ddeich, running up to the bleakest of bleak jetties
thrown out from the dyke-bound polders of the mainland. Boehme and I
landed together, and he was at my elbow as I asked for a ticket for
Amsterdam, and was given one as far as Rheine, a junction near the
Dutch frontier. He was ensconced in an opposite corner to me in the
railway carriage, looking like an Indian idol. 'Where do you come
in?' I pondered, dreamily. Too sleepy to talk, I could only blink at
him, sitting bolt upright with my arms folded over my precious
pocket-book. Finally, I gave up the struggle, buttoned my ulster
tightly up, and turning my back upon him with an apology, lay down to
sleep, the precious pocket nethermost. He was at liberty to rifle my
bag if he chose, and I dare say he did. I cannot say, for from this
point till Rheine, for the best part of four hours, that is, I had
only two lucid intervals.

The first was at Emden, where we both had to change. Here, as we
pushed our way down the crowded platform, Boehme, after being greeted
respectfully by several persons, was at last buttonholed without
means of escape by an obsequious gentleman, whose description is of
no moment, but whose conversation is. It was about a canal; what
canal I did not gather, though, from a name dropped, I afterwards
identified it as one in course of construction as a feeder to the
Ems. The point is that the subject was canals. At the moment it was
seed dropped in unreceptive soil, but it germinated later. I passed
on, mingling with the crowd, and was soon asleep again in another
carriage where Boehme this time did not follow me.

The second occasion was at Leer, where I heard myself called by name,
and woke to find him at the window. He had to change trains, and had
come to say good-bye. 'Don't forget to go to Lloyd's,' he grated in
my ear. I expect it was a wan smile that I returned, for I was at a
very low ebb, and my fortress looked sarcastically impregnable. But
the sapper was free; 'free' was my last conscious thought.

Even after Rheine, where I changed for the last time, a brutish
drowsiness enchained me, and the afternoon was well advanced before
my faculties began to revive.

The train crept like a snail from station to station. I might, so a
fellow-passenger told me, have waited three hours at Rheine for an
express which would have brought me to Amsterdam at about the same
time; or, if I had chosen to break the journey farther back, two
hours at either Em