I trust Juan de Maestre, but
because he couldn't have invented the information. He hasn't the
knowledge."

Lopez Baeza agreed.

"Juan de Maestre is keeping faith with us," he said shortly, and, to the
judgment of Lopez Baeza, Hillyard had learnt to incline a ready ear.

"This is the real thing, Hillyard," said Fairbairn, pulling at his
moustache. "Look!"

He handed to Martin a chart. The points of the compass were marked in a
corner. Certain courses and routes were given, and fixed lights
indicated by which the vessel might be guided. There was a number of
patches as if to warn the navigator of shallows, and again a number of
small black cubes and squares which seemed to declare the position of
rocks. There was no rough work in this chart. It was elaborately and
skilfully drawn, the work of an artist.

"This is a copy made by me. Juan de Maestre left the original document
with us for an hour," said Fairbairn, and he allowed Hillyard to
speculate for a few seconds upon the whereabouts of that dangerous and
reef-strewn sea. "It's not a chart of any bay or water at all. It's a
plan of Cardiff by night for the guidance of German airships. Those
patches are not shallows, but the loom in the sky of the furnaces. The
black spots are the munition factories. Here are the docks," he pointed
with the tip of his pencil. "The _Jesus-Maria_ brought that back a week
ago. Let it get from here to Germany, as it will do, eh? and a Zeppelin
coming across England on a favourable night could make things hum in
Cardiff."

Hillyard laid the sketch down and took another which Fairbairn held out
to him.

"Do you see this?" Fairbairn continued. "This gives the exact line of
the nets between the English and the Irish coasts, and the exact points
of latitude and longitude where they are broken for the passage of
ships, and the exact number and armament of the trawlers which guard
those points."

Hillyard gazed closely at the chart. It gave the positions clearly
enough, but it was a roughly-made affair, smudged with dingy fingers and
uneven in its drawing. He laid it upon the table by the side of the map
of Cardiff and compared one with the other.

"This," he said, touching the roughly-drawn map of a section of the
Channel, "this is the work of the ship's captain?"

"Yes."

"But what of this?" and Hillyard lifted again the elaborate chart of
Cardiff by night. "Some other hand drew this."

Fairbairn agreed.

"Yes. Here is the repo