With growing excitement, for I felt certain that, this time, my deductions were not at fault, I read on:—
"Flash, flash, much
"The garrison of Kiel"
This absolutely defeated me and I passed on.
"With the compass is best
"Think of the Feast of Orders"
Der Ordensfest! Unconsciously, as I repeated the words to myself, the clean white panels of the cabin melted away, and there rose before my mind a dim picture, a study in grey, an outdoor scene across which swept the wintry wind with biting blast.... A leaden sky, grey buildings, their roofs deep-thatched with snow, and grey-clad troops, masses of them, set about a vast square. It was a blurred picture with, here and there, a detail clear, the rime glistening on an officer's pelisse, the plume of a helmet blown out in the icy breeze.... Ah! I had it! Berlin.... The Feast of Orders, with the annual ceremony of the so-called nailing of the Colours. I had seen it once, that famous winter parade, as a boy when my brother Francis and I had been on a visit to a cousin of ours, who was secretary at the Berlin Embassy....
But what did it mean in this connection? What had the Feast of Orders, the annual bestowal on the old Prussian bureaucracy of thousands of crosses and stars and medals, as an economical substitute for increases in salary, what had it to do with a compass?
Then it came to me with a flash.... A compass argued a compass bearing, and this bearing was there concealed in this phase! "Der Ordensfest!" Stay! The date. What was the date? And that came back to me too.... January 27th, "Kaisers Geburtstag," the Emperor's birthday.
By Jove! At last a beam of light was piercing the darkness.
Those two lines meant indubitably: "Take a compass bearing of 27 degrees!"
The next two lines:—