I could hardly believe my
own eyes!"
"Hans Eckstein? Who is he?" demanded my new acquaintance, and I was
pleased to observe no suspicion in his voice, merely a little
astonishment.
"A friend," I answered glibly, "one of us."
He looked at me for a moment, very narrowly, and in those seconds of
silence I began to realise more exactly what must have happened. The
upper current of air had been blowing _westwards_--not eastwards as the
wind blew on the surface. The good land under my feet was assuredly not
Germany; almost certainly it must be part of my own blessed native
island, or why this insistence on my speaking English, rather than, say,
Dutch or Danish? And then the man I was speaking to, what must he
obviously be? There was only one answer possible.
I may add that I had the presence of mind not to stare blankly at him
while I thought these thoughts. I let him do the staring while I fished
my pipe out of my oilskin pocket and began to fill it.
"So!" he murmured, and I thought he seemed satisfied enough, especially
as he asked with manifest curiosity but without any apparent suspicion in
his voice, "And how did you get here?"
Yet when I looked up from my pipe-filling to answer him I could almost
swear that he had done something to make his features less
visible--pulled his sou'wester further down and sunk his chin into the
high collar of his oilskin, it certainly seemed to me.
Pages:
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26