CHAPTER XXX
THE STOLEN SUBMARINE
As the full extent of this audacious plot was laid bare before my eyes I had a difficulty in believing in its reality.
I was obliged to remind myself of some of the maneuvres which have marked German statecraft in the recent past, of the forgeries and “reinsurance” treaties of Bismarck, of the patronage extended to Abdul Hamid, of the secret intrigue that brought about the disasters of Greece.
If I had had any scepticism left, the Emperor would have dispelled it by the clear and business-like explanations which followed.
His majesty produced a chart of the North Sea, showing the coasts of Great Britain and Germany, with the Kiel Canal and so forth. Half-way between the opposite shores a dotted outline marked the situation of the great shoals which attract the fish, and from which the harvests of the sea are gathered by the brave and industrious toilers of Grimsby, Hull, and many another port.
From the northern point of Denmark, two lines in red ink were drawn right down the map to where the North Sea narrows into the Straits of Dover.
The first of these lines was fairly direct, passing about thirty miles to the eastward of the great fishing grounds.
The second line took a wide curve to the west, and crossed right over the center of a shoal marked “Dogger Bank.”