However, I went back into Southsea, into the town, and there I bought a chart. Then I struck off ranges upon the chart and marked them in pencil, and I also marked the Fairway through Spithead into Portsmouth Harbour. Then I came back to the little man, and I said: "Do look at this!"
He looked at it very patiently and carefully, but at the end of so looking at it he said: "I do not understand these things. I do not belong to the High Map-making Corps; I belong to the Spy Corps, and I have orders to draw this Fort." And he went on drawing the Old Round Stone Fort.
Then, seeing I could not persuade him, I went into a neighbouring church which is dedicated to the Patron of Spies, to wit, St. Judas, and I prayed for this man. I prayed thus:
"Oh, St. Judas! Soften the flinty heart of this Spy, and turn him, by your powerful intercession, from his present perfectly useless occupation of drawing the Old Round Stone Fort to something a little more worthy of his distinguished mission and the gallant profession he adorns."
When I had prayed thus diligently for half an hour something within me told me that it was useless, and when I got back to the seashore I found out what the trouble was. Prayers went off my little man like water off a cabbage-leaf. My little man with hair like hemp was a No-Goddite, for he so explained to me in a conversation we had upon the Four Last Things.
"I have done my drawing," he said at the end of this conversation (and he said it in a tone of great satisfaction). "Now I shall go back to Germany."
"No," said I, "you shall do nothing of the kind. I will have you tried first in a court, and you shall be sent to prison for being a Spy."
"Very well," said he, and he came with me to the court.