“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.