands, off the coast. At that place I remained in safety for a month, then got away to Amsterdam, and from there to Java. Then for the next eight-and-twenty years, down to this very moment, I have been a wanderer on the face of the earth.
'All went well till we were off Wangeroog, the last of the islands here and then it began to blow really hard. Not that that mattered in the least. I knew my course, had read up my tides, and, thick as the weather was, I had no doubt of being able to pick up the lightship. No change of plan was possible now.
The distance is 240 sea-miles, west by south roughly, from Borkum Island, and 280 from Wangeroog. The time estimated for transit after the flotillas had been assembled outside the islands is from thirty to thirty-four hours. Embarkation is the next topic. This could and must be effected in one tide.
I remembered conversations with the natives in the inn, scraps of the post-master's pompous loquacity, talks of growing trade, of bricks and grain passing from the interior to the islands: from another source was it the grocer of Wangeroog? of expansion of business in the islands themselves as bathing resorts; from another source again von Brüning himself, surely of Dollmann's personal activity in the development of the islands.
Apparently at Wangeroog, but possibly in the estuaries, where we had not fired a shot at duck. Perhaps he knew even more Dollmann's treachery, Davies's escape, and our subsequent movements we could not tell. On the other hand, exploration was known to be a fad of Davies's, and in September he had made no secret of it.
During this period, also, Heligoland, the island handed over by Britain in 1890 in exchange for certain East African rights, became the key and center of the whole German coast defense system against England. Cuxhaven, Borkum, Emden, Wilhelmshaven with twice as many Dreadnought docks as Portsmouth Wangeroog, Bremerhaven, Geestemunde, etc., were magnificently fortified and guarded.
The naked spots of the two islands are hideous in their sterility: melancholy bits of wreck-wood their only relief, save for one or two grotesque beacons, and, most bizarre of all, a great church-tower, standing actually in the water, on the north side of Wangeroog, a striking witness to the encroachment of the sea.
Now, if you really wish for sport, I could help you. I could get you a trustworthy 'Oh, it's too good of you, stammered Davies, in a more unhappy accent than usual. 'We can easily find one for ourselves. A man at Wangeroog offered 'Oh, did he? interrupted von Brüning, laughing. 'I'm not surprised. You don't know the Frieslanders. A stranger is a poacher.
'They're excellent folk, he said, 'but they're born with predatory instincts. Their fathers made their living out of wrecks on this coast, and the children inherit a weakness for plunder. When Wangeroog lighthouse was built they petitioned the Government for compensation, in perfect good faith.
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