7. Tales of Secret Service (11)
A Near Miss and a Necessary Delay
Now Robertson had observed that every day the British frigate which was watching the Greater Belt sent out boats to patrol the narrower waters. Wherefore he walked in leisurely fashion toward a long lonely spit which ran far out into the strait, past whose side he had noted that the boats ran very close inshore. And when he was at its point he began to wag his white handkerchief as a signal, while pretending to be throwing stones for idle amusement. There was a British man-of-war’s boat rowing only a few hundred yards away. Before he had succeeded in attracting its attention, he was startled by receiving a hoarse military challenge in Danish, and finding at his back a soldier who had risen from behind a bank with musket levelled at him. The spot was not unwatched, and a corporal’s guard started out of the ground, and arrested Brother James. As he could not speak a word of their tongue, his explanations were useless, and when he exhibited his passport it turned out that none of the party could read. He had certainly been caught under most suspicious circumstances, so was run into the guardhouse of a Danish regiment quartered a mile or two away.
It says much for the resourcefulness of Brother James that he succeeded in convincing its colonel, who spoke fluent German, that he was a harmless bagman given to pedestrian excursions, who had been caught playing “ducks and drakes” on the Baltic shore. The Danish passport from Lübeck was in perfect order, the bagman was very amusing and apologetic, and the colonel finally told him to run away, and not play silly games before concealed sentries, or he might get shot the next time.
This adventure was a nasty jar, and Brother James made up his mind that, near as the British boats might be, the shore was too well watched. He resolved that he must get back to Hamburg, where he had several threads of communication with Heligoland and Mr. Mackenzie. So he warned the Spaniards that they must wait till they had word through some other envoy that the Baltic Fleet was at hand and ready for them. This would take some days, a fortnight at least, but meanwhile the delay would give them leisure to perfect their whole plan for the “grand review”, and the concentration at Nyborg. His own task was to get as soon as possible in touch with Heligoland and the Baltic Fleet. Sir Richard Keates must be ready in the Great Belt as near as possible to August 7th, with all the shipping that he could collect.
There was no further need for Adam Rohrauer to linger in Nyborg, for he had completed his contract for colonial wares with the Spanish headquarters’ mess, as he assured his landlord, who was inclined to be suspicious. His Jewish fellow-lodger seemed also more inquisitive than ever, so next morning the traveller departed as quietly as he had come. He was not, therefore, an eyewitness of the coup de main of August 7th, and the account of it which he gives in his little book is inaccurate in several particulars. He got back to Hamburg, and sent word by several channels to Mr. Mackenzie that the plan—unspecified, of course—would work. And Mackenzie at once sent light vessels both to London and to Gottenborg in Sweden, which was the base of the British squadron in the Baltic.
Meanwhile Brother James himself struck inland, on one of the unostentatious circular tours which he loved. When the bomb burst in Denmark on August 7th, and British secret agents were being hunted for in every direction, he had to drop his Rohrauer identity and passport. But he slipped from place to place, and was at Erfurt in October, staying in the Scottish monastery there, when Napoleon held his famous interview with Czar Alexander of Russia. We hear of him at Linz, Ratisbon, and Munich; evidently his boast that a priest could go anywhere was perfectly justified. It was not till the autumn of 1809 that he caught the right smuggler at Cuxhaven, and reported himself well and happy, first in Heligoland and then in Downing Street.
Before ending the biography of this humorous and resourceful monk, it is, of course, necessary to explain what happened at Nyborg after his departure. La Romana had lost no time in sending officers of his staff to each of the detached Spanish forces in Jutland and Zeeland, to discover how their commanders would receive the plan. All gave eager assent, save General Kindelan, the brigadier commanding in Jutland, an Irish soldier of fortune, who showed such complete indifference as to King Joseph and King Ferdinand that the officer sent to sound him dropped the topic at once, without disclosing his commission. The colonels under him were dealt with instead, and plans were laid for a simultaneous movement in each cantonment. Meanwhile Mr. Mackenzie had passed on his message to London, and Canning not only ordered the sweeping up of transport, but sent to the Baltic Don Rafael Lobo, an Asturian deputy, who was landed on the isle of Langeland on August 4th, and confirmed to the Spanish regiment there garrisoned all the news that Robertson had brought about the condition of affairs in the Peninsula.
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