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But events were driving them to reconsider their decision. These seemed to show that the information wrung with such peril and labour from the German Government, and transmitted so promptly to our own, had had none but the most transitory influence on our policy. The great drawback was that an Englishman, bearing an honoured name, was disgracefully implicated, and that unless infinite delicacy were used, innocent persons, and, especially, a young lady, would suffer pain and indignity, if his identity were known. Indeed, troublesome rumours, containing a grain of truth and a mass of falsehood, were already afloat. After weighing both sides of the question, I gave my vote emphatically for publication. The personal drawbacks could, I thought, with tact be neutralised; while, from the public point of view, nothing but good could come from submitting the case to the common sense of the country at large. Publication, therefore, was agreed upon, and the next point was the form it should take. I was strongly against this course, first, because it would aggravate instead of allaying the rumours that were current; secondly, because in such a form the narrative would not carry conviction, and would thus defeat its own end. The persons and the events were indissolubly connected; to evade, abridge, suppress, would be to convey to the reader the idea of a concocted hoax. Indeed, I took bolder ground still, urging that the story should be made as explicit and circumstantial as possible, frankly and honestly for the purpose of entertaining and so of attracting a wide circle of readers. Even anonymity was undesirable. Nevertheless, certain precautions were imperatively needed. To cut the matter short, they asked for my assistance and received it at once. The year it belongs to is disguised; the names of persons are throughout fictitious; and, at my instance certain slight liberties have been taken to conceal the identity of the English characters. Remember, also that these persons are living now in the midst of us, and if you find one topic touched on with a light and hesitating pen, do not blame the The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service, who, whether they are known or not, would rather say too little than say a word that might savour of impertinence. The maps and charts are based on British and German Admiralty charts, with irrelevant details omitted. I have read of men who, when forced by The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service calling to live for long periods in utter solitude—save for a few black faces—have made it a rule to dress regularly for dinner in order to maintain their self-respect and prevent a relapse into barbarism. I thought the date and the place justified the parallel; to my advantage even; for the obscure Burmese administrator The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service well be a man of blunted sensibilities and coarse fibre, and at least he is alone with nature, while I—well, a young man of condition and fashion, who knows the right people, belongs to the right clubs, has a safe, possibly a brilliant, future in the Foreign Office—may be excused for a sense of complacent martyrdom, when, with his keen appreciation of the social calendar, he is doomed to the outer solitude of London in September. For to feel oneself a martyr, as everybody knows, is a pleasurable thing, and the true tragedy of my position was that I had passed that stage. I had enjoyed what sweets it had to offer in ever dwindling degree since the middle of August, when ties were still fresh and sympathy abundant. I had been conscious that I was missed at Morven Lodge party. Lady Ashleigh herself had said so in the kindest possible manner, when she wrote to acknowledge the letter in which I explained, with an effectively austere reserve of language, that circumstances compelled me to remain at my office. I began to take a spurious interest in the remaining five millions, and wrote several clever letters in a vein of cheap satire, indirectly suggesting the pathos of my position, but indicating that I was The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service enough to find intellectual entertainment in the scenes, persons, and habits of London in the dead season. I even did rational things at the instigation of others. For, though I should have liked total The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service best, I, of course, found that there was a sediment of unfortunates like myself, who, unlike me, viewed the situation in a most prosaic light. There were The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service excursions, and so on, after office-hours; but I dislike the river at any time for its noisy vulgarity, and most of all at this season. I did spend one or two week-ends with the Catesbys in Kent; but I was not inconsolable when they let their house and went abroad, for I found that such partial compensations did not suit me. Neither did the taste for satirical observation last. By the first week in September I had abandoned all palliatives, and had settled into the dismal but dignified routine of office, club, and chambers. And now came the most cruel trial, for the hideous truth dawned on me that the world I found so indispensable could after all dispense with me. The reason of my detention was not a cloud on the international horizon—though I may say in passing that there was such a cloud—but a caprice on the part of a remote and mighty personage, the effect of which, ramifying downwards, had dislocated the The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service holiday plans of the humble juniors, and in my own small case had upset the arrangement between myself and K——, who positively liked the dog-days in Whitehall. Only one thing was needed to fill my cup of bitterness, and this it was that specially occupied me as I dressed for dinner this evening. Two days more in this dead and fermenting city and my slavery would be at an end. Yes, but—irony of ironies! The Morven Lodge party was breaking up. A dreadful rumour as to an engagement which had been one of its accursed fruits tormented me with the fresh certainty that I had not been missed, and bred in me that most desolating brand of cynicism which is produced by defeat through insignificance. Invitations for a later date, which I had declined in July with a gratifying sense of being much in request, now rose up spectrally to taunt me. There was at least one which I could easily have revived, but neither in this case nor in any other had there been any renewal of pressure, and there are moments when the difference between proposing oneself and surrendering as a prize to one of several eagerly competing hostesses seems too crushing to be contemplated. Besides, they would be leaving soon for our home in Yorkshire, and I was not a prophet in my own country. In short, I was at the extremity of depression. The usual preliminary scuffle on the staircase prepared me for the knock and entry of Withers. One of the things which had for some time ceased to amuse me was the laxity of manners, proper to the season, among the servants of the big block of chambers where I lived. I had just finished dressing, and was collecting my money and gloves. A momentary thrill of curiosity broke in upon my depression as I sat down to open it. So I merely write on the offchance to ask if you would care to come out here and join me in a little yachting, and, I hope, duck-shooting. This part of the Baltic—the Schleswig fiords—is a splendid cruising-ground—A1 scenery—and there ought to be plenty of duck about soon, if it gets cold enough. I came out here via Holland and the Frisian Islands, starting early in August. If you can, send me a wire to the P. Flushing and on by Hamburg will be your best route, I think. Bring your gun and a good lot of No. Bring some oilskins. I know you speak German like a native, and that will be a The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service help. Anyway, I hope you and the F. Would you mind bringing me out a prismatic compassand a pound of Raven mixture? This letter marked an epoch for me; but I little suspected the fact as I crumpled it into my pocket and started languidly on the voie douloureuse which I nightly followed to the club. In Pall The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service there were no dignified greetings to be exchanged now with well-groomed acquaintances. Of course the club was a strange one, both of my own being closed for cleaning, a coincidence expressly planned by Providence for my inconvenience. The few occupants seem odd and oddly dressed, and you wonder how they got there. The particular weekly that you want is not taken in; the dinner is execrable, and the ventilation a farce. All these evils oppressed me to-night. And yet I was puzzled to find that somewhere within me there was a faint lightening of the spirits; causeless, as far as I could discover. Yachting in the Baltic at the end of September! The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service very idea made one shudder. Cowes, with a pleasant party and hotels handy, was all very The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service. An August cruise on a steam yacht in French waters or the Highlands was all very well; but what kind of a yacht was this? That brought me to the man himself. I had known him at Oxford—not as one of my immediate set; but we were a sociable college, and I had seen a good deal of him, liking him for his physical energy combined with a certain simplicity and modesty, though, indeed, he had nothing to be conceited about; liked him, in fact, in the way that at that receptive period one likes many men whom one never keeps up with later. We had both gone down in the same year—three years ago now. I had only seen him since at rare intervals, though I admitted to myself that for his part he had clung loyally to what ties of friendship there were between us. But the truth was that we had drifted apart from the nature of things. He seemed to know none of my friends, he dressed indifferently, and The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service thought him dull. I had always connected him with boats and the sea, but never with yachting, in the sense that I understood it. In college days he had nearly persuaded me into sharing a squalid week in some open boat he had picked up, and was going to sail among some dreary mudflats somewhere on the east coast. There was nothing else, and the funereal function of dinner drifted on. When I reached the savoury, I had concluded, so far as I had centred my mind on it at all, that the whole thing was a culminating irony, as, indeed, The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service the savoury in its way. After the wreck of my pleasant plans and the fiasco of my martyrdom, to be asked as consolation to spend October freezing in the Baltic with an eccentric nonentity who bored me! Yet, as I smoked my cigar in the ghastly splendour of the empty smoking-room, the subject came up again. Was there anything in it? There were certainly no alternatives at hand. And to bury myself in the Baltic at this unearthly time of year had at least a smack of tragic thoroughness about it. I pulled out the letter again, and ran down its impulsive staccato sentences, affecting to ignore what a gust of fresh air, high spirits, and good fellowship this flimsy bit of paper wafted into the jaded club-room. Every sane yachtsman was paying off his crew now. His pals had left him; why? As to the size, comfort, and crew of the yacht—all cheerfully ignored; so many maddening blanks. I fingered a few magazines, played a game of fifty with a friendly old fogey, too importunate to be worth the labour of resisting, and went back to my chambers to bed, ignorant that a friendly Providence had come to my rescue; and, indeed, rather resenting any clumsy attempt at such friendliness. That two days later I should be found pacing the deck of the Flushing steamer with a ticket for Hamburg in my pocket may seem a strange result, yet not so strange if you have divined my state of mind. You will guess, at any rate, that I was armed with the conviction that I was doing an act of obscure penance, rumours of which might call attention to my lot and perhaps awaken remorse in the right quarter, while it left me free to enjoy myself unobtrusively in the remote event of enjoyment being possible. The fact was that, at breakfast on the morning after the arrival of the letter, I had still found that inexplicable lightening which I mentioned before, and strong enough to warrant a revival of the pros and cons. An important pro which I had not thought of before was that after all it was a good-natured piece of unselfishness to join Davies; for he had spoken of the want of a pal, and seemed honestly to be in need of me. I almost clutched at this consideration. It was an admirable excuse, when I reached my office that day, for a resigned study of the Continental Bradshaw, and an order to Carter to unroll a great creaking wall-map of Germany and find me Flensburg. The latter labour I might have saved him, but it was good for Carter to have something to do; and his patient ignorance was amusing. With most of the map and what it suggested I was tolerably familiar, for I had not wasted my year in Germany, whatever I had done or not done since. Its people, history, progress, and future had interested me intensely, and I had still friends in Dresden and Berlin. Thought you had got away long ago. Lucky devil, though, to be going now, just in time for the best driving and the early pheasants. By lunch-time the weight of indecision had been removed, and I found myself entrusting Carter with a telegram to Davies, P. Indeed, my resolution was continually faltering. It faltered when I turned out my gun in the evening and thought of the grouse it ought to have accounted for. The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers - Free Ebook

The book, which enjoyed immense popularity in the The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service before World War Iis an early example of the espionage novel and was extremely influential in the genre of spy fiction. It has been made into feature-length films for both cinema and television. The novel "owes a lot to the wonderful adventure novels of writers like Rider Haggardthat were a staple of Victorian Britain ". The same is true for the various "sands" of the title - vast areas which are flooded at high tide but become mudflats at ebb. Navigating a small boat under these conditions requires a specialized kind of skilled seamanship - of which the character Davies is an unsurpassed master, and the descriptions of his feats are of abiding interest to yachting enthusiasts, quite apart from their role in the book's espionage plot. Carruthers, a minor official in the Foreign Officeis contacted by an acquaintance, Davies, asking him to join in a yachting holiday in the Baltic Sea. Carruthers agrees, as his other plans for a holiday have fallen through, and because of a heartbreak due to a woman he courted becoming engaged to another man. He arrives to find that Davies has a small sailing boat the vessel is named Dulcibellaa reference to Childers's own sister of that namenot The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service comfortable crewed yacht that he expected. However Carruthers agrees to go on the trip and joins Davies in Flensburg on the Baltic, whence they head for the Frisian Islandsoff the coast of Germany. Carruthers has to learn quickly how to sail the small boat. Davies gradually reveals that he suspects that the Germans are undertaking something sinister in the German Frisian islands. This is based on his belief that he was nearly wrecked by a German yacht luring him into a shoal in rough weather during a previous trip. The yacht was owned and captained by a mysterious German entrepreneur called Dollmann, whom Davies suspects of being in fact an expatriate Englishman posing as a German. The situation was further complicated by Davies having fallen deeply in love with Dollmann's daughter, Klara - who, Davies is sure, is not involved in whatever nefarious scheme her father is engaged upon. The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service any case, Davies is suspicious about what would motivate Dollmann to try to kill him, and believed that it is some scheme involving the German Imperial government. Having failed to interest anyone in the British government in the incident, Davies feels it is his patriotic duty to investigate further on his own — hence the invitation to Carruthers. Carruthers and Davies spend some time exploring the shallow tidal waters of the Frisian Islands, moving closer to the mysterious site where there is a rumoured secret treasure recovery project in progress on the island of Memmert. The two men discover that Dollmann is involved in the recovery project. Carruthers and Davies try to approach Memmert. They are warned away by a German Navy patrol boat, the Blitzand its commander von Bruning - who is friendly and affable, but still makes a veiled warning. This makes them all the more sure that there is something more than a treasure dig on the island. And meanwhile, they discover that, not only is Dollmann indeed an Englishman, he had been an officer in the Royal Navy - evidently having had to leave Britain in hurry and take up a new life as a German. Taking advantage of a thick fog, Davies navigates them covertly through the complicated sandbanks in a small The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service to investigate the Memmert site. Carruthers investigates the island. He overhears von Bruning and Dollmann discussing something more than treasure hunting, including cryptic references to "Chatham", "Seven" and "the tide serving", and hear of a The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service at the Frisian railway station, several days ahead. The pair return through the fog to the Dulcibellamoored at the island of Norderney. There, they find Dollmann and von Bruning have beaten them and are seemingly suspicious. However, getting in the fog from Norderney to Memmert and back is a nearly impossible feat, which only Davies' superb seamanship could have achieved, and the Germans do not seriously suspect them of having done that. Von Bruning invites them to Dollmann's villa for a dinner, The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service he attempts to subtly cross- examine them to find out if they are British spies. Carruthers plays a dangerous game, admitting they are curious. But he convinces von Bruning that he believes the cover story about treasure and merely wants to see the imaginary "wreck". The party also serves to show that the Germans do not fully trust the renegade Englishman Dollmann and that there is some rift between them which might be widened. Carruthers announces that the Foreign Office has recalled him to England. He heads off, being accompanied part of the way to the Dutch border by one of the German conspirators - outwardly an affable fellow-traveler. But instead of embarking from Amsterdam to England, he doubles back, returns to Germany in time to be present at the conspirators' rendezvous to which Dollmann, significantly, was not invited. He manages to follow von Bruning and his men without being noticed, and trails them to a port where they board a tugboat towing a barge. Carruthers then sneaks aboard and hides, and the convoy heads to sea. Carruthers finally puts the riddle together. The Germans are linking the canals and the railways, dredging passages through the shifting sands and hiding a fleet of tugs and barges. The only explanation is that they are going to secretly transport a powerful German army across the North Sea to invade Britain's east coast. He escapes after grounding the tugboat and rushes back to Davies. He finds him and explains how they must flee before the Germans come after them. They convince Dollmann and Clara to come with them to avoid Dollmann's being arrested by the Germans, who will think he has changed sides again. They promise Dollman immunity from being charged for treason in Britain - which, acting on their own and not having any authorization from the British government, they were not truly in a position to promise. As they sail across the North Sea, Dollmann commits suicide by jumping overboard, presumably to avoid disgrace and probable arrest. An epilogue by the "editor" examines the details of a report prepared by Dollmann, outlining his plan for the invasion force. A postscript notes that the Royal Navy is finally taking countermeasures to intercept any German invasion fleet and urges haste. Childers's biographer Andrew Boyle noted: "For the next ten years Childers's book remained the most powerful contribution of any English writer to the debate on Britain's alleged military unpreparedness. The Daily Telegraph has cited the book as the second best spy novel of all time, after Kipling 's Kim. Though wars with Germany would become a central issue for Britain for much of the 20th Century, in fact few Britons anticipated that before Just nine years before The Riddle of the SandsWilliam Le Queux published The Great War in Englandraising the specter of a French surprise invasion of England, reaching London - with Germany cast as Britain's loyal ally, rushing to help and in the nick of time saving England from the evil French; as evident from the great success of this book when published inthe British public at that time took seriously the idea of a French threat and a German ally. But Emperor Wilhelm II 's policy of building up the German Navy and challenging the British sea power effected a change in the actual power relations - reflected in the specific literary genre of invasion novels and the identity assigned to the possible invader of British soil. As described in its author's own words, Riddle of the Sands was written as " Although the belief has grown that the book was responsible for the development of the naval base at Rosyththe novel was published in Maytwo months after the purchase of the land for the Rosyth naval base was announced in Parliament 5 March and some time after secret negotiations for the purchase had begun. Although Winston Churchill later credited the book as a major reason why the Admiralty had decided to establish the new naval bases, this seems unlikely. When war was declared he ordered the Director of Naval Intelligence to find Childers, whom he had met when the author was campaigning to represent a naval seat in Parliamentand employ him. The novel contains many realistic details based on Childers's own sailing trips along the East Frisia coast and large parts of his logbook entries from an Baltic cruise "appear almost unedited in the book. The two men were sentenced to The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service years custody by a military court in Leipzig, but they were pardoned by the Emperor in They joined " Room 40 ", the intelligence and decoding section of the British Admiralty, on the outbreak of war. It is noteworthy that the demonization and vilification of Kaiser Wilhelmwhich would become a staple of British propaganda in later years, are conspicuously absent from The Riddle of the Sands. To the contrary, on several occasions the character Davies expresses admiration for the German Emperor: "He is a fine fellow, that emperor. By Jove! We want a man like The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service Kaiser, who doesn't wait to be kicked, but works like a nigger for his country, and sees ahead" [15]. Lower in the hierarchy, Carruthers several times states that he likes Commander von Bruning as a person - and this liking is not diminished by the discovery that von Bruning is deeply involved in the plan to invade England. In general, the book's protagonists feel no malice towards the Germans. Rather, they take a "sporting" attitude, frankly admiring the Germans' audacity and resourcefulness while being determined to outwit these Germans and foil their plans. From the start it is obvious that something is going on behind the placid facade of the Frisian islands and towns. The protagonists gather The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service, follow clues and form various hypotheses. There are many red herrings - for example, for much of the book, their suspicions centre on Memmert. However, though that island provides a convenient cover for the German plotters to meet and talk, what is actually going on there is a genuine salvage operation seeking to find a cargo of gold from a French ship sunken during the Napoleonic Wars. The actual German design, revealed only at the end - a full-fledged, meticulous plan for the invasion of England - is in fact unfolding among very mundane and prosaic small Frisian towns and harbours. As set out in detail in the book's Epilogue, the German plan constitutes a vast, audacious military deception. While the British would observe the major German ports and the array of German battleships and detect no signs of an impending invasion, the invasion force would gather unnoticed in the Frisian countryside. German troops - infantry with the The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service type of field guns - would board big sea-going lighterstowed by powerful but shallow-draught tugs, which would proceed to the sea through the Frisian canal network that was unobtrusively widened and extended for years, in preparation for this day. Seven invasion flotillas would emerge - not from any major port, but out of seven contemptible tiny Frisian harbours which The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service open only on high tide and only to small vessels; harbours of whose existence the British Admiralty is barely aware, and which were certainly never viewed as having any kind of military value or posing any threat. From there, the invaders quickly dash over a distance of sea miles and land completely unexpected and unopposed at The Wash on the East shore of England. With the beachhead secured, more German ships would follow with munitions and heavy artillery. As the Epilogue points out, such an invasion would necessarily involve a German strategic gamble - since, after an initial confusion, the British Royal Navy could be expected to rally and regain its control of the North Sea. With that, the German invading force would be cut off from further supplies and would be dependent on what they could bring with them in the initial stage, plus whatever British resources they could capture. German success would depend on a swift exploitation of the element of surprise, breaking out of the initial landing area to quickly capture their main objective - "the industrial heart of the [British] kingdom, the great northern and midland towns, with their teeming populations of peaceful wage earners". The projected landing site at The Wash would place the Germans conveniently close to that industrial heartland. The plan does not include any direct attack on London which would have necessitated a different and far more risky landing place. German hopes for a quick and decisive victory would hinge upon the loss of the industrial towns being so demoralizing to the British and dislocating to their economy that Britain would agree to sign a peace on terms favourable to Germany. Should the British prove persistent, obdurate and willing to engage in a long war as they actually would in the German invading force, cut off from fresh supplies, might eventually end up in a dire situation. Actually, the protagonists come upon the invasion plan in an advanced state of preparation - but still with a lot left to do before it could be implemented. One of the crucial factors for its success is to make sure that the lighters being built for troop transport would actually stand open sea conditions - unlike the ordinary lighters used in this area, which usually do not venture out of the protected waters behind the Frisian islands. The clue followed by Carruthers, in a brief overheard conversation of the German plotters, is that one such lighter would be tested under open sea conditions and that a certain high-ranking German "insisted on being personally present". The hidden Carruthers is present at the successful testing voyage where the lighter proves fully sea-worthy, and then manages to sabotage the tug and escape. In the confusion Carruthers sees the face of the high-ranking participant and recognizing him as "one who, in Germany, has a better right to insist than anyone else" - the implication clearly being that it was Kaiser Wilhelm II in person. Innautical writer Sam Llewellyn wrote a continuation of the story named The Shadow in the Sands. This is subtitled "being an account of the cruise of the yacht Gloria in the Frisian Islands in April of and the Conclusion of the Events described by Erskine Childers. Llewellyn assumes that the British authorities disregarded the warnings brought by the protagonists of Childers' book and the preparations for a German invasion of England continued unabated. The Duke of Leominster - a cynical schemer but also a British patriot - takes on his own the act of sending the Gloria for a desperate last moment effort. On board are the narrator Charlie Webb - a lowly fisherman but highly capable and resourceful - together with his mate Sam and with the sinister Captain Dacre, a military officer cashiered for wantonly killing a Boer woman in South Africa. They tangle with the arrogant and cruel Baron von Tritt, and Charlie Webb wins the love of the beautiful Grafin von and zu Marsdorff Katya to those intimate with her. A series of daring acts of sabotage and arson by the protagonists, undertaken with the risk of being hanged out of hand if caught, succeeds against all odds in derailing Kaiser Wilhelm's carefully prepared invasion plan, and a quarter of a million German soldiers who were poised to board the invasion fleet return to barracks. The German and British governments tacitly agree to pretend none of this ever happened, though the countdown continues towards the bloodletting of Meanwhile the resourceful Webb reaps his just rewards, marries happily his Grafin and is headed to a future as a shipping magnate and a seat in the House of Lords. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service - Erskine Childers - Google Books

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