reaching the north channel, and
should have driven ashore long before I got there. But as a matter of
fact I turned south.'

'Why?'

'Couldn't help it. I was running on the starboard tack--boom over to
port; to turn north would have meant a jibe, and as things were I
couldn't risk one. It was blowing like fits; if anything had carried
away I should have been on shore in a jiffy. I scarcely thought about
it at all, but put the helm down and turned her south. Though I knew
nothing about it, that little central channel was now on my port
hand, distant about two cables. The whole thing was luck from
beginning to end.'

Helped by pluck, I thought to myself, as I tried with my landsman's
fancy to conjure up that perilous scene. As to the truth of the
affair, the chart and Davies's version were easy enough to follow,
but I felt only half convinced. The 'spy', as Davies strangely called
his pilot, might have honestly mistaken the course himself,
outstripped his convoy inadvertently, and escaped disaster as
narrowly as she did. I suggested this on the spur of the moment, but
Davies was impatient.

'Wait till you hear the whole thing,' he said. 'I must go back to
when I first met him. I told you that on that first evening he began
by being as rude as a bear and as cold as stone, and then became
suddenly friendly. I can see now that in the talk that followed he
was pumping me hard. It was an easy game to play, for I hadn't seen a
gentleman since Morrison left me, I was tremendously keen about my
voyage, and I thought the chap was a good sportsman, even if he was a
bit dark about the ducks. I talked quite freely--at least, as freely
as I could with my bad German--about my last fortnight's sailing; how
I had been smelling out all the channels in and out of the islands,
how interested I had been in the whole business, puzzling out the
effect of the winds on the tides, the set of the currents, and so on.
I talked about my difficulties, too; the changes in the buoys, the
prehistoric rottenness of the English charts. He drew me out as much
as he could, and in the light of what followed I can see the point of
scores of his questions.

'The next day and the next I saw a good deal of him, and the same
thing went on. And then there were my plans for the future. My idea
was, as I told you, to go on exploring the German coast just as I had
the Dutch. His idea--Heavens, how plainly I see it now!--was to choke
me off, get me to clear o