A little aimlessly I set out to the left. Somehow or other I had got it
into my head that I was nearer the Dutch than the Danish border and my
idea was to head for a neutral country. The coast line swung inland round
a cove and at the same time dipped sharply, and hardly had I turned to
follow it when a figure seemed to spring up out of the dip.

Whether the man had been squatting down, or whether it was the slope of
the ground that suddenly revealed him, I know not, but there he was not
ten paces away. I could see that he wore an oilskin and sou'wester and
judged him at once as a fisherman.

"Good evening!" I cried genially in my best German. "It's a fine night!"

"Good evening!" said he, also in German and quite involuntarily it
seemed, for the next instant he spoke again in a very different key, and
_in English_.

"My God! Are you insane?" he said in a low intense voice and with a
distinct trace of guttural accent. "Don't speak German here! Have you no
other language? Don't you speak English?"

I don't know whether you could have literally knocked me down with a
feather, but a stout feather would certainly have come pretty near doing
it. I simply gaped at him.

Again he spoke; this time in German, but almost in a whisper.

"Do not speak German here so loudly! Do you not know any English?"

A dim perception of the almost incredible truth began to dawn on me