Part 5 (2/2)

'And this is Herr Pienaar?' he asked in Dutch

He saluted 'Gentleize I am late because of the slowness of the Herr Commandant's motor-car Had I been in tih this cere, and I am instructed to attend you on your journey The train for Berlin leaves in half an hour Pray doof distinction we stalked out of the ordinary ruck of passengers and followed the lieutenant to the station restaurant He plunged at once into conversation, talking the Dutch of Holland, which Peter, who had forgotten his school-days, found a bit hard to follow He was unfit for active service, because of his eyes and a weak heart, but he was a desperate fire-eater in that stuffy restaurant By his way of it Gerobble up the French and the Russians whenever she cared, but she was ai all the Middle East in her hands first, so that she could come out conqueror with the practical control of half the world

'Your friends the English,' he said grinning, 'will come last When we have starved them and destroyed their commerce with our under-sea boats ill show the their tireat shi+ps-oh, so many! My cousin at Kiel-' and he looked over his shoulder

But we never heard about that cousin at Kiel A short sunburnthis heels like a pair of tongs

'These are the South African Dutch, Herr Captain,' he said

The new-coent eyes, and started questioning Peter in the taal It ell that we had taken some pains with our story, for this man had been years in German South West, and knew every mile of the borders Zorn was his na him spoken of

I am thankful to say that we both showed up pretty well Peter told his story to perfection, not pitching it too high, and asking me now and then for a name or to verify some detail Captain Zorn looked satisfied

'You seeht kind of fellows,' he said 'But remember'-and he bent his brows on us-'we do not understand slimness in this land If you are honest you will be rewarded, but if you dare to play a double gas Your race has produced over ruffly 'We are not Gerainst England ill fight for her'

'Bold words,' he said; 'but you must bow your stiff necks to discipline first Discipline has been the weak point of you Boers, and you have suffered for it You are no more a nation In Germany we put discipline first and last, and therefore ill conquer the world Off with you now Your train starts in three minutes We will see what von Stuave me the best 'feel' of any German I had yet met He was a white man and I could have worked with him I liked his stiff chin and steady blue eyes

My chief recollection of our journey to Berlin was its commonplaceness The spectacled lieutenant fell asleep, and for the ain a soldier on leave would drop in, most of them tired men with heavy eyes No wonder, poor devils, for they were co back from the Yser or the Ypres salient I would have liked to talk to them, but officially of course I knew no Gernify h one chap, as in better spirits than the rest, observed that this was the last Christ at home with full pockets The others assented, but without much conviction

The winter day was short, and most of the journey was hts of little villages, and now and then the blaze of ironworks and forges We stopped at a town for dinner, where the platforo ard We saw no signs of any scarcity of food, such as the English newspapers wrote about We had an excellent dinner at the station restaurant, which, with a bottle of white wine, cost just three shi+llings apiece The bread, to be sure, was poor, but I can put up with the absence of bread if I get a juicy fillet of beef and as good vegetables as you will see in the Savoy

I was a little afraid of our giving ourselves away in our sleep, but I need have had no fear, for our escort slu with his h the darkness I kept pinching myself to make myself feel that I was in the enemy's land on a wildtoith the lights shi+ning fro seeenerous After the arish stations with a hundred arc lights glowing, and to see long lines of la to the horizon Peter dropped off early, but I kept awake till hts that persistently strayed Then I, too, dozed and did not awake till about five in the ht as midday It was the easiest and most unsuspicious journey I ever made

The lieutenant stretched himself and se to a droschke, for there seeave the address of sohtly lit ehty dorp,' said Peter 'Of a truth the Gerood-hureatest people on earth,' he said, 'as their eneiven a lot for a bath, but I felt that it would be outsidepersuasion But we had a very good breakfast of coffee and eggs, and then the lieutenant started on the telephone He began by being dictatorial, then he seerew more polite, and at the end he fairly crawled He ements, for he informed us that in the afternoon ould see some fellohose title he could not translate into Dutch I judged he was a great swell, for his voice became reverential at theafter Peter and I had attended to our toilets We were an odd pair of scallywags to look at, but as South African as a wait-a-bit bush Both of us had ready-rey flannel shi+rts with flannel collars, and felt hats with broader bri-nailed brown boots, Peter a pair of those uese affect and which made him hobble like a Chinese lady He had a scarlet satin tie which you could hear a th, and I trimmed it like General s the taakhaar loves, which has scarcely ever been shaved, and is combed once in a blue moon I must say we made a pretty solid pair Any South African would have set us down as a Boer froht a suit of clothes in the nearest store, and his cousin froht himself the devil of a fellow We fairly reeked of the sub-continent, as the papers call it

It was a fineafter the rain, and andered about in the streets for a couple of hours They were busy enough, and the shops looked rich and bright with their Christ store where I went to buy a pocket-knife was packed with custoUniforenerally looked like dug-outs or office fellows We had a gli which housed the General Staff and took off our hats to it Then we stared at the Marina there behind old Tirpitz's whiskers The capital gave one an ily cleanness and a sort of dreary effectiveness And yet I found it depressing- than London I don't kno to put it, but the whole big concern see factory instead of a city You won't h you decorate its front and plant rose-bushes all round it The place depressed and yet cheered me It somehow made the German people seem smaller

At three o'clock the lieutenant took us to a plain white building in a side street with sentries at the door A young staff officer met us and made us wait for fiveroom with a polished floor on which Peter nearly sat down There was a log fire burning, and seated at a table was a little man in spectacles with his hair brushed back from his brow like a popular violinist He was the boss, for the lieutenant saluted him and announced our names Then he disappeared, and the man at the table motioned us to sit down in two chairs before hi over his glasses

But it was the other hthis elbows on the mantelpiece He was a perfect mountain of a fellow, six and a half feet if he was an inch, with shoulders on him like a shorthorn bull He was in uniform and the black-and-white ribbon of the Iron Cross showed at a buttonhole His tunic was all wrinkled and strained as if it could scarcely contain his huge chest, and hty hands were clasped over his stoorilla He had a great, lazy, s face, with a square cleft chin which stuck out beyond the rest His brow retreated and the stubby back of his head ran forward to ed out over his collar His head was exactly the shape of a pear with the sharp end topht eyes and I stared back I had struck so time, and till that moment I wasn't sure that it existed Here was the Gerainst He was as hideous as a hippopotamus, but effective Every bristle on his odd head was effective

TheI took hih up fros, perhaps an Under-Secretary His Dutch was slow and careful, but good-too good for Peter He had a paper before hi us questions fro pretty well a repetition of those Zorn had asked us at the frontier I answered fluently, for I had all our lies by heart

Then thebroke in 'I'll talk to them, Excellency,' he said in German 'You are too acadean in the taal, with the thick guttural accent that you get in German South West 'You have heard of ht the Hereros'