“By all that’s wonderful!” he cried in a slow, long-drawn accent of amazement, raising his head and looking at his companion. “_He has marked our wreck!_ Look!--Fifty-fifty-five North, Nine-fourteen West--and there’s the date under it 20/9/18!” “Then all those other crosses----?” queried Lyngstrand, in a voice of puzzled interest. “They must be---- Wait a minute!” He compared some of them with the indications on his list. “Yes! They are wrecks, too--all torpedoed ships--look! this and this and this are marked on the chart! There are others not marked--but there are many more marks than there are ships on our list. They must be all torpedoed ships!” “But why?” asked Lyngstrand. “Why has he got them all marked like this?--Where did he get this chart, I wonder?” Jensen glanced to the bottom of the sheet. “_This is a German chart!_” he exclaimed. Lyngstrand stared at him. “German----!” he began, and stopped. They looked into each other’s eyes in a long moment when suspicion defined itself as almost certitude. For that moment they forgot the sickly rolling of the ship threshing and wallowing on her way to one of those tragic little red crosses. They forgot everything except the slowly dawning possible corollaries of this discovery. Before either could utter another word, the lee door of the charthouse opened and Captain Horst stood framed in the entrance. He glared across at them, his face livid with a sudden anger, his eyes blazing. Then, with a scarcely articulate but vehemently muttered oath, he sprang across the little room, snatched the chart from the table, thrust it into the drawer, locked it up and put the key in his pocket. He turned and scowled at them in a silence which they were too awed to break. His eyes, fiercely blue, seemed to search into their very souls. Theirs dropped under the intolerable scrutiny. He uttered an exclamation of angry contempt and, without further speech, walked out of the charthouse. The two young men looked at each other. “That is the second time this morning!” said Jensen, at last, glancing toward the door now once more closed on them. “What is?” asked Lyngstrand, curiously. “_That he has cursed in German!_--Lyngstrand! I am beginning to see into this!” “But it’s impossible!” exclaimed Lyngstrand, his mind leaping to his friend’s deduction and then rejecting it. “He is a Swede, like ourselves!” “He is a German!” said Jensen, positively. “But he speaks Swedish without a trace of accent!” “And other languages also, I expect--French and English, as well--better than you or I speak them, I have no doubt. Swedish would much facilitate service in the Baltic--and your German naval officer was linguistically well equipped for any possible campaign.” “German naval officer!” echoed Lyngstrand, incredulously. “I will bet on it!” asserted his friend. “But--a German naval officer commanding a rotten little tramp like the _Upsal?_” said Lyngstrand, emphasizing his incredulity. “I can’t believe it!”