Outside we joined Davies, who was knitting his brow over prospects.
“It just comes of going into places like this,” he said to me. “We may be stuck here for days. Too much wind to tow out with the dinghy, and too narrow a channel to beat in.”
Von Brüning was ready with a new proposal.
“Why didn’t I think of it before?” he said. “I’ll tow you out in my launch. Be ready at 6.30; we shall have water enough then. My men will send you a warp.”
It was impossible to refuse, but a sense of being personally conducted again oppressed me; and the last hope of a bed in the inn vanished. Davies was none too effusive either. A tug meant a pilot, and he had had enough of them.
“He objects to towage on principle,” I said.
“Just like him!” laughed the other. “That’s settled, then!” A dogcart was standing before the inn door in readiness for von Brüning. I was curious about Esens and his business there. Esens, he said, was the principal town of the district, four miles inland.
“I have to go there,” he volunteered, “about a poaching case—a Dutchman trawling inside our limits. That’s my work, you know—police duty.”
Had the words a deeper meaning?
“Do you ever catch an Englishman?” I asked, recklessly.