“Or, suppose we have the best of it on the high seas, and have to attack or blockade a coast like this, which is sand from end to end. You can’t improvise people who are at home in such waters. The navy chaps don’t learn it, though, by Jove! they’re the most magnificent service in the world—in pluck, and nerve, and everything else. They’ll _try_ anything, and often do the impossible. But their boats are deep, and they get little practice in this sort of thing.”
Davies never pushed home his argument here; but I know that it was the passionate wish of his heart, somehow and somewhere, to get a chance of turning his knowledge of this coast to practical account in the war that he felt was bound to come, to play that “splendid game” in this, the most fascinating field for it.
I can do no more than sketch his views. Hearing them as I did, with the very splash of the surf and the bubble of the tides in my ears, they made a profound impression on me, and gave me the very zeal for our work he, by temperament, possessed.
But as the days passed and nothing occurred to disturb us, I felt more and more strongly that, as regards our quest, we were on the wrong tack. We found nothing suspicious, nothing that suggested a really adequate motive for Dollmann’s treachery. I became impatient, and was for pushing on more quickly westward. Davies still clung to his theory, but the same feeling influenced him.
“It’s something to do with these channels in the sand,” he persisted, “but I’m afraid, as you say, we haven’t got at the heart of the mystery. Nobody seems to care a rap what we do. We haven’t done the estuaries as well as I should like, but we’d better push on to the islands. It’s exactly the same sort of work, and just as important, I believe. We’re bound to get a clue soon.”
There was also the question of time, for me at least. I was due to be back in London, unless I obtained an extension, on the 28th, and our present rate of progress was slow. But I cannot conscientiously say that I made a serious point of this. If there was any value in our enterprise at all, official duty pales beside it. The machinery of State would not suffer from my absence; excuses would have to be made, and the results braved.