Our Adventure with the Danube River-Police

by Algernon Blackwood

In July of last year, while travelling down the Danube in a flat-bottomed boat, an adventure befell us that I am sure will long live in the memories of all who took part in it. Certainly, the impudent Bavarian who was the central figure in it (as well as the deserving victim) is not likely to forget it in a hurry, or to repeat an experiment that cost him dear in the eyes of his companions, and secured him an unwelcome dousing in the river into the bargain!

Our party consisted of four persons, two ladies and two men; and we steered our own boat, put up our tents on the shores wherever we happened to find ourselves at nightfall, and cooked our own meals in the most approved camping fashion.

We were three weeks on the river all told, and by the time we reached Buda-pesth we had travelled a good many hundred miles from our starting-point; but, although there are rapids and whirlpools and one or two nasty bridges to negotiate for a small boat, we accomplished the journey without serious misadventure, and the only time we came into unpleasant conflict with the natives was on the occasion of the incident which I am about to describe.

Having already been down the Danube before (as told in the B.O.P. two years ago), we “knew the ropes” pretty well, and remembered that there were certain things it was just as well to bear in mind. And one of these was that all the way down a narrow strip of the banks on both sides belongs to the German Government; no private property can run down quite to the river’s edge as it does, of course, on the Thames. This ensures the banks being kept in good repair, and the rule is probably intended in case of war; but the important thing for campers like ourselves was that the only people who had the right to interfere with our tents and nightly bivouacs were the police⁠—die Polizei. No mere private individual or gamekeeper could ever turn us off.

On previous trips, when we camped too near the towns, die Polizei often came to ask us what our business was. Often, too, they were very disagreeable and troublesome, poking about in our tents, searching through our kit in the boat, evidently suspicious that we were spies of some kind. Sometimes they asked if we were gypsies (for in Germany and Austria the gypsies are very numerous and troublesome, and the law does not allow them to camp for more than a single night in any one place); and sometimes⁠—very rarely⁠—they grasped the fact that we were merely a party of quiet Englander enjoying a holiday. But in every case we had learned that our best plan was to be very polite and quiet with them, to show them our things readily, and to answer all their (often stupid) questions without demur, because if we made them angry they had the nght to arrest us, to seize our baggage, and to hold us in the local lockup until by one way or another we had proved to their satisfaction that we were really what we said we were⁠—innocent holidaymakers. Of course, nothing serious could have happened to us, but the delay would have been extremely annoying, and the night in the village lockup, instead of under the stars, would have been, no doubt, too horrible to contemplate!

This year we had got a long way down the river from Ulm (Bavaria), and had enjoyed a dozen camps unmolested by anyone, so that we began to think we should escape visits from die Polizei altogether perhaps. The river was in flood and we travelled very fast, and took pains to camp as far away from towns and villages as possible, so that our fires and our little white tents should not attract attention.

This, however, was not always possible, and one night we were fairly caught. All day long a head wind had delayed us, and made paddling a weariness to the flesh. The map showed a long string of villages for a dozen miles or more, no one village being far enough from the next one to ensure a really safe and quiet camp. Then, for a mile or two, the current slowed down too, and this sealed our fate definitely, for it meant that we could not hope to get free of the villages before dark. And, after dark, no man in his senses would care to paddle down a river like the Danube in flood.

So we made the best of a bad job and, choosing the most deserted bit of ground we could find, we pitched our camp a short hour before sunset on the right bank, and made cosy for the night. Opposite us, on the other shore, were the houses of a long, straggling village, but, though the river was swift and as much as three-quarters of a mile wide, there was a rope-ferry, which enabled people to go to and fro without much difficulty. Thus, although our own bank was deserted⁠—consisting of fields and rows of willow-bushes close to the water⁠—we did not feel very secure from interruption.

We made a small fire for cooking, put up one tent for the ladies to sleep in, and hauled the boat high up the shingly shore to be safe in case the river rose farther in the night. My cousin and myself decided not to put up our own tent, but to use it as a sleeping-bag We often did this on hot nights, and very easy it was. By spreading our cork mattresses on one side of the tent, we could draw the other side over us lke a blanket. It was waterproof and kept out the dew, and was so large that we had far more room to turn about in than if the tent were standing. It made a giant sleeping-bag.

Wood was rather scarce, and we had to hunt about a good deal to collect enough to make the fire last till bedtime, but otherwise there was nothing against the camp, and it was no worse and no better than a dozen others.

Just before reaching this place we had passed a large quarry in the hills, and now, as we cooked our evening meal, we saw the men coming home from their work on the opposite shore. They passed along in straggling fashion for the best part of an hour, and some of them, seeing our smoke, shouted to us across the water and asked us laughingly if we had got leave to camp. One man in particular stood for a long time and shouted at us. He asked if we had the necessary papers and passports, and what we should have to say when the police came to turn us off, and a lot more besides that the great width of the river only just enabled us to hear. Naturally, we took no notice of any of them, but just went on with our cooking as though we did not hear them, and when the dusk came down and hid the opposite shore in shadows, they all moved on to the little inn half a mile lower down and left us in peace. We felt sure, however, that we had not seen the end of them.

“They’ll come across and pay us a visit after supper,” said my cousin, “if only for curiosity, and to see who we are and what we’re doing.”

“Probably,” I made answer. “We’ve camped too near the ferry. But they won’t stay long. Those fellows work too hard, and have to get up too early in the morning to sit up late.”

And come they did, though not exactly in the way we meant.

It was about nine o’clock when we first heard steps on the grass behind our camp. The ferry was round the bend of the river, just out of sight, and we had not seen it come across, but we found out later that it had brought over a load of a dozen men, most of whom were at that minute standing behind the willow-bushes watching us as we lay smoking and chatting round the camp fire. It was difficult for us to see anything outside the circle of the blazing wood.

“Hulloa!” exclaimed my cousin, “here they are at last!”

We all looked up and saw a couple of men enter the circle of light. The one in front was a fine-looking fellow, who held himself like an officer; he had a red beard and was smartly dressed, and he was followed closely by another man in a sort of peasant’s overall. The man with the red beard drew his heels together with snap and saluted.

“Good evening,” he said in German. “Have you got your papers of identification? Kindly show them.”

“It’s the police,” whispered my cousin’s wife, turning to her husband, who, suspecting nothing, began laboriously to produce his passport from the leather pocket of his belt. He handed it across the fire to the man, who stooped down and held it close to the flames for inspection.

At first, apparently, he could rot make head or tail of it, for he turned it over and over, upside down and sideways, in his endeavour to decipher the English sentences; but a passport, especially one that has been much viséd, is a formidable-looking document, and a local country policeman who had never seen one before might well be excused for being somewhat puzzled what to make of it. The man studied it for some minutes in silence.

“It’s a passport,” I explained in German, “signed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and viséd by the consuls of the various countries we have passed through.”

The red-bearded man looked up sharply.

“It’s not sufficient,” he said. “You must produce something more than this. This does not identify you.”

The tone in which he spoke betrayed at once that he wished to make things awkward for us, and that he had come with that intention. At the same time something about his voice and manner roused my suspicions. In almost every case previously the police had been amply satisfied with a passport. It rather impressed them as a rule. This man was so very quick to object and find fault, and for some reason it struck me as a little overdone.

“We are English people,” I explained, “and we are making a holiday trip down the river to Buda-pesth. These papers are all we have, and they have always been held sufficient by the police everywhere. What more do you want?”

The man turned with a quick look to his companion who stood close behind him, and said something in patois we could not understand. The second man shrugged his shoulders.

“This paper is not enough,” he said brusquely, standing upright and fixing me with his eye. “It does not tell sufficient about you. You cannot travel here⁠—in this part of Bavaria⁠—without proper papers. I fear it will be my duty to hold you till the Commissaire comes up from Regensburg. I regret it, but I cannot let you pass. You would only be stopped at Regensburg, even if I did.”

This time the man had said too much. He had quite overdone his part. I knew the police at Regensburg from the experiences of a former trip. They were the most polite and reasonable people in the world, and, instead of asking for papers, they volunteered all sorts of useful information about the river, with advice where to camp, and what dangerous rapids to look out for, etc. I was quite certain then that the man’s sole object was to extort a good fat tip on the plea of allowing us to proceed. And the group of men standing on the grass behind were watching the fun. They were the quarrymen who had seen us pass in the afternoon, and had shouted across the river to us. When we had paid the ten marks to be left in peace they would retire to the inn and roar over their successful joke with unlimited beer and sausages at our expense.

At the moment, however, I did not feel positive of my suspicions. It was never wise to be too certain in a foreign country.

“Are you from the police?” I asked suddenly.

“Of course I am,” he said with a snap.

“But the police wear uniform. I know them well. They are always very polite and intelligent, whereas you⁠—you have no uniform at all,” I said.

“I belong to the Strand Polizei (river police), who are always in plain clothes,” he answered, quick as a flash.

The answer came a little too pat, and made me suspect a lesson carefully learned in the beer-room of the inn where the plot had been hatched. But, of course, I could not be sure yet of my suspicions.

“I have been down the Danube before,” I said, “and have made friends with the police all the way down; but I never heard of the Strand Polizei before.”

“Our duties are to watch the banks and to prevent trespassing, and see that no damage is done. Fires, for instance”⁠—here he pointed to ours⁠—“are not permitted at all. And your explanation of a holiday trip is not enough. It will be my duty to detain you.”

“Rot! Tommyrot!” I heard my cousin whisper in my ear, and, indeed, all that the man said was so utterly contrary to our former experience with the police, that I now felt more certain than ever it was all a clumsy plot to get money out of us.

“All right,” I said, “then if you wish to arrest us you are at liberty to do so. We have shown our papers and given sufficient explanation. You can take the risk of holding us if you wish. We are quite at your disposal.”

The man stared hard at me for a moment, as though hardly knowing what to say. His companion muttered something in patois of which the only word I caught was “Regensburg.” (Regensburg was a couple of miles farther down the river.)

“Precisely,” he said at length; “I must detain you here while I go back across the river to telephone to my Commissaire at Regensburg. He will send me instructions what to do with you⁠—” His change of plan, though very quick and adroit, of course, did not escape us.

“Better hurry up, or he may have taken his hot bath and gone to bed,” interrupted my cousin, but in such bad German that the man did not understand, and evidently imagined that his words had produced the desired impression of alarm.

“Only I must first examine your boat,” he added, and moved down towards the bank. I then noticed for the first time that he walked unsteadily. He had evidently been drinking.

“You will do nothing of the sort,” I said, jumping up and moving in front of him. “You are no more a policeman than I am. You have shown no proof of your identity. You have produced no papers.”

The shot told. The red-bearded man and his companion hesitated a moment, measuring myself and my cousin who stood before them with their eyes. The sight of two six-foot Englishmen, perhaps, did not invite an attempt at violence. Anyhow, they did nothing. The fact that they made no effort to arrest us themselves, but pretended they must wait instructions from their chief, convinced me finally beyond all possible doubt that they were humbugs.

“I shall go at once and telephone to Regensburg,” said the man, though with much less assurance, “and later we shall come back together and arrest you.”

“We shall expect you when we see you,” I made reply with a laugh, “and what is more, I shall report, to the Regensburg police that two of the workmen from the quarry came to our camp and impersonated the police and made threats. I shall describe you so that you will be easily recognised.”

“Good night,” said the man, saluting, and paying no attention to my words. “Good night; we shall be back again in a couple of hours, and you will be arrested.” And they were gone, my cousin and I following them at a distance through the darkness, and just making out the group of men that joined them behind the willow bushes and made off to the ferry with them.

For another half-hour we heard their voices, growing fainter and fainter as they floated to us across the river. We heard the booming sound the great wooden ferry made as it landed on the rocks, and then the voices and shouting of the men died away as they returned to their beer in the inn and discussed the details of a plot that failed.

“We shan’t see him again,” I said with a laugh, as I piled the wood on for a final blaze before turning in. “And his pals will make endless fun of him, I expect, for playing his cards so badly. No doubt they expected at least a twenty-mark piece.”

But when, half an hour later, the women-folk had gone to their tent, and my cousin and I were sitting round the dying embers for a last pipe he turned to me and said suggestively:

“I think we ought to sleep with one eye open tonight, don’t you?” He jerked his head in the direction of the opposite bank, where the sounds of the men’s voices at the inn were still faintly audible.

“You think they’ll try something else on?” I asked. “You think they might come back, perhaps?”

“Not with the police, of course; that was all humbug, but out of revenge they’d play us a trick if they could.”

“I suppose they feel rather foolish, yes. Still, I hardly see what they could do.”

“I shall sleep in my clothes all the same,” he said, “to be ready for them if they do come.”

So that night we both crawled into our great cosy sleeping-bag with all our clothes on. There was no danger of the fire spreading, and for some time we watched the glow it threw on the leaves of the willow bushes. The sky was cloudless and a crescent moon hung over the tops of the hills across the river. We heard the dull roar of the rushing water at our feet and looked up at the stars, thinking of our journey on the following day. Already the outside cover of our tent was wet with dew, and a dozen yards away we saw the white shape of the other tent glistening faintly in the last rays of the moon before it sank below the hills. A dreadful sleepiness came over me. It was all very well to talk of sleeping with one eye open; that is easier said than done after twelve strenuous hours in the open air, and before eleven o’clock sounded from the church tower across the river I had slipped away into the regions of utter forgetfulness, and was so soundly asleep that I think nothing short of a tidal wave or a cannonball whizzing over the willow bushes behind could have made me stir a muscle.

The next thing I knew was that something warm and soft lay tightly over my mouth. I struggled and sat up. It was my cousin’s hand. His face was close to mine in the darkness.

“Hush,” he whispered softly, “don’t make a sound. There’s somebody about the camp.”

In an instant my senses were alert and I was wide awake.

“Those fellows have come back?” I whispered. And he nodded his head by way of reply. “I think so,” he said under his breath. “I’ve heard movements for some time. There’s someone quite close.”

The night was very dark, for the moon had disappeared below the hills and there was only the light of the stars. We lay still and listened, and after a bit my eyes got more accustomed to the gleam, and I made out the line of hills and the outline of the other tent. The fire had long since gone out. It was after two in the morning.

Almost immediately I heard sounds of rustling in the willow bushes behind us, and the same-minute two dark forms moved stealthily out and stood looking down at us a few feet away. We lay absolutely still. The men were evidently waiting to see that we were asleep, for after several minutes’ inspection they moved past us on tiptoe, and made their way down very softly towards the river. My companion nudged me under the blankets, and approached his head cautiously towards mine.

“They’re going to the boat,” he whispered, and then lay stock still again with a quick “Look out!” in my ear, for a third figure issued at the same moment from the trees, and walked close past us after the other two. Our movement, however, had been so slight that in the darkness the man had failed to note it, and the figure disappeared among the shadows of the river edge. Then followed a slight rattling noise as though the chain that held the boat was being very carefully moved over the shingle.

My cousin leaned over quickly and whispered again in my ear.

“They’re going to steal the boat,” he said. “Grab a stick, and let’s make a rush at them. Hit anything you see and shout at the top of your voice. We’ll scare the impudent rascals to death.”

The same second we both leaped out of our blankets. My cousin seized the heavy six-foot paddle which always lay beside us in the night, and I grabbed the first thing I could find in the darkness⁠—a stout iron rod, with a hook at one end and a sharp point at the other. It was the iron rod we used to hang the kettles over the fire, and a very formidable weapon indeed.

Thus armed, we ran down in the direction of the boat, shouting lustily with a noise to wake the dead. And at the same instant the women in the other tent (who, it appeared, had heard the sounds for some time and were thoroughly frightened) put their heads out of the door-flaps and sent a series of high-pitched and wild screams into the night that woke the echoes from the opposite hills, and must have made all who heard them think that at least murder was being done. I never heard such a sudden burst of sound as the combined noise of our shouting and their screaming, and to think of it to this day makes me roar with laughter.

What the men thought I have no conception. Everything happened so quickly, and there was such a scurrying of feet over the shingle and up towards the shelter of the bushes, that in the darkness it was impossible to know what was going on or who was who. I only know that we saw the three men on the edge of the river by our boat, and that two of them who stood pushing her off into the water, stopped, caught in the act, and dashed past us like winged shadows, but very noisy and frightened shadows! And that as they tore past us my cousin raised his huge paddle and caught one of them such a crack in the back that the sound of it lives in my memory to this day.

The force of the swing, however, upset his balance, and as he lay struggling on the shingle, the second man tripped and fell across him, so that for several seconds I was afraid to use my iron hook for fear of hitting my cousin instead of the rascally thief. In a few seconds, however, they disentangled themselves, and the first German ruffian was on his feet and away, and though I was too late to sting up the second one in the back as I should have liked to do, I was just in the nick of time to catch his flying foot with the hook end of my iron, so that he landed upon his face with a crash that must have loosened every tooth in his head.

In a second he was up again, and in another second down again, for the hook caught the same foot⁠—by pure luck, for it was too dark, and I was too flustered to aim correctly⁠—and he sprawled on the stones, puffing and shouting in his unintelligible patois, as though all the demons from the underworld were after him. The third time, however, he got up again with such a terrific spring in his terror, and made so furious a lunge forward, that the force and weight of his leg drew the iron out of my hand, and I heard him thrashing away down the stony beach, with the rod clanking and rattling at his heels, until at last he got free of its clutch, and made off over the fields in final escape.

The second man, meanwhile, had made good his escape into the darkness without a scratch, and at that minute, to our great delight, the women-folk came running down from their tent with a couple of lanterns. They had recovered from their fright at the sound of our laughter, and had pluckily done the very thing that was best. And the first thing we saw in the glare of the two lanterns was the figure of the red-bearded man standing sheepishly and foolishly in the boat, unable to escape past us by the shore, and equally unable to escape by way of the river, because the chain was still fast to the pegs that held it to the bank.

For a second we all stood and stared at him. Then, with a shout, my cousin dashed into the boat, and, talking the worst German I have ever heard in the whole course of my life, explained to the man that he was a rascal and a thief, and that we had caught him in the act of stealing, and he must now accept the consequences of his acts.

The man said no word in reply. He made one dash for the shore-end of the boat, but my cousin was too quick for him, and had him round the waist in a twinkling. A second later that red-bearded German was dipped, struggling, fighting, kicking, shouting, spluttering, into the cold water of the rushing Danube. I stood by ready to help if necessary, but my cousin was far more than a match for the beery Teuton and needed no assistance, so that I stood on the bank holding the lantern and shaking with laughter till I thought I should drop.

Three times he went under the water, and three times came up gasping and spitting, and would doubtless have undergone his well-earned punishment a fourth time, but for the intervention of my cousin’s wife, who was so afraid that the man would slip from the arms that held him and be drowned, that she begged her husband to desist.

“Now you’ve had your bath you may go,” he shouted at him; but the grammar was so bad that the wretched man did not understand what was meant, and evidently thought something more was in store for him. My cousin accordingly took him by the hand and led his dripping figure off the boat, and pointing towards the ferry (where, doubtless, lay the boat that had brought them all across) told him to get home to bed as quickly as he could.

“And tomorrow,” I added, “we shall inform the police at Regensburg of your wickedness, for you not only impersonated the police, with the clear intention getting money, but you also deliberately came back to steal our boat in the night.”

The man went off with a sploshy sound of dripping clothes, his boots making & noise like sponges, and was soon lost in the darkness.

By this time all desire to sleep had left us. There was a faint red glow in the east already, and the morning air was fresh and cool.

“Let’s make coffee and strike camp,” I suggested, and all agreed.

An hour later, under the grey dawn, we were whizzing again down the swift Danube, and two hours more saw us watching the sunrise several miles below Regensburg; for we considered that, on the whole, the red-bearded man had been sufficiently punished, and we did not land to inform the police as we had threatened. We learn later, however, that there is no such thing at all as the Strand Polizei, and that if any man along the river shores came up and pretended to belong to the police the proper thing to do was to ask him to show his Polizei Anweta (police badge), without which “none are genuine.”