Chapter XVI The Bomb-Proof Shelter
Nothing was said in Haddisport concerning the discovery and removal of the secret store of petrol buried in the sand on Alderwick Denes. The reason for the silence was that no one unconnected with the naval base knew anything about the matter.
Any day during the herring season carts may be seen on the denes carrying to and fro the fleets of nets that are spread out to dry on the grass; and if two heavily-laden carts in particular were noticed being drawn along the lower road towards the town, no one was any the wiser as to their contents, since the red-painted tins of petrol which they carried were successfully hidden under cover of herring nets. Mark Redisham and his fellow scouts knew too well the importance of their discovery to say anything about it, even in their homes.
One thing which the members of the Lion Patrol had especially laid to heart from the beginning of the war was the necessity of keeping silence when in the performance of their duties they chanced to come into possession of a naval or a military secret.
They had shown that they could be trusted with information which never came to the knowledge of the ordinary reader of newspapers or of local gossips such as Constable Challis and old Mr. Croucher. Amongst themselves they might indeed talk and compare notes; but only within limits. Mark Redisham, for example, knew many things which he never mentioned to Darby Catchpole, while Darby was similarly silent towards Mark.
“Strictly between ourselves, sir,” said Constable Challis, meeting Mr. Croucher on the esplanade, “I believe young Mark Redisham knows exactly where Sir John Jellicoe’s Grand Fleet is at this moment, and what our submarines are doin’ across there under the very noses of the enemy’s forts. He knows a lot, sir. But you can take it from me, you might as well try to get blood out of a stone as information out of him.”
“It’s the same with young Catchpole,” nodded Mr. Croucher significantly. “Time after time I’ve asked that boy to tell me in confidence things which I’m certain he knows—things about our ships and their mysterious movements, things about our awful disasters at sea which are being systematically hidden from us; but it’s useless, Challis—useless, and we are kept in the dark; always kept in the dark.”
“Talking about bein’ in the dark, sir,” resumed the constable, “have you seen the trench as the Scouts have been makin’ in Mrs. Daplin-Gennery’s kitchen-garden? You ought to. It’s a room that you could live in, with four feet of sand piled on the roof as a refuge from bombs and shells. It’s so comfortable and safe, sir, that Mrs. Daplin-Gennery threatens to invite her friends to take afternoon tea with her in it. And there’s what they calls a sap trench—a tunnel leadin’ from it right up to the kitchen door, so that the household can escape into it on the first alarm, and be as safe as a rabbit in its burrow.”
“Indeed?” said Mr. Croucher. “But mightn’t it fall in, as mine did?”
“Not a bit of it, sir,” declared Chain’s. “You could mount a 6-inch gun on top of it. Those Sea Scouts knew what they was doin’ when they planned and built it. It’s not an ordinary dug-out, sir, like yours and the vicar’s. First of all they quarried a deep pit and shifted the bicycle shed into it. They packed the shed round with sandbags, roofed it with cross planks, covered it with brushwood, and then piled a mound of sea sand on top. Even supposin’ a Zeppelin bomb was to drop on it, there’d be no explosion. If a shell from an enemy ship was to smash the house, the people in the underground shed would be safe, bein’ too far off for the chimneys and bricks and things to fall on them. Of course, it can never be really needed. The Germans’ll never come here.”
“Don’t be too sure about that, Challis,” Mr. Croucher retorted warmly. “Mrs. Daplin-Gennery and her household may have to go into their refuge any day, any night. As I have argued all along, if the enemy’s battleships break through, we are doomed. We can’t resist them, either on sea or land, let alone the air. We are in constant danger. Look at what they’re doing on the Continent! They’ve already occupied Brussels, you know. Antwerp has fallen, too. They will take the Channel ports next—Ostend, Calais, and Boulogne—and then, Challis, it will be the invasion of England, and they will serve us just as they have served the poor Belgians—perhaps worse.”
Constable Challis shook his head and smiled compassionately upon the timid, old gentleman.
“You may take it from me, sir,” he averred, “the Germans will never get to Calais. The Allies won’t let ’em. And try how they will, they’ll always be brought up against the British Navy. Not but what Mrs. Daplin-Gennery is quite right to have that trench made. It comforts her and her servants to know that it’s there.”
“They may have need for it much sooner than you think, Constable,” declared Mr. Croucher, turning in at Mrs. Daplin-Gennery’s gateway.
In the garden he encountered Seth Newruck.
“Is Redisham in the trench?” he inquired. “I have come to have a look at it.”
“There is nobody there now, sir,” Seth answered. “Mark Redisham is out at sea with the mine-sweepers. I’ve just been making things a bit tidy. I’m sorry I haven’t time to stay, sir; but I’ve got to go down to the naval base to see our Scoutmaster. Mrs. Daplin-Gennery has gone into the town in her motor-car; but I daresay if you ask the cook she will show you into the trench, or,” he reflected that Mr. Croucher was lame, “you could get into it yourself easily enough if you’re careful about how you go down the ladder.”
Mr. Croucher looked somewhat disappointed. He had resolved to ask Mark Redisham to dig a similar refuge in his garden at Rose Cottage.
“Gone out mine-sweeping, has he?” he ruminated. “When will he be back?”
“I don’t know, sir. Perhaps in a week; perhaps in a day or two.”
“That reminds me,” pursued Mr. Croucher, detaining Seth with a grip on the boy’s shoulder. “Is it true that Redisham has invented a new contrivance for picking up German mines, and that the Admiralty have adopted it?”
“They’re always making improvements of one sort or another,” Seth answered evasively.
“Yes, I suppose so. But I understand that this invention of Redisham’s is not only an improvement, but an entirely new idea, on the principle of a torpedo net, and that it’s the means of saving dozens of valuable lives. I have noticed some of the mine-sweeping boats going out with curious gear at their prows. How is it worked?”
Seth Newruck was not quite sure whether or not he was expected to regard the matter as a naval secret.
“How is it worked, eh?” repeated Mr. Croucher. “I am sure you know.”
“I’m afraid it would take too long to explain, sir,” Seth answered guardedly. “You should go down to the harbour and get one of the naval officers to show you. But there’s the cook at the kitchen door, sir. I must be off. Good-morning, sir.”
Mr. Croucher’s puffy eyes followed the boy as he ran off.
“Just the same as the rest of them,” he complained. “There’s no worming information out of any of them. One would think that they were all bound down by an oath of secrecy.”
Seth Newruck had spoken quite truthfully when he said that he had no time to spare. He was glad to have such a valid excuse to escape from the inquisitive questioning of the old gossip. He was due to report himself for duty at the naval base at eleven o’clock, when Mr. Bilverstone would probably send him on some errand to the coastguards or to the police-station, or give him some piece of clerical work to perform. It was already half-past ten, and he had a long walk through the town.
As he went at scout’s pace along the esplanade, he glanced eastward across the sea to a grey-painted gunboat which he quickly recognised as H.M.S. Rapid. She was steaming northward, followed by a flotilla of mine-sweepers. He wished that he might be on board of her, little dreaming that she was destined never again to return to her moorings in Haddisport harbour. He heard a whirring in the air and looked back for a moment to watch a seaplane flying overhead. Very soon the seaplane passed above him, and by something in its colour and structure he knew it to be the machine of which Lieutenant Aldiss was the pilot—Lieutenant Aldiss who had lately done such wonderful, daring things in the aerial raid over Düsseldorf. The aeroplane presently circled round and seemed to hover above some dark-sailed boats outside of Haddisport, as if the pilot were inspecting them with suspicion.
Seth Newruck looked at the boats curiously as he ran, but they were soon hidden from view beyond the trees of the park. He walked through the park and down the long High Street. At the top of each of the narrow scores leading downward to the beach, there was a group of people, eagerly looking out to sea. Beyond the Town Hall, Seth paused and mingled with a group at the top of Fisherman’s Score.
“What are they looking at?” he questioned of a man in khaki. “Is it a wreck?”
“Nobody seems to know,” the soldier answered. “It’s something about those boats out there.”
The boats were certainly curious enough to excite interest. Seth Newruck had never seen any exactly like them before, although he prided himself on his knowledge of sailing craft and the varieties of rig. The nearest resemblance to them that he knew were galliots in a Dutch picture at home. They were clumsy, untidy-looking vessels, with bluff bows and weather boards, tall masts, and patched, ill-fitting sails. He counted thirty at the least.
He thought for an instant of Mr. Croucher’s often-repeated statement about the flat-bottomed boats in which the Germans were expected to bring over their invading troops. Could these be raiding Germans? he wondered. Then, as one of the sloops turned shoreward, he saw a flag at the peak of her mast. It was black, yellow, and red.
“They’re Belgian!” he cried, and ran off down the town.
While he ran he recollected something which he had read in the newspaper that morning. Antwerp had fallen and was occupied by the Germans. The Belgian Army and British troops had retired. The Belgian people, driven from their homes, had fled to the coast, and now the enemy had reached Ostend.
A glimmer of the truth was revealed to him. These boats which he had seen making for Haddisport were surely Flemish fishing smacks bringing the hard-pressed, homeless Belgians across to the friendly refuge of England.