That evening I went to a music-hall, with the firm intention of blowing my last pound, and then staking everything on one card, and try to get to the docks and hide there on a neutral steamer. And if this plan miscarried—as it had with Trefftz—I decided to give myself up to the police. I stood in the upper gallery of the biggest music-hall in London and watched the performance. An inner voice whispered to me: “Your place is at Gravesend, working for your escape. Your duty is to throw off this slackness, otherwise you are not worthy to be a German sailor!” So when I saw the _tableaux vivants_, scenes from the trenches and allegories of the coming Victory and Peace, in which the Germans naturally figured as fleeing and conquered, when at last, in the chief picture, Britannia appeared—a shining figure with the Palm of Victory in her hand, and a field-grey German soldier lying prostrate beneath her right foot—I felt consumed by a flame of righteous anger, and in spite of the forcible protests of my neighbours I fled from the theatre, and was able to catch the last train to Tilbury. Only then did I feel happy again. And I felt so certain now that my plan would come off, that no room was left for doubt. After I had passed the first fishermen’s huts of Gravesend, I found a small scull. I took it with me. In mid-stream, just near the landing-place of the fishing-vessels, a little dinghy bobbed on the water. Not more than twenty feet away sat their owners on a bench, so absorbed in tender flirtation with their fair ones that the good sea-folk took no heed of my appearance on the scene. It was risky, but “Nothing venture, nothing have,” I muttered to myself. And, thanks to my acquired proficiency, I crept soundlessly into the boat—one sharp cut, and the tiny nutshell softly glided alongside a fishing-boat, on whose quarter-deck a woman was lulling her baby to sleep.