partly a confession. Last night I had made
up my mind to say nothing, but when Bartels turned up I knew it must
all come out. It's been fearfully on my mind, and perhaps you'll be
able to help me. But it's for you to decide.'

'Fire away!' I said.

'You know what I was saying about the Frisian Islands the other day?
A thing happened there which I never told you, when you were asking
about my cruise.'

'It began near Norderney,' I put in.

'How did you guess that?' he asked.

'You're a bad hand at duplicity,' I replied. 'Go on.'

'Well, you're quite right, it was there, on 9th September. I told you
the sort of thing I was doing at that time, but I don't think I said
that I made inquiries from one or two people about duck-shooting, and
had been told by some fishermen at Borkum that there was a big
sailing-yacht in those waters, whose owner, a German of the name of
Dollmann, shot a good deal, and might give me some tips. Well, I
found this yacht one evening, knowing it must be her from the
description I had. She was what is called a "barge-yacht", of fifty
or sixty tons, built for shallow water on the lines of a Dutch
galliot, with lee-boards and those queer round bows and square stern.
She's something like those galliots anchored near us now. You
sometimes see the same sort of yacht in English waters, only there
they copy the Thames barges. She looked a clipper of her sort, and
very smart; varnished all over and shining like gold. I came on her
about sunset, after a long day of exploring round the Ems estuary.
She was lying in--'

'Wait a bit, let's have the chart,' I interrupted.

Davies found it and spread it on the table between us, first pushing
back the cloth and the breakfast things to one end, where they lay in
a slovenly litter. This was one of the only two occasions on which I
ever saw him postpone the rite of washing up, and it spoke volumes
for the urgency of the matter in hand.

'Here it is,' said Davies _[See Map A]_ and I looked with a new and
strange interest at the long string of slender islands, the parallel
line of coast, and the confusion of shoals, banks, and channels which
lay between. 'Here's Norderney, you see. By the way, there's a
harbour there at the west end of the island, the only real harbour on
the whole line of islands, Dutch or German, except at Terschelling.
There's quite a big town there, too, a watering place, where Germans
go for sea-bathing in the summer. Well, the 'Medusa