He broke off and shook his head again. "Well," said I, "that's explained away very happily. What I saw was only something else and what I heard was something else too. You put the alternatives so clearly, Jack, that one can't help being convinced. And what about the shooting affair? I only heard a thingumabob and saw a what-you-may-call-it, I suppose?" "My dear Roger, I only want to test the alternatives and see what _can't_ be explained away. Have you ever been under fire before?" "No, but I've seen pictures of it in the illustrated papers." "Dash it, be serious!" said he. "You have no doubt whatever that somebody blazed either at you or at something else from behind that wall?" "Or at something else? What do you mean?" "There weren't any duck about, or anything of that kind? I've known a wild shot blaze both barrels within six inches of my own head and explain he had never noticed me." "I was rather too preoccupied to notice whether there were any duck there when he began," said I, "but unless they were deaf duck there certainly wouldn't be any left after he'd loosed off his first bullet. Besides one doesn't usually shoot duck with bullets." "One might with a rook rifle." "I admit that one might; also that a very excitable person might go on shooting after the duck had gone. But do you really mean to tell me, Jack, that that explanation satisfies you?" "I don't say that it does absolutely, and I quite admit that the weakness of my explanations is that your story requires three of them; none being perfectly satisfactory. However, it comes to this, that we have narrowed the field down to three incidents that want a bit of explanation. Everything else points as much one way as the other." "Which way?" "To your being mistaken for a spy yourself." A horried thought struck me. It was so horrid that it took a little pluck to get it out. "In that case, supposing some patriotic individual had tried first to stab and then to shoot me, for his country's sake?" "By Jove!" exclaimed my cousin and gazed thoughtfully into space for a bit. Then he said, "That's possible, but it's a tall order too; and it leaves out the man on the shore." I was visited by another horrid thought. "He might have been spy hunting!" "Well, in that case we can easily get on to his tracks. There will be no point in his denying it. But would the conversation fit that theory?" I thought for a moment and then said with heart-felt relief, "No, it couldn't possibly." My cousin fell silent and stared into the thickening dusk. Then he looked round with a start and said, "We're nearly in." We both went out on deck and saw at the head of the bay before us houses and lights on shore and a church tower against the evening sky. "Well, Roger," said he, "I'll go into this business very carefully and make the most thorough enquiry. Don't think I'm not keen on getting at the bottom of it. You've got to get off at once and rejoin your ship of course?" I said I must.