For the first time that day there came to me a sense of genuine inspiration. Those shallow depths and short distances, fractions of metres and kilometres, which I had overheard from Böhme’s lips at Memmert, and which Davies had attributed to the outside channels—did they refer to a canal? I remembered seeing barges in Bensersiel harbour. I remembered conversations with the natives in the inn, scraps of the post-master’s pompous loquacity, talks of growing trade, of bricks and grain passing from the interior to the islands: from another source—was it the grocer of Wangeroog?—of expansion of business in the islands themselves as bathing resorts; from another source again—von Brüning himself, surely—of Dollmann’s personal activity in the development of the islands. In obscure connexion with these things, I saw the torpedo-boat in the Ems-Jade Canal.
It was between Dornum and Esens that these ideas came, and I was still absorbed in them when the train drew up, just upon nine o’clock, at my destination, and after ten minutes’ walk, along with a handful of other passengers, I found myself in the quiet cobbled streets of Esens, with the great church steeple, that we had so often seen from the sea, soaring above me in the moonlight.
Selecting the very humblest _Gasthaus_ I could discover, I laid down my bundle and called for beer, bread, and _Wurst._ The landlord, as I had expected, spoke the Frisian dialect, so that though he was rather difficult to understand, he had no doubts about the purity of my own German high accent. He was a worthy fellow, and hospitably interested: “Did I want a bed?” “No; I was going on to Bensersiel,” I said, “to sleep there, and take the morning _Postschiff_ to Langeoog Island.” (I had not forgotten our friends the twin giants and their functions.) “I was not an islander myself?” he asked. “No, but I had a married sister there; had just returned from a year’s voyaging, and was going to visit her.” “By the way,” I asked, “how are they getting on with the Benser Tief?” My friend shrugged his shoulders; it was finished, he believed. “And the connexion to Wittmund?” “Under construction still.” “Langeoog would be going ahead then?” “Oh! he supposed so, but he did not believe in these new-fangled schemes.” “But it was good for trade, I supposed? Esens would benefit in sending goods by the ‘tief’—what was the traffic, by the way?” “Oh, a few more barge-loads than before of bricks, timber, coals, etc., but it would come to nothing _he_ knew: _Aktiengesellschaften_ (companies) were an invention of the devil. A few speculators got them up and made money themselves out of land and contracts, while the shareholders they had hoodwinked starved.” “There’s something in that,” I conceded to this bigoted old conservative; “my sister at Langeoog rents her lodging-house from a man named Dollmann; they say he owns a heap of land about. I saw his yacht once—pink velvet and electric light inside, they say——”