defending our coasts in the way I mean--we've nothing ready--nothing
whatsoever! We don't even build or use small torpedo-boats. These
fast "destroyers" are no good for _this_ work--too long and
unmanageable, and most of them too deep. What you want is something
strong and simple, of light draught, and with only a spar-torpedo, if
it came to that. Tugs, launches, small yachts--anything would do at a
pinch, for success would depend on intelligence, not on brute force
or complicated mechanism. They'd get wiped out often, but what
matter? There'd be no lack of the right sort of men for them if the
thing was _organized._ But where are the men?

'Or, suppose we have the best of it on the high seas, and have to
attack or blockade a coast like this, which is sand from end to end.
You can't improvise people who are at home in such waters. The navy
chaps don't learn it, though, by Jove! they're the most magnificent
service in the world--in pluck, and nerve, and everything else.
They'll _try_ anything, and often do the impossible. But their boats
are deep, and they get little practice in this sort of thing.'

Davies never pushed home his argument here; but I know that it was
the passionate wish of his heart, somehow and somewhere, to get a
chance of turning his knowledge of this coast to practical account in
the war that he felt was bound to come, to play that 'splendid game'
in this, the most fascinating field for it.

I can do no more than sketch his views. Hearing them as I did, with
the very splash of the surf and the bubble of the tides in my ears,
they made a profound impression on me, and gave me the very zeal for
our work he, by temperament, possessed.