Several hours passed. Save for a visit from a particularly surly seaman who brought the sub. a very sorry meal, Tressidar was left severely alone, to ruminate over his bad luck.
At length the slowing down of the torpedo-boat's engines told him that she was nearing port, for hitherto she had been racing at top speed and steering a zig-zag course. After twenty minutes, during which the engine-room telegraph bell clanged as many times, the vessel came to a standstill.
Then followed another tedious wait. Apparently the Huns were in no hurry to land their prisoner. But, since there is an end to all things, Tressidar in due course found himself being escorted on deck, preceded and followed by armed seamen.
It was still daylight. The torpedo-boat was berthed, in company with more than twenty others, in a spacious basin. Surrounding the enclosed water was a broad quay, flanked with two-storeyed buildings. The entrance to the basin was, remarkably, on the eastern side or remote from the open sea. Evidently the approach was by a tortuous, intricate channel that skirted the southernmost extremity of the island.
To the westward the outlook was bounded by a range of sand-dunes of varying altitudes. In some places they were about 50 feet in height; in others the grass-grown hummocks slightly exceeded double that dimension. A short distance to the north-west was a lighthouse, a round yellow tower perched upon a tall red cliff, that formed a striking contrast to the white sand-dunes on either side.
In almost every depression between the chain of dunes were heavy gun batteries, while on a broad level road running parallel to the sea and about two hundred yards from the summits of the sand-hills were numerous armoured motor-cars armed with quick-firers of widely differing calibres.
"Ah, I know where I am now," thought Tressidar as he recognised the lighthouse—not from actual acquaintanceship but from an intimate knowledge of the British "North Sea Pilot." "That's Rothe Kliff lighthouse, so they have landed me at Sylt. Next to Heligoland, they couldn't have chosen a stronger place to hold me prisoner. I wonder if they are going to keep me in some wretched prison camp in the centre of the German Empire."
He looked in vain for the cutter's crew. The men had been landed and marched off almost as the torpedo-boat was berthed, and were now on their way to embark in a small steamer for Hamburg.
The exhibition of captured British seamen in that paralysed commercial port was a stroke of diplomacy on the part of the German authorities. It gave colour to the official lie that a portion of the dauntless High Seas Fleet had boldly made a demonstration in force off the Firth of Forth The English had plucked up sufficient courage to leave their fortified harbours and give battle. It was a feeble attempt, and the British fleet broke off the engagement before the Germans could force a decisive action. As it was, a British battleship had been sunk with all hands. A large armoured cruiser had been sent to the bottom, a portion of the crew being rescued by the humane Germans. While engaged in this work of mercy the German cruiser had been torpedoed by a submarine. This was the fairy-tale that was quickly spread--broadcast from Hamburg to Königsberg and from the shores of the Baltic to the Swiss frontier.
Escorted by a file of marines, Tressidar was marched along the quay through throngs of curious and ill-disposed sightseers, of whom nine out of ten were in uniforms. At the end of the quay the escort turned down a narrow lane and finally came to a halt outside a low stone building, almost on the outskirts of the little town. The house stood in its own grounds, which were enclosed by a tall iron fence topped by a complex array of barbed wire. At the gate were two sentries. Two more stood in the portico of the house, while others were much in evidence as they marched to and fro on the raised platforms commanding an uninterrupted view of the grounds.