CHAPTER V
A Discovery
Sub-Lieutenant Jack Hamerton was fairly well-informed as far as British naval officers go, and his information regarding the island fortress of Heligoland was fairly extensive, but he still had a lot to learn.
He knew the history of the island from its capture by the British from the Danes in the first decade of the nineteenth century. For nearly ninety years Heligoland existed as a British possession, its safety entrusted to a handful of coastguards, its ordering to a British governor, and its spiritual welfare to a Lutheran pastor. Up till 1850 the then pastor used regularly to offer up a prayer in the presence of his flock that a storm might arise to cast a valuable wreck upon the cliff-bound coast, for the Frisian inhabitants of Heligoland were to a great extent dependent upon the unlawful harvest of the sea.
As for the governor, his office was little more than a sinecure, once the regulations forbidding gaming were enforced. It was said that one of these officials was responsible for the introduction of rabbits upon Sandy Island, in order that his guests might while away the otherwise tedious hours by indulging in a little shooting. To-day, where the twelve-bores of the sportsmen used to bowl over harmless rabbits, enormous Krupp guns, on disappearing mountings, are cunningly concealed in strongly protected pits, for Sandy Island—now known as Sandinsel—has been artificially increased until it is nearly twice as large in extent as Heligoland itself.
Even Heligoland has undergone a complete metamorphosis. The little red sandstone rock, barely three-quarters of a mile in length and a quarter of a mile in breadth, had long been threatened with destruction by the action of the sea. Neglected under British rule, the island seemed fated to be wiped off the map, for after every heavy storm huge masses of sandstone would slide into the raging waters.
But directly Heligoland became a German possession prompt steps were taken to prevent further inroads of the ocean. The worthless rock was destined to be one of the most powerful fortresses in the North Sea, and a perpetual thorn in Britannia's side. Accordingly a massive sea wall of granite was built to encircle the island and baulk the billows of the German Ocean. This done, the work of fortifying the island with modern weapons was begun, and had been rapidly yet secretly carried out.
The British Government was cognizant of the fact that Krupp guns had been mounted, presumably equivalent to the nine-inch weapons. But it did not know that the ordnance consisted chiefly of fifteen-inch guns, conveyed under the most elaborate conditions of secrecy to the island.
His Majesty's Intelligence Department knew of an ammunition tunnel piercing the island from north to west; it knew nothing of the presence of vast artificial caves filled with oil fuel, with discharging pipes capable of supplying a fleet of the largest battleships with crude petroleum in the minimum of time.
The British Admiralty official charts and sailing directions gave the depth of the anchorage in North Haven at less than four and a quarter fathoms anywhere south of a line drawn due east of Nathurn, the northernmost extremity of Heligoland. By the same authority the maximum depth in South Haven, and within a mile of the Unterland, was given as three and three-quarter fathoms. In reality, thanks to strenuous dredging operations between the two islands, a fleet of the deepest-draughted battleships could lie at anchor, protected from all winds by the enormous harbour works that had sprung into existence during the last fifteen or twenty years.