"Usually about four."
"Did you always deliver, here, to the same mine-layer?"
"No; that was as it happened. Sometimes to one boat, sometimes to another."
"How many mines could your craft carry?"
As this agreed with the information supplied by Ensign Andrews, Dave believed that the seaman was telling the truth.
"Did your craft always come to these same waters to deliver mines to mine-layers?"
"Always, since I have been aboard, to some one of the shoals in this stretch of them," replied the sailor.
"Do you know how many mine-layers wait over here on the English side to have mines delivered to them?"
"No, but they are not so many."