here they will hunt any man down,
but let him trek for open country and they will be at a loss.
Therefore boldness, my friend; for ever boldness. Remember as a nation
they wear spectacles, which means that they are always peering.'

Peter broke off to gloat over the wedges of geese and the strings of
wild swans that were always winging across those plains. His tale had
bucked me up wonderfully. Our luck had held beyond all belief, and I
had a kind of hope in the business now which had been wanting before.
That afternoon, too, I got another fillip. I came on deck for a breath
of air and found it pretty cold after the heat of the engine-room. So
I called to one of the deck hands to fetch me up my cloak from the
cabin--the same I had bought that first morning in the Greif village.

_'Der grune mantel_?' the man shouted up, and I cried, 'Yes'. But the
words seemed to echo in my ears, and long after he had given me the
garment I stood staring abstractedly over the bulwarks.

His tone had awakened a chord of memory, or, to be accurate, they had
given emphasis to what before had been only blurred and vague. For he
had spoken the words which Stumm had uttered behind his hand to
Gaudian. I had heard something like 'Uhnmantl,' and could make nothing
of it. Now I was as certain of those words as of my own existence.
They had been '_Grune mantel_'. _Grune mantel_, whatever it might be,
was the name which Stumm had not meant me to hear, which was some
talisman for the task I had proposed, and which was connected in some
way with the mysterious von Einem.

This discovery put me in high fettle. I told myself that, considering
the difficulties, I had managed to find out a wonderful amount in a
very few days. It only shows what a man can do with the slenderest
evidence if he keeps chewing and chewing on it ...

Two mornings later we lay alongside the quays at Belgrade, and I took
the opportunity of stretching my legs. Peter had come ashore for a
smoke, and we wandered among the battered riverside streets, and looked
at the broken arches of the great railway bridge which the Germans were
working at like beavers. There was a big temporary pontoon affair to
take the railway across, but I calculated that the main bridge would be
ready inside a month. It was a clear, cold, blue day, and as one
looked south one saw ridge after ridge of snowy hills. The upper
streets of the city were still fairly whole, and there were shops