CHAPTER VIII.

The Theory

Davies leaned back and gave a deep sigh, as though he still felt the

relief from some tension. I did the same, and felt the same relief. The

chart, freed from the pressure of our fingers, rolled up with a flip,

as though to say, “What do you think of that?” I have straightened out

his sentences a little, for in the excitement of his story they had

grown more and more jerky and elliptical.

“What about Dollmann?” I asked.

“Of course,” said Davies, “what about him? I didn’t get at much that

night. It was all so sudden. The only thing I could have sworn to from

the first was that he had purposely left me in the lurch that day. I

pieced out the rest in the next few days, which I’ll just finish with

as shortly as I can. Bartels came aboard next morning, and though it

was blowing hard still we managed to shift the _Dulcibella_ to a place

where she dried safely at the midday low water, and we could get at her

rudder. The lower screw-plate on the stern post had wrenched out, and

we botched it up roughly as a makeshift. There were other little

breakages, but nothing to matter, and the loss of the jib was nothing,

as I had two spare ones. The dinghy was past repair just then, and I

lashed it on deck.

“It turned out that Bartels was carrying apples from Bremen to Kappeln

(in this fiord), and had run into that channel in the sands for shelter

from the weather. To-day he was bound for the Eider River, whence, as I

told you, you can get through (by river and canal) into the Baltic. Of

course the Elbe route, by the new Kaiser Wilhelm ship canal, is the

shortest. The Eider route is the old one, but he hoped to get rid of

some of his apples at Tönning, the town at its mouth. Both routes touch

the Baltic at Kiel. As you know, I had been running for the Elbe, but

yesterday’s muck-up put me off, and I changed my mind—I’ll tell you why

presently—and decided to sail to the Eider along with the _Johannes_

and get through that way. It cleared from the east next day, and I

raced him there, winning hands down, left him at Tönning, and in three

days was in the Baltic. It was just a week after I ran ashore that I

wired to you. You see, I had come to the conclusion that _that chap was

a spy_.”

In the end it came out quite quietly and suddenly, and left me in

profound amazement. “I wired to you—that chap was a spy.” It was the

close association of these two ideas that hit me hardest at the moment.

For a second I was back in the dreary splendour of the London

club-room, spelling out that crabbed scrawl from Davies, and

fastidiously criticising its proposal in the light of a holiday.

Holiday! What was to be its issue? Chilling and opaque as the fog that

filtered through the skylight there flooded my imagination a mist of

doubt and fear.

“A spy!” I repeated blankly. “What do you mean? Why did you wire to me?

A spy of what—of whom?”

“I’ll tell you how I worked it out,” said Davies. “I don’t think ‘spy’

is the right word; but I mean something pretty bad.

“He purposely put me ashore. I don’t think I’m suspicious by nature,

but I know something about boats and the sea. I know he could have kept

close to me if he had chosen, and I saw the whole place at low water

when we left those sands on the second day. Look at the chart again.

Here’s the Hohenhörn bank that I showed you as blocking the road. _[See

Chart A]_ It’s in two pieces—first the west and then the east. You see

the Telte channel dividing into two branches and curving round it. Both

branches are broad and deep, as channels go in those waters. Now, in

sailing in I was nowhere near either of them. When I last saw Dollmann

he must have been steering straight for the bank itself, at a point

somewhere _here_, quite a mile from the northern arm of the channel,

and two from the southern. I followed by compass, as you know, and

found nothing but breakers ahead. How did I get through? That’s where

the luck came in. I spoke of only two channels, that is, _round_ the

bank—one to the north, the other to the south. But look closely and

you’ll see that right through the centre of the West Hohenhörn runs

another, a very narrow and winding one, so small that I hadn’t even

noticed it the night before, when I was going over the chart. That was

the one I stumbled into in that tailor’s fashion, as I was groping

along the edge of the surf in a desperate effort to gain time. I bolted

down it blindly, came out into this strip of open water, crossed that

aimlessly, and brought up on the edge of the _East_ Hohenhörn, _here_.

It was more than I deserved. I can see now that it was a hundred to one

in favour of my striking on a bad place outside, where I should have

gone to pieces in three minutes.”

“And how did Dollmann go?” I asked.

“It’s as clear as possible,” Davies answered. “He doubled back into the

northern channel when he had misled me enough. Do you remember my

saying that when I last saw him I _thought_ he had luffed and showed

his broadside? I had another bit of luck in that. He was luffing

towards the north—so it struck me through the blur—and when I in my

turn came up to the bank, and had to turn one way or the other to avoid

it, I think I should naturally have turned north too, as he had done.

In that case I should have been done for, for I should have had a mile

of the bank to skirt before reaching the north channel, and should have

driven ashore long before I got there. But as a matter of fact I turned

south.”

“Why?”

“Couldn’t help it. I was running on the starboard tack—boom over to

port; to turn north would have meant a jibe, and as things were I

couldn’t risk one. It was blowing like fits; if anything had carried

away I should have been on shore in a jiffy. I scarcely thought about

it at all, but put the helm down and turned her south. Though I knew

nothing about it, that little central channel was now on my port hand,

distant about two cables. The whole thing was luck from beginning to

end.”

Helped by pluck, I thought to myself, as I tried with my landsman’s

fancy to conjure up that perilous scene. As to the truth of the affair,

the chart and Davies’s version were easy enough to follow, but I felt

only half convinced. The “spy”, as Davies strangely called his pilot,

might have honestly mistaken the course himself, outstripped his convoy

inadvertently, and escaped disaster as narrowly as she did. I suggested

this on the spur of the moment, but Davies was impatient.

“Wait till you hear the whole thing,” he said. “I must go back to when

I first met him. I told you that on that first evening he began by

being as rude as a bear and as cold as stone, and then became suddenly

friendly. I can see now that in the talk that followed he was pumping

me hard. It was an easy game to play, for I hadn’t seen a gentleman

since Morrison left me, I was tremendously keen about my voyage, and I

thought the chap was a good sportsman, even if he was a bit dark about

the ducks. I talked quite freely—at least, as freely as I could with my

bad German—about my last fortnight’s sailing; how I had been smelling

out all the channels in and out of the islands, how interested I had

been in the whole business, puzzling out the effect of the winds on the

tides, the set of the currents, and so on. I talked about my

difficulties, too; the changes in the buoys, the prehistoric rottenness

of the English charts. He drew me out as much as he could, and in the

light of what followed I can see the point of scores of his questions.

“The next day and the next I saw a good deal of him, and the same thing

went on. And then there were my plans for the future. My idea was, as I

told you, to go on exploring the German coast just as I had the Dutch.

His idea—Heavens, how plainly I see it now!—was to choke me off, get me

to clear out altogether from that part of the coast. That was why he

said there were no ducks. That was why he cracked up the Baltic as a

cruising-ground and shooting-ground. And that was why he broached and

stuck to that plan of sailing in company direct to the Elbe. It was to

_see_ me clear.

“He improved on that.”

“Yes, but after that, it’s guess-work. I mean that I can’t tell when he

first decided to go one better and drown me. He couldn’t count for

certain on bad weather, though he held my nose to it when it came. But,

granted that he wanted to get rid of me altogether, he got a

magnificent chance on that trip to the Elbe lightship. I expect it

struck him suddenly, and he acted on the impulse. Left to myself I was

all right; but the short cut was a grand idea of his. Everything was in

its favour—wind, sea, sand, tide. He thinks I’m dead.”

“But the crew?” I said; “what about the crew?”

“That’s another thing. When he first hove to, waiting for me, of course

they were on deck (two of them, I think) hauling at sheets. But by the

time I had drawn up level the _Medusa_ had worn round again on her

course, and no one was on deck but Dollmann at the wheel. No one

overheard what he said.”

“Wouldn’t they have _seen_ you again?”

“Very likely not; the weather was very thick, and the _Dulce_ is very

small.”

The incongruity of the whole business was striking me. Why should

anyone want to kill Davies, and why should Davies, the soul of modesty

and simplicity, imagine that anyone wanted to kill him? He must have

cogent reasons, for he was the last man to give way to a morbid fancy.

“Go on,” I said. “What was his motive? A German finds an Englishman

exploring a bit of German coast, determines to stop him, and even to

get rid of him. It looks so far as if you were thought to be the spy.

Davies winced. “_But he’s not a German_,” he said, hotly. “He’s an

Englishman.”

“An Englishman?”

“Yes, I’m sure of it. Not that I’ve much to go on. He professed to know

very little English, and never spoke it, except a word or two now and

then to help me out of a sentence; and as to his German, he seemed to

me to speak it like a native; but, of course, I’m no judge.” Davies

sighed. “That’s where I wanted someone like you. You would have spotted

him at once, if he wasn’t German. I go more by a—what do you call

it?—a——”

“General impression,” I suggested.

“Yes, that’s what I mean. It was something in his looks and manner; you

know how different we are from foreigners. And it wasn’t only himself,

it was the way he talked—I mean about cruising and the sea, especially.

It’s true he let me do most of the talking; but, all the same—how can I

explain it? I felt we understood one another, in a way that two

foreigners wouldn’t.

“He pretended to think me a bit crazy for coming so far in a small

boat, but I could swear he knew as much about the game as I did; for

lots of little questions he asked had the right ring in them. Mind you,

all this is an afterthought. I should never have bothered about it—I’m

not cut out for a Sherlock Holmes—if it hadn’t been for what followed.”

“It’s rather vague,” I said. “Have you no more definite reason for

thinking him English?”

“There were one or two things rather more definite,” said Davies,

slowly. “You know when he hove to and hailed me, proposing the short

cut, I told you roughly what he said. I forget the exact words, but

‘abschneiden’ came in—‘durch Watten’ and ‘abschneiden’ (they call the

banks ‘watts’, you know); they were simple words, and he shouted them

loud, so as to carry through the wind. I understood what he meant, but,

as I told you, I hesitated before consenting. I suppose he thought I

didn’t understand, for just as he was drawing ahead again he pointed to

the suth’ard, and then shouted through his hands as a trumpet

‘Verstehen Sie? short-cut through sands: follow me!’ the last two

sentences in downright English. I can hear those words now, and I’ll

swear they were in his native tongue. Of course I thought nothing of it

at the time. I was quite aware that he knew a few English words, though

he had always mispronounced them; an easy trick when your hearer

suspects nothing. But I needn’t say that just then I was observant of

trifles. I don’t pretend to be able to unravel a plot and steer a small

boat before a heavy sea at the same moment.”

“And if he was piloting you into the next world he could afford to

commit himself before you parted! Was there anything else? By the way,

how did the daughter strike you? Did she look English too?”

Two men cannot discuss a woman freely without a deep foundation of

intimacy, and, until this day, the subject had never arisen between us

in any form. It was the last that was likely to, for I could have

divined that Davies would have met it with an armour of reserve. He was

busy putting on this armour now; yet I could not help feeling a little

brutal as I saw how badly he jointed his clumsy suit of mail. Our ages

were the same, but I laugh now to think how old and _blasé_ I felt as

the flush warmed his brown skin, and he slowly propounded the verdict,

“Yes, I think she did.”

“She _talked_ nothing but German, I suppose?”

“Oh, of course.”

“Did you see much of her?”

“A good deal.”

“Was she——,” (how frame it?) “Did she want you to sail to the Elbe with

them?”

“She seemed to,” admitted Davies, reluctantly, clutching at his ally,

the match-box. “But, hang it, don’t dream that she knew what was

coming,” he added, with sudden fire.

I pondered and wondered, shrinking from further inquisition, easy as it

would have been with so truthful a victim, and banishing all thought of

ill-timed chaff. There was a cross-current in this strange affair,

whose depth and strength I was beginning to gauge with increasing

seriousness. I did not know my man yet, and I did not know myself. A

conviction that events in the near future would force us into complete

mutual confidence withheld me from pressing him too far. I returned to

the main question; who was Dollmann, and what was his motive? Davies

struggled out of his armour.

“I’m convinced,” he said, “that he’s an Englishman in German service.

He must be in German service, for he had evidently been in those waters

a long time, and knew every inch of them; of course, it’s a very lonely

part of the world, but he has a house on Norderney Island; and he, and

all about him, must be well known to a certain number of people. One of

his friends I happened to meet; what do you think he was? A naval

officer. It was on the afternoon of the third day, and we were having

coffee on the deck of the _Medusa_, and talking about next day’s trip,

when a little launch came buzzing up from seaward, drew alongside, and

this chap I’m speaking of came on board, shook hands with Dollmann, and

stared hard at me. Dollmann introduced us, calling him Commander von

Brüning, in command of the torpedo gunboat _Blitz_. He pointed towards

Norderney, and I saw her—a low, grey rat of a vessel—anchored in the

Roads about two miles away. It turned out that she was doing the work

of fishery guardship on that part of the coast.

“I must say I took to him at once. He looked a real good sort, and a

splendid officer, too—just the sort of chap I should have liked to be.

You know I always wanted—but that’s an old story, and can wait. I had

some talk with him, and we got on capitally as far as we went, but that

wasn’t far, for I left pretty soon, guessing that they wanted to be

alone.”

“_Were_ they alone then?” I asked, innocently.

“Oh, Fräulein Dollmann was there, of course,” explained Davies, feeling

for his armour again.

“Did he seem to know them well?” I pursued, inconsequently.

“Oh, yes, very well.”

Scenting a faint clue, I felt the need of feminine weapons for my

sensitive antagonist. But the opportunity passed.

“That was the last I saw of him,” he said. “We sailed, as I told you,

at daybreak next morning. Now, have you got any idea what I’m driving

at?”

“A rough idea,” I answered. “Go ahead.”

Davies sat up to the table, unrolled the chart with a vigorous sweep of

his two hands, and took up his parable with new zest.

“I start with two certainties,” he said. “One is that I was ‘moved on’

from that coast, because I was too inquisitive. The other is that

Dollmann is at some devil’s work there which is worth finding out.

Now”—he paused in a gasping effort to be logical and articulate.

“Now—well, look at the chart. No, better still, look first at this map

of Germany. It’s on a small scale, and you can see the whole thing.” He

snatched down a pocket-map from the shelf and unfolded it. _[See Map

A]_ “Here’s this huge empire, stretching half over central Europe—an

empire growing like wildfire, I believe, in people, and wealth, and

everything. They’ve licked the French, and the Austrians, and are the

greatest military power in Europe. I wish I knew more about all that,

but what I’m concerned with is their sea-power. It’s a new thing with

them, but it’s going strong, and that Emperor of theirs is running it

for all it’s worth. He’s a splendid chap, and anyone can see he’s

right. They’ve got no colonies to speak of, and _must_ have them, like

us. They can’t get them and keep them, and they can’t protect their

huge commerce without naval strength. The command of the sea is _the_

thing nowadays, isn’t it? I say, don’t think these are my ideas,” he

added, naïvely. “It’s all out of Mahan and those fellows. Well, the

Germans have got a small fleet at present, but it’s a thundering good

one, and they’re building hard. There’s the——and the——.” He broke off

into a digression on armaments and speeds in which I could not follow

him. He seemed to know every ship by heart. I had to recall him to the

point. “Well, think of Germany as a new sea-power,” he resumed. “The

next thing is, what is her coast-line? It’s a very queer one, as you

know, split clean in two by Denmark, most of it lying east of that and

looking on the Baltic, which is practically an inland sea, with its

entrance blocked by Danish islands. It was to evade that block that

William built the ship canal from Kiel to the Elbe, but that could be

easily smashed in war-time. Far the most important bit of coast-line is

that which lies _west_ of Denmark and looks on the North Sea. It’s

there that Germany gets her head out into the open, so to speak. It’s

there that she fronts us and France, the two great sea-powers of

Western Europe, and it’s there that her greatest ports are and her

richest commerce.

“Now it must strike you at once that it’s ridiculously short compared

with the huge country behind it. From Borkum to the Elbe, as the crow

flies, is only seventy miles. Add to that the west coast of Schleswig,

say 120 miles. Total, say, two hundred. Compare that with the seaboard

of France and England. Doesn’t it stand to reason that every inch of it

is important? Now what _sort_ of coast is it? Even on this small map

you can see at once, by all those wavy lines, shoals and sand

everywhere, blocking nine-tenths of the land altogether, and doing

their best to block the other tenth where the great rivers run in. Now

let’s take it bit by bit. You see it divides itself into three.

Beginning from the west the _first piece_ is from Borkum to

Wangeroog—fifty odd miles. What’s that like? A string of sandy islands

backed by sand; the Ems river at the western end, on the Dutch border,

leading to Emden—not much of a place. Otherwise, no coast towns at all.

_Second piece:_ a deep sort of bay consisting of the three great

estuaries—the Jade, the Weser and the Elbe—leading to Wilhelmshaven

(their North Sea naval base), Bremen, and Hamburg; total breadth of

bay, twenty odd miles only; sandbanks littered about all through it.

_Third piece:_ the Schleswig coast, hopelessly fenced in behind a six

to eight mile fringe of sand. No big towns; one moderate river, the

Eider. Let’s leave that third piece aside. I may be wrong, but, in

thinking this business out, I’ve pegged away chiefly at the other two,

the seventy-mile stretch from Borkum to the Elbe—half of it estuaries,

and half islands. It was there that I found the _Medusa_, and it’s that

stretch that, thanks to him, I missed exploring.”

I made an obvious conjecture. “I suppose there are forts and coast

defences? Perhaps he thought you would see too much. By the way, he saw

your naval books, of course?”

“Exactly. Of course that was my first idea; but it can’t be that. It

doesn’t explain things in the least. To begin with, there _are_ no

forts and can be none in that first division, where the islands are.

There might be something on Borkum to defend the Ems; but it’s very

unlikely, and, anyway, I had passed Borkum and was at Norderney.

There’s nothing else to defend. Of course it’s different in the second

division, where the big rivers are. There are probably hosts of forts

and mines round Wilhelmshaven and Bremerhaven, and at Cuxhaven just at

the mouth of the Elbe. Not that I should ever dream of bothering about

them; every steamer that goes in would see as much as me. Personally, I

much prefer to stay on board, and don’t often go on shore. And, good

Heavens!” (Davies leant back and laughed joyously) “do I _look_ like

that kind of spy?”

I figured to myself one of those romantic gentlemen that one reads of

in sixpenny magazines, with a Kodak in his tie-pin, a sketch-book in

the lining of his coat, and a selection of disguises in his hand

luggage. Little disposed for merriment as I was, I could not help

smiling, too.

“About this coast,” resumed Davies. “In the event of war it seems to me

that every inch of it would be important, _sand and all._ Take the big

estuaries first, which, of course, might be attacked or blockaded by an

enemy. At first sight you would say that their main channels were the

only things that mattered. Now, in time of peace there’s no secrecy

about the navigation of these. They’re buoyed and lighted like streets,

open to the whole world, and taking an immense traffic; well charted,

too, as millions of pounds in commerce depend on them. But now look at

the sands they run through, intersected, as I showed you, by threads of

channels, tidal for the most part, and probably only known to smacks

and shallow coasters, like that galliot of Bartels.

“It strikes me that in a war a lot might depend on these, both in

defence and attack, for there’s plenty of water in them at the right

tide for patrol-boats and small torpedo craft, though I can see they

take a lot of knowing. Now, say _we_ were at war with Germany—both

sides could use them as lines between the three estuaries; and to take

our own case, a small torpedo-boat (not a destroyer, mind you) could on

a dark night cut clean through from the Jade to the Elbe and play the

deuce with the shipping there. But the trouble is that I doubt if

there’s a soul in our fleet who knows those channels. _We_ haven’t

coasters there; and, as to yachts, it’s a most unlikely game for an

English yacht to play at; but it does so happen that I have a fancy for

that sort of thing and would have explored those channels in the

ordinary course.” I began to see his drift.

“Now for the islands. I was rather stumped there at first, I grant,

because, though there are lashings of sand behind them, and the same

sort of intersecting channels, yet there seems nothing important to

guard or attack.

“Why shouldn’t a stranger ramble as he pleases through them? Still

Dollmann had his headquarters there, and I was sure that had some

meaning. Then it struck me that the same point held good, for that

strip of Frisian coast adjoins the estuaries, and would also form a

splendid base for raiding midgets, which could travel unseen right

through from the Ems to the Jade, and so to the Elbe, as by a covered

way between a line of forts.

“Now here again it’s an unknown land to us. Plenty of local galliots

travel it, but strangers never, I should say. Perhaps at the most an

occasional foreign yacht gropes in at one of the gaps between the

islands for shelter from bad weather, and is precious lucky to get in

safe. Once again, it was my fad to like such places, and Dollmann

cleared me out. He’s not a German, but he’s in with Germans, and naval

Germans too. He’s established on that coast, and knows it by heart. And

he tried to drown me. Now what do you think?” He gazed at me long and

anxiously.