In fact, I should leave them
as they are. You had them when you were here before, and Dollmann
knows you had them. If you return without them, it will look queer.'
They were spared.

The English charts, being relatively useless, though more suitable to
our _role_ as English yachtsmen, were to be left in evidence, as
shining proofs of our innocence. It was all delightfully casual, I
could not help thinking. A seven-ton yacht does not abound in (dry)
hiding-places, and we were helpless against a drastic search. If
there _were_ secrets on this coast to guard, and we were suspected as
spies, there was nothing to prevent an official visit and warning.
There need be no prowlers scuttling off when alarmed, unless indeed
it was thought wisest to let well alone, if we _were_ harmless, and
not to arouse suspicions where there were none. Here we lost
ourselves in conjecture. Whose agent was the prowler? If Dollmann's,
did Dollmann know now that the 'Dulcibella' was safe, and back in the
region he had expelled her from? If so, was he likely to return to
the policy of violence? We found ourselves both glancing at the duck
guns strung up under the racks, and then we both laughed and looked
foolish. 'A war of wits, and not of duck guns,' I opined. 'Let's look
at the chart.'

[Illustration: Map B of East Friesland.]

The reader is already familiar with the general aspect of this
singular region, and I need only remind him that the mainland is that
district of Prussia which is known as East Friesland. It is a _[See
Map B]_ short, flat-topped peninsula, bounded on the west by the Ems
estuary and beyond that by Holland, and on the east by the Jade
estuary; a low-lying country, containing great tracts of marsh and
heath, and few towns of any size; on the north side none. Seven
islands lie off the coast. All, except Borkum, which is round, are
attenuated strips, slightly crescent-shaped, rarely more than a mile
broad, and tapering at the ends; in length averaging about six miles,
from Norderney and Juist, which are seven and nine respectively, to
little Baltrum, which is only two and a half.

Of the shoal spaces which lie between them and the mainland,
two-thirds dry at low-water, and the remaining third becomes a system
of lagoons whose distribution is controlled by the natural drift of
the North Sea as it forces its way through the intervals between the
islands. Each of these intervals resembles the bar of a river, and is
obstructed