“No, I have told you all that he told me,” he replied.
“I shouldn't be surprised to hear that his partner was a man named Drake,” said I. “A senior partner too in that transaction and others. But the story is a capital one and show's the Englishman as he is to-day. Why, it was only the year before the war that there was a verse going about,—
'I was playing golf one day
When the Germans landed;
All our men had run away,
All our ships were stranded.
And the thought of England's shame
Almost put me off my game.'”
Our antiquarian friend looked puzzled for some time; then he shook his head gravely, saying:—
“I don't like that. It's a gross libel upon our brave men—and on our noble sailors too: I heard some one say in a speech the other day that there are no better seamen in the world than are in the British Navy. Our soldiers did not run away, and all our ships were not stranded. It was one of the German lies to say so. And what I say is that it was very lucky for the man who wrote that verse that there was a British fleet to prevent the Germans landing. They never did succeed in landing, I'm sure, though I was talking to a man who had it on good authority that there were five U-boats beginning to disembark some crack regiments of Hun cavalry when a British man-o'-war—one, mind you—a single ship—came 'n sight, and they all bundled back to their blessed U-boats hi double quick time.”