Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3815/A Determined Island
I continue this record of our daily lives at Totland Bay on August 12th. Before it appears in Mr. Punch's columns great and decisive events may have happened, but at present, except for such slight distractions as I shall relate, we are still calm and peaceful. When we think or speak of Belgium our faces glow, and we are all resolved, should the need arise, to do as Belgium has done, and to do it in the same resolute and unconquerable spirit. In the meantime we rush for the newspapers with a constantly increasing eagerness. At about 11 a.m. the whole of Totland Bay is filled with people reading their papers in the open air. Everybody bumps into everybody else, but nobody minds. A gentleman the other day set out in a canoe and read the morning's news to a party of swimmers, who appeared to be much invigorated by what they heard.
On Sunday night, just as we had finished dinner, we suddenly heard the report of a great gun from the fort at the Needles. The explosion was followed by three plaintive answering notes from a fog-horn. "They're firing at a ship," said someone, and out we all rushed to the nearest vantage-point, and even as we ran another gun went off and again the fog-horn answered with its bleat. The searchlights were striking great shafts of light along the Solent, and far away their beams outlined the shape of a big ship. She was still advancing on her course, when—Bang! another violent explosion shattered the the night. This time it came from the fort just over the pier of Totland Bay. The echoes reverberated and rumbled, and the shot tore past close to the ship. Now she took the warning. There were no more appeals from the fog-horn. Slowly she turned and disappeared into the darkness. Possibly she had been at sea for a long time and knew nothing of the war. How she must have marvelled at this strange and dreadful welcome from the Isle of Wight. We went to our beds that night with a feeling of perfect security.
On land, too, we have had our excitements. Yesterday afternoon, when the heather-clad slopes of Headon Hill were crowded with picnickers, there was a sudden alarm of spies. Some men, reported to have been conversing in German, were to have been peering into cracks in the ground and otherwise behaving in a most suspicious manner. The alarm was given, and almost instantly, springing as it were from the very bowels of the earth, came some half-dozen soldiers running with rifles and fixed bayonets. Amid the shouts of the children they spread about the heather in their hunt, but nothing came of it, for the "spies," though they were caught, turned out to be some Italians resident in Totland Bay and fervently British in their sympathies.
I mentioned last week that we had a children's maid, a German, in our household. Since then, in obedience to the Act, she has been registered as an "alien enemy." I took her by train to Newport for that purpose. On arriving the station I hailed a fly. "Where to, Sir?" said the driver. To the police-station," I answered, and the man broke out into a a grin. "It isn't a serious offence," I added, but I doubt if he believed me. At the police-station, however, they were quite prepared for us, and in a a very few minutes Maria Hasewitz—that is her eminently German name—had had all the particulars of her birth-place, her age, her height, and her personal appearance entered on a blue form by a jocose and affable sergeant. "Brown eyes, I think," said the sergeant; "height, five feet four inches; no beard or moustache, ha-ha. Now sign here and make a mark with your left thumb in this space. That'll pin you down; no escape after that, ha-ha." He produced a board covered with some black sticky substance, dabbed her thumb in it, dabbed it hard on the paper, and, lo, Maria Hasewitz had been registered and had undertaken not to move five miles from Totland Bay without a special permit.
At present this particular alien enemy is engaged, together with all the other available female members of the household, in making pyjamas for our soldiers. Wonderful deeds are being done all round me with scissors and needle and thread. A sewing-machine has been requisitioned. Button-holes are being manufactured with immense expedition. A good deal of "basting" is being got through. In my illimitable ignorance I had had hitherto imagined that basting was something that you did to a joint of meat with a big ladle and some gravy. If you did it sufficiently the joint came our succulent, if not it become dry and you abused the butcher. However, we live and learn. Part, at any rate, of three suits of pyjamas that are to go to the Red Cross to-day has been severely and completely basted without either gravy or a ladle.
R. C. L.