“As a Christian I protest. As an officer and a gentleman I must ask you to put me ashore at the first opportunity. They may be Fattish ships which you have destroyed. My King and country need me.”
“Come, come,” interposed Siebenhaar, “your King and country are probably doing very well without you. They have an immense geographical advantage which only the blind jealousy of the Fatters makes it impossible for them to admit. You are already a hero; poems have in all probability been written to your memory. You had better stay with us. It will be much more amusing to see what effect Ultimus has on civilisation than to plunge back into the fever which has seized it.”
The Rear-Admiral looked scornful and very proud and said:
“Herr Siebenhaar, on our previous acquaintance only the protection of the late heroic Mr. Samways prevented me from denouncing you as a Fatter spy. I have not forgotten.”
“What,” asked Ultimus, “is a spy?”
“Spies,” replied Siebenhaar, “are corrupt and useless people who are sent out to frighten a hostile nation by making them think that the enemy knows more about them than they do themselves. They are only used when the desire for war is very strong. They exercise a paralysing effect upon the civil population and deliver them up to the guidance of their own military authorities. They are like microbes which carry the war fever from one country to another. I regret that Sir Charles should have so small an opinion of my intelligence as to think that my country would make so trivial a use of me.”
“I can’t stand all this talk,” muttered the Rear-Admiral, and he went away and all night long paced up and down the sands on the other side of the island, imagining that he was once more serving his King and country on his own quarter-deck.
VII: PLANS
In secret the indomitable servant of his country made himself a boat, a coracle of palm branches and mud, and when, a week later, they came in sight of land and Ultimus put in close to have a good look at it and the little white city built by the mouth of a river, he put off in it without so much as saying good-bye or thank you for the hospitality he had received.
“He will come back,” said Siebenhaar; “he will come and try to annex the island. No Fattish officer can resist an island and the Fattish have been known to waste thousands of lives in order to add a bare rock or a pestilential swamp to their Empire. It is an amiable lunacy which my unhappy race, who cannot appreciate their geographical disadvantage, are trying to emulate. What is the news of the war to-day?”