There is not much that I can add to the succinct summary of the inspection of the forts of the "Baltic Gibraltar." What the sub-commission saw—or rather failed to see—there went a long way toward confirming the impression (which had been growing stronger ever since the arrival of the Hercules at Wilhelmshaven) that Germany had depended upon mines rather than guns for the defence of her coasts. The porker mentioned was the one I alluded to in an earlier chapter as just failing to win the officer sighting it the pool which was to go to the first man who saw a pig in Germany, because an Irish-American member of the party had testified that it had "died from hog cholera an hour before it had been killed." The lovely stretch of farming country driven through showed many signs of its Danish character, and at several windows I even saw the red-and-white flag of the mother country discreetly displayed. This region, of course, falls well north of the line that is expected to form the new Danish boundary.
*****
At the final conference with the German Naval Armistice Commission, which was held in the Hercules on the morning of the 17th, Admiral Goette and his associates, in striking contrast to their belligerent attitude at the first meeting in Kiel, proved thoroughly docile and conciliatory. All of the important points at issue were conceded—including the surrender of submarines building and the delivery of the Baden in place of Mackensen—and tentative arrangements were made for future visits of special Allied Commissions whenever these should be deemed necessary to insure the enforcement of the provisions of the armistice. Work on the reconditioning of all Allied merchant ships was to be given precedence over everything else. Considering that he had no trumps either in his hands or up his sleeve, Admiral Goette played his end of the game with considerable skill. Such futile attempts at "bluffing" as he made were invariably traceable to pressure exerted upon him from the "outside," probably Berlin. Personally, in spite of the severe nervous strain he was under (the effects of which were increasingly noticeable at every succeeding conference), he deported himself with a dignity compatible with his heavy responsibilities. The same may be said of Captain Von Müller, which is perhaps as far down the list as it would be charitable to go in this connection.
*****
Weighing anchor at noon of the 18th, the Hercules was locked through into the canal in good time to see in daylight that section which had been passed in darkness in coming through from the North Sea. A rain, which turned into soft snow as the afternoon lengthened, was responsible for rather less frequent and numerous crowds of spectators than on the previous passage. The ubiquitous Russian prisoner was still much in evidence. An especially pathetic figure was that of a lone poilu—still in horizon blue, with the skirts of his bedraggled overcoat buttoned back in characteristic fashion—whom I sighted just before dark. Leaning dejectedly on his hoe in a beet-field, he watched the Hercules pass without so much as lifting a finger. Most likely the unlucky chap took her for a German, for the rapturous demonstrations with which a score of his comrades signalized their arrival aboard a few days before showed very clearly how a French prisoner would greet a British ship if he knew her nationality.
The Hercules went into her lock at Brunsbüttel an hour before midnight. The Regensburg, which had preceded her through the canal, was already in the adjoining lock, and in attempting to pass on the light cruiser Constance and three British destroyers at the same operation the canal people made rather a mess of things. There was a savage crashing and tearing of metal at one stage, followed by a considerable flow of profanity in two languages. When, the next morning in the Bight, a signal of condolence was made by the Hercules to one of the destroyers following in her wake on the "messy" state of its nose, the reply came back. "Don't worry about my nose. You ought to see the Regensburg. I've got a piece of her side-plating on my forecastle!" That was the second time the unlucky Regensburg had come to grief in locking through at Brunsbüttel with the ships of the Allied Naval Commission.
Owing to the fog, the Germans were unable, or unwilling, to send a ship to take off their pilots from the Hercules and escorting destroyers after the outer limits of the mine-fields had been passed, and it became necessary as a consequence to carry them on to Rosyth. The change of air and food incidental to their personally conducted tour to Scapa (to await the next German transport home) was evidently a by no means disagreeable prospect to them, judging by the way they took the news. The steward who reported that the pilot he was looking after had been "stowing away grub like he expected a long continuance of the blockade," may have stumbled upon the reason for their philosophic attitude.
We found the Firth of Forth as we left it—wrapped in fog. There was just enough visibility to make it possible to find the gates in the booms and the main channel under the bridge. The historic voyage came to an end when the Hercules, after tying up to the Queen Elizabeth's buoy for a few hours, went into the dry dock at two-thirty in the afternoon of the 20th. The Commission left for London the same evening in a special train provided by the Admiralty.
THE END