The gloaming had increased. He was straining his eyes into the coming night when the sergeant with the relief arrived.
A quick whispered report caused double guards to be mounted, men to be sent to cover possible lines of retreat, and a messenger to be despatched for assistance on the water. These precautions were efficient and effective. The mysterious boatman was captured.
It was not known whether he was too frightened, or too unintelligent, or too intoxicated to give a satisfactory account of his movements, but in a parcel concealed under odd bits of rope and sailcloth was a dead codfish addressed to Herr K. V. S.
Whilst the captured one was meditating under lock and key, the boat and its contents were minutely examined. Nothing unusual had been found on the prisoner, nothing else had been found in the boat. The cod-fish was ordered to be dissected, when, lo and behold! a small metal tube was extracted from the gullet. Inside this, tightly rolled and wrapped in oil-silk, was a small piece of thin foreign correspondence paper, which, on being held up to the light, revealed hieroglyphics in the smallest of German characters imaginable.
Subsequent investigation and examination elicited that the boatman had agreed to deliver the parcel personally to Herr K. von S---- at a certain place, and at a certain hour in the evening, for which he had received a generous sum of money. The advisability of remaining in the alcove until dark to prevent the military from holding him up, or prying into his parcel, had been suggested to him by his employer, who was quite a stranger to him. He had never seen him until two hours before he had arranged to bring the parcel along; he had assured him it was all right. It was only an act of kindness to a sick man. There could be no harm done by it.
A thin story indeed, but the fishermen of northern seas are a confiding, unsuspecting, innocent race.
The letter proved to be written in Prussian or High German. It required a good magnifying glass to decipher it. It was highly technical in its terms, and was evidently composed by a thoroughly expert _garrison artillery officer_. It ran somewhat as follows:
1. You say we can now communicate with you through more open channels but we doubt this and fear taking any avoidable risk.