ould have given a lot for a bath, but I felt that it would be
outside my part, and Peter was not of the washing persuasion. But we
had a very good breakfast of coffee and eggs, and then the lieutenant
started on the telephone. He began by being dictatorial, then he
seemed to be switched on to higher authorities, for he grew more
polite, and at the end he fairly crawled. He made some arrangements,
for he informed us that in the afternoon we would see some fellow whose
title he could not translate into Dutch. I judged he was a great
swell, for his voice became reverential at the mention of him.

He took us for a walk that morning after Peter and I had attended to
our toilets. We were an odd pair of scallywags to look at, but as
South African as a wait-a-bit bush. Both of us had ready-made tweed
suits, grey flannel shirts with flannel collars, and felt hats with
broader brims than they like in Europe. I had strong-nailed brown
boots, Peter a pair of those mustard-coloured abominations which the
Portuguese affect and which made him hobble like a Chinese lady. He
had a scarlet satin tie which you could hear a mile off. My beard had
grown to quite a respectable length, and I trimmed it like General
Smuts'. Peter's was the kind of loose flapping thing the _taakhaar_
loves, which has scarcely ever been shaved, and is combed once in a
blue moon. I must say we made a pretty solid pair. Any South African
would have set us down as a Boer from the back-veld who had bought a
suit of clothes in the nearest store, and his cousin from some
one-horse dorp who had been to school and thought himself the devil of
a fellow. We fairly reeked of the sub-continent, as the papers call it.

It was a fine morning after the rain, and we wandered about in the
streets for a couple of hours. They were busy enough, and the shops
looked rich and bright with their Christmas goods, and one big store
where I went to buy a pocket-knife was packed with customers. One
didn't see very many young men, and most of the women wore mourning.
Uniforms were everywhere, but their wearers generally looked like
dug-outs or office fellows. We had a glimpse of the squat building
which housed the General Staff and took off our hats to it. Then we
stared at the Marinamt, and I wondered what plots were hatching there
behind old Tirpitz's whiskers. The capital gave one an impression of
ugly cleanness and a sort of dreary effectiveness. And yet I found it
de