y to the cipher. The numbers clustering round them
were mostly very small, with decimals. What maddened me most was the
scarcity of plain nouns.

To report what I heard to the reader would be impossible; so chaotic
was most of it that it left no impression on my own memory. All I can
do is to tell him what fragments stuck, and what nebulous
classification I involved. The letters ran from A to G, and my best
continuous chance came when Boehme, reading rapidly from a paper, I
think, went through the letters, backwards, from G, adding remarks to
each; thus: 'G. . . completed.' 'F. . . bad. . . 1.3 (metres?). . .2.5
(kilometres?).' 'E . . . thirty-two. . . 1.2.' 'D. . . 3 weeks. . .
thirty.' 'C. . .'and soon.

Another time he went through this list again, only naming each letter
himself, and receiving laconic answers from Grimm--answers which seemed
to be numbers, but I could not be sure. For minutes together I caught
nothing but the scratching of pens and inarticulate mutterings. But out
of the muck-heap I picked five pearls--four sibilant nouns and a name
that I knew before. The nouns were 'Schleppboote' (tugs); 'Wassertiefe'
(depth of water); 'Eisenbahn' (railway); 'Lotsen' (pilots). The name,
also sibilant and thus easier to hear, was 'Esens'.

Two or three times I had to stand back and ease my cramped neck, and
on each occasion I looked at my watch, for I was listening against
time, just as we had rowed against time. We were going to be asked to
supper, and must be back aboard the yacht in time to receive the
invitation. The fog still brooded heavily and the light, always bad,
was growing worse. How would _they_ get back? How had they come from
Juist? Could we forestall them? Questions of time, tide,
distance--just the odious sort of sums I was unfit to cope with--were
distracting my attention when it should have been wholly elsewhere.
4.20--4.25--now it was past 4.30 when Davies said the bank would
cover. I should have to make for the beacon; but it was fatally near
that steamboat path, etc., and I still at intervals heard voices from
there. It must have been about 4.35 when there was another shifting
of chairs within. Then someone rose, collected papers, and went out;
someone else, _without_ rising (therefore Grimm), followed him.

There was silence in the room for a minute, and after that, for the
first time, I heard some plain colloquial German, with no
accompaniment of scratching or rustling. 'I must wait for