With the point of his cutlass Snider scraped the dirt and
verdigris from the face of the larger ornament.

"An inscription," he said, and handed the thing to me.

They were the spike and ornaments of an ancient German
helmet. Before long we had uncovered many other indications
that a great battle had been fought upon the ground where we
stood. But I was then, and still am, at loss to account for
the presence of German soldiers upon the English coast so
far from London, which history suggests would have been the
natural goal of an invader.

I can only account for it by assuming that either England
was temporarily conquered by the Teutons, or that an
invasion of so vast proportions was undertaken that German
troops were hurled upon the England coast in huge numbers
and that landings were necessarily effected at many places
simultaneously. Subsequent discoveries tend to strengthen
this view.

We dug about for a short time with our cutlasses until I
became convinced that a city had stood upon the spot at some
time in the past, and that beneath our feet, crumbled and
dead, lay ancient Devonport.

I could not repress a sigh at the thought of the havoc war
had wrought in this part of England, at least. Farther
east, nearer London, we should find things very different.
There would be the civilization that two centuries must have