At ports like Swinemunde, Stettin, Lübeck, and Kiel, if a traveller of any nationality attempted to pass through on a passport in the usual manner, he or she was subjected to unbelievable indignities and searches which in most instances amounted to insult and violation of the actual person. No wonder that many Danish workmen, who in some instances had actually been employed upon private, even secret, war material for Germany, and who had obtained permission to visit their homes for a spell, preferred any means of making the home passage across the southern Baltic rather than take the regular ferry-boat routes. Thus it was that quite a few of them came across with the smugglers, whereby they avoided the severe investigations and saved considerable money on their passage. I was not slow at ascertaining these facts and I made several voyages with the Danish smugglers, which were interesting in themselves, whilst they brought me in contact with some of the very workmen who had been employed upon war-work in Germany which was at that time of the very greatest interest to Englishmen engaged in attempting to anticipate and to thwart the wily Hun. I ascertained by this means valuable corroboration of preliminary particulars concerning the super-submarines, the super-Zeppelins, and the preliminary trials of the super-cannon afterwards used on Paris. In the early spring of 1915 I had returned from one of these little cruises where business and pleasure had been combined. I had landed safely upon one of the southern islands of Denmark and entered a _kro_, or small licensed inn, to obtain a decent meal with a good long drink of the famous Jacob Jacobsen's Gamle Karlsberg porter, which can be obtained everywhere throughout Denmark and is every bit as good as it is famous, when the very dirty waiter whispered in my ear that there was a heap of good money offered for a very little work. Perhaps I should apologise to the aforesaid waiter for disparaging his personal appearance. Because it might have been possible that at the time in question my outward appearance equalled or surpassed his own in filth and slovenliness. But be that as it may, I naturally inquired further regarding this hinted El Dorado. "Well," he said, rubbing his chin and gazing at me with great earnestness, "there are a couple of Germans hunting round this town" (every cluster of houses in Denmark is called a town) "looking for an English spy who has been jumping over the frontier a time or two, and they say that they can get ten thousand marks for him, dead or alive, if they can only put their hands on him." I was on the point of quaffing a most delicious draught of the far-famed porter, but somehow I seemed to lose my thirst. The news was of absorbing interest to me, if not actually startling in its purport.