“_Were_ they alone then?” I asked, innocently.
“Oh, Fräulein Dollmann was there, of course,” explained Davies, feeling for his armour again.
“Did he seem to know them well?” I pursued, inconsequently.
Scenting a faint clue, I felt the need of feminine weapons for my sensitive antagonist. But the opportunity passed.
“That was the last I saw of him,” he said. “We sailed, as I told you, at daybreak next morning. Now, have you got any idea what I’m driving at?”
Davies sat up to the table, unrolled the chart with a vigorous sweep of his two hands, and took up his parable with new zest.
“I start with two certainties,” he said. “One is that I was ‘moved on’ from that coast, because I was too inquisitive. The other is that Dollmann is at some devil’s work there which is worth finding out. Now”—he paused in a gasping effort to be logical and articulate. “Now—well, look at the chart. No, better still, look first at this map of Germany. It’s on a small scale, and you can see the whole thing.” He snatched down a pocket-map from the shelf and unfolded it. _[See Map A]_ “Here’s this huge empire, stretching half over central Europe—an empire growing like wildfire, I believe, in people, and wealth, and everything. They’ve licked the French, and the Austrians, and are the greatest military power in Europe. I wish I knew more about all that, but what I’m concerned with is their sea-power. It’s a new thing with them, but it’s going strong, and that Emperor of theirs is running it for all it’s worth. He’s a splendid chap, and anyone can see he’s right. They’ve got no colonies to speak of, and _must_ have them, like us. They can’t get them and keep them, and they can’t protect their huge commerce without naval strength. The command of the sea is _the_ thing nowadays, isn’t it? I say, don’t think these are my ideas,” he added, naïvely. “It’s all out of Mahan and those fellows. Well, the Germans have got a small fleet at present, but it’s a thundering good one, and they’re building hard. There’s the——and the——.” He broke off into a digression on armaments and speeds in which I could not follow him. He seemed to know every ship by heart. I had to recall him to the point. “Well, think of Germany as a new sea-power,” he resumed. “The next thing is, what is her coast-line? It’s a very queer one, as you know, split clean in two by Denmark, most of it lying east of that and looking on the Baltic, which is practically an inland sea, with its entrance blocked by Danish islands. It was to evade that block that William built the ship canal from Kiel to the Elbe, but that could be easily smashed in war-time. Far the most important bit of coast-line is that which lies _west_ of Denmark and looks on the North Sea. It’s there that Germany gets her head out into the open, so to speak. It’s there that she fronts us and France, the two great sea-powers of Western Europe, and it’s there that her greatest ports are and her richest commerce.