"Then you think that the Antinous and the Antigone were both damaged by the same man, and that he may have designs upon the Malplaquet?" said I.
"I don't propose to tell you what I think," replied Dawson stiffly.
"Still," I persisted, passing over the snub, "you have a theory?"
"No, thanks," said Dawson contemptuously. "I have no use for theories. When they are wrong they mislead you, and when they are right they are no help. I believe in facts—facts brought out by constant vigilance. Unsleeping watchfulness and universal suspicion, those are the principles I work on. The theory business makes pretty story books, but the Force does not waste good time over them."
"What are you going to do?"
"This is Thursday afternoon. I am going to join the Malplaquet presently, and I'm not going to sleep till she is safely down the river. I'm going to be my own watchman this time."
"How? In what capacity?"
Dawson gave a shrug of impatience, for his nerves were on edge. For a moment he hesitated, and then, recollecting the high post to which I had tacitly been appointed in his household, he replied:
"I am going as one of the Marine sentries."
"It's no use, Dawson," protested I emphatically. "You are a wonder at disguise, and will look, I do not doubt, the very spit of a Marine. But you can't pass among the men for half an hour without discovery. They are a class apart, they talk their own language, cherish their own secret traditions, live in a world to which no stranger ever penetrates. You could pass as a naval officer more easily than you could as a Pongo. It is sheer madness, Dawson."