WILLIAM LE QUEUX: 15 Dystopian Novels & Espionage Thrillers (Illustrated Edition). William Le Queux
there, the second half having been quietly collected by ships putting in unobserved into such ports as Emden, Bremen, Bremerhaven, and Geestemunde, where there are at least ten miles of deep-sea wharves, with ample railway access. The arrival of these crafts caused no particular comment, but they had already been secretly prepared for the transport of men and horses while at sea.
Under the cover of the Frisian Islands, from every canal, river, and creek had been assembled a huge multitude of flats and barges, ready to be towed by tugs alongside the wharves and filled with troops. Of a sudden, in a single hour it seemed, Hamburg, Altona, Cuxhaven, and Wilhelmshaven were in excited activity, and almost before the inhabitants themselves realised what was really in progress the embarkation had well commenced.
At Emden, with its direct cables to the theatre of war in England, was concentrated the brain of the whole movement. Beneath the lee of the covering screen of Frisian Islands, Borkum, Juist, Norderney, Langebog, and the others, the preparations for the descent upon England rapidly matured.
Troop-trains from every part of the Fatherland arrived with the punctuality of clockwork. From Düsseldorf came the VIIth Army Corps, the VIIIth from Coblenz, the IXth were already assembled at their headquarters at Altona, while many of them being stationed at Bremen embarked from there, the Xth came up from Hanover, the XIVth from Magdeburg, and the Corps of German Guards, the pride and flower of the Kaiser’s troops, arrived eagerly at Hamburg from Berlin and Potsdam, among the first to embark.
Each army corps consisted of about 38,000 officers and men, 11,000 horses, 144 guns, and about 2000 motor-cars, wagons, and carts. But for this campaign — which was more of the nature of a raid than of any protracted campaign — the supply of wheeled transport, with the exception of motor-cars, had been somewhat reduced.
Each cavalry brigade attached to an army corps consisted of 1400 horses and men, with some thirty-five light machine-guns and wagons. The German calculation — which proved pretty correct — was that each army corps could come over to England in 100,000 tons gross of shipping, bringing with them supplies for twenty-seven days in another 3000 tons gross. Therefore about 618,000 tons gross conveyed the whole of the six corps, leaving an ample margin still in German ports for any emergencies. Half this tonnage consisted of about 100 steamers, averaging 3000 tons each, the remainder being the boats, flats, lighters, barges, and tugs previously alluded to.
The Saxons who, disregarding the neutrality of Belgium, had embarked at Antwerp, had seized the whole of the flat-bottomed craft in the Scheldt and the numerous canals, as well as the merchant ships in the port, finding no difficulty in commandeering the amount of tonnage necessary to convey them to the Blackwater and the Crouch.
As hour succeeded hour, the panic increased.
It was now also known that, in addition to the various corps who had effected a landing, the German Guards had, by a sudden swoop into the Wash, got ashore at King’s Lynn, seized the town, and united their forces with Von Kleppen’s corps, who, having landed at Weybourne, were now spread right across Norfolk. This picked corps of Guards was under the command of that distinguished officer the Duke of Mannheim, while the infantry divisions were under Lieutenant-Generals von Castein and Von Der Decken.
The landing at King’s Lynn on Sunday morning had been quite a simple affair. There was nothing whatever to repel them, and they disembarked on the quays and in the docks, watched by the astonished populace. All provisions were seized at shops, including the King’s Lynn and County Stores, the Star Supply Stores, Ladyman’s and Lipton’s in the High Street, while headquarters were established at the municipal buildings, and the German flag hoisted upon the old church, the tower of which was at once used as a signal station.
Old-fashioned people of Lynn peered out of their quiet, respectable houses in King Street in utter amazement, but soon, when the German proclamation was posted, the terrible truth was plain.
In half an hour, even before they could realise it, they had been transferred from the protection of the British flag to the militarism of the German.
The Tuesday Market Place, opposite the Globe Hotel, was one of the points of assembly, and from there and from other open spaces troops of cavalry were constantly riding out of town by the Downham Market and Swaffham Roads. The intention of this commander was evidently to join hands with Von Kleppen as soon as possible. Indeed, by that same evening the Guards and IVth Corps had actually shaken hands at East Dereham.
A few cavalry, mostly Cuirassiers and troopers of the Gardes du Corps, were pushed out across the flat, desolate country over Sutton Bridge to Holbeach and Spalding, while others, moving south-easterly, came past the old Abbey of Crowland, and even to within sight of the square cathedral tower of Peterborough. Others went south to Ely.
Ere sundown on Sunday, stalwart, grey-coated sentries of the Guards Fusiliers from Potsdam and the Grenadiers from Berlin were holding the roads at Gayton, East Walton, Narborough, Markham, Fincham, Stradsett, and Stow Bardolph. Therefore on Sunday night, from Spalding on the east, Peterborough, Chatteris, Littleport, Thetford, Diss, and Halesworth were faced by a huge cavalry screen protecting the landing and repose of the great German Army behind it.
Slowly but carefully the enemy were maturing their plans for the defeat of our defenders and the sack of London.
CHAPTER XII
DESPERATE FIGHTING IN ESSEX
London was at a standstill. Trade was entirely stopped. Shopkeepers feared to open their doors on account of the fierce, hungry mobs parading the streets. Orators were haranguing the crowds in almost every open space. The police were either powerless, or feared to come into collision with the assembled populace. Terror and blank despair were everywhere.
There was unrest night and day. The banks, head offices and branches, unable to withstand the run upon them when everyone demanded to be paid in gold, had, by mutual arrangement, shut their doors, leaving excited and furious crowds of customers outside unpaid. Financial ruin stared everyone in the face. Those who were fortunate enough to realise their securities on Monday were fleeing from London south or westward. Day and night the most extraordinary scenes of frantic fear were witnessed at Paddington, Victoria, Waterloo, and London Bridge. The southern railways were badly disorganised by the cutting of the lines by the enemy, but the Great Western system was, up to the present, intact, and carried thousands upon thousands to Wales, to Devonshire, and to Cornwall.
In those three hot, breathless days the Red Hand of Ruin spread out upon London.
The starving East met the terrified West, but in those moments the bonds of terror united class with mass. Restaurants and theatres were closed, there was but little vehicular traffic in the streets, for of horses there were none, while the majority of the motor ’buses had been requisitioned, and the transit of goods had been abandoned. “The City,” that great army of daily workers, both male and female, was out of employment, and swelled the idlers and gossips, whose temper and opinion were swayed each half-hour by the papers now constantly appearing night and day without cessation.
Cabinet Councils had been held every day, but their decisions, of course, never leaked out to the public. The King also held Privy Councils, and various measures were decided upon. Parliament, which had been hurriedly summoned, was due to meet, and everyone speculated as to the political crisis that must now ensue.
In St. James’s Park, in Hyde Park, in Victoria Park, on Hampstead Heath, in Greenwich Park, in fact, in each of the “lungs of London,” great mass meetings were held, at which resolutions were passed condemning the Administration and eulogising those who, at the first alarm, had so gallantly died in defence of their country.
It was declared that by the culpable negligence of the War Office and the National Defence Committee we had laid ourselves open to complete ruin, both financially and as a nation.
The man-in-the-street already felt