Greenmantle by John Buchan (snow like ashes series .txt) 📕

Blenkiron had said you couldn’t cheat the Boche, but you could bluff him. I was going to put up the most monstrous bluff. If the whole countryside was hunting for Richard Hannay, Richard Hannay would walk through as a pal of the hunters. For I remembered the pass Stumm had given me. If that was worth a tinker’s curse it should be good enough to impress a ship’s captain.

Of course there were a thousand risks. They might have heard of me in the village and told the ship’s party the story. For that reason I resolved not to go there but to meet the sailors when they were returning to the boat. Or the captain might have been warned and got the number of my pass, in which case Stumm would have his hands on me pretty soon. Or the captain might be an ignorant fellow who had never seen a Secret Service pass and did not know what it meant, and would refuse me transport by the letter of his instructions. In that case I might wait on another convoy.

I had shaved and made myself a fairly respectable figure before I left the cottage. It was my cue to wait for the men when they left the church, wait on that quarter-mile of straight highway. I judged the captain must be in the party. The village, I was glad to observe, seemed very empty. I have my own notions about the Bavarians as fighting men, but I am bound to say that, judging by my observations, very few of them stayed at home.

That funeral took hours. They must have had to dig the grave, for I waited near the road in a clump of cherry-trees, with my feet in two inches of mud and water, till I felt chilled to the bone. I prayed to God it would not bring back my fever, for I was only one day out of bed. I had very little tobacco left in my pouch, but I stood myself one pipe, and I ate one of the three cakes of chocolate I still carried.

At last, well after midday, I could see the ship’s party returning. They marched two by two and I was thankful to see that they had no villagers with them. I walked to the road, turned up it, and met the vanguard, carrying my head as high as I knew how.

“Where’s your captain?” I asked, and a man jerked his thumb over his shoulder. The others wore thick jerseys and knitted caps, but there was one man at the rear in uniform.

He was a short, broad man with a weather-beaten face and an anxious eye.

“May I have a word with you, Herr Captain?” I said, with what I hoped was a judicious blend of authority and conciliation.

He nodded to his companion, who walked on.

“Yes?” he asked rather impatiently.

I proffered him my pass. Thank Heaven he had seen the kind of thing before, for his face at once took on that curious look which one person in authority always wears when he is confronted with another. He studied it closely and then raised his eyes.

“Well, Sir?” he said. “I observe your credentials. What can I do for you?”

“I take it you are bound for Constantinople?” I asked.

“The boats go as far as Rustchuk,” he replied. “There the stuff is transferred to the railway.”

“And you reach Rustchuk when?”

“In ten days, bar accidents. Let us say twelve to be safe.”

“I want to accompany you,” I said. “In my profession, Herr Captain, it is necessary sometimes to make journeys by other than the common route. That is now my desire. I have the right to call upon some other branch of our country’s service to help me. Hence my request.”

Very plainly he did not like it.

“I must telegraph about it. My instructions are to let no one aboard, not even a man like you. I am sorry, Sir, but I must get authority first before I can fall in with your desire. Besides, my boat is ill-found. You had better wait for the next batch and ask Dreyser to take you. I lost Walter today. He was ill when he came aboard⁠—a disease of the heart⁠—but he would not be persuaded. And last night he died.”

“Was that him you have been burying?” I asked.

“Even so. He was a good man and my wife’s cousin, and now I have no engineer. Only a fool of a boy from Hamburg. I have just come from wiring to my owners for a fresh man, but even if he comes by the quickest train he will scarcely overtake us before Vienna or even Buda.”

I saw light at last.

“We will go together,” I said, “and cancel that wire. For behold, Herr Captain, I am an engineer, and will gladly keep an eye on your boilers till we get to Rustchuk.”

He looked at me doubtfully.

“I am speaking truth,” I said. “Before the war I was an engineer in Damaraland. Mining was my branch, but I had a good general training, and I know enough to run a river-boat. Have no fear. I promise you I will earn my passage.”

His face cleared, and he looked what he was, an honest, good-humoured North German seaman.

“Come then in God’s name,” he cried, “and we will make a bargain. I will let the telegraph sleep. I require authority from the Government to take a passenger, but I need none to engage a new engineer.”

He sent one of the hands back to the village to cancel his wire. In ten minutes I found myself on board, and ten minutes later we were out in midstream and our tows were lumbering into line. Coffee was being made ready in the cabin, and while I waited for it I picked up the captain’s binoculars and scanned the place I had left.

I saw some curious things. On the first road I had struck on leaving the cottage there were men on bicycles moving rapidly. They seemed to wear