The names of "Norderney" and "Borkum" on the list of seaplane stations to be inspected seemed to strike a familiar chord of memory, but it was not until I chanced upon a dog-eared copy of "The Riddle of the Sands" on a table in the "Commission Room" of the _Hercules_ that it dawned upon me where I had heard them before. There was no time at the moment to re-turn the pages of this most consummately told yarn of its kind ever written, but, prompted by a happy inspiration, I slipped the grimy little volume into my pocket. And there (as the clattering special which was to take us to Norddeich, _en route_ to Norderney, turned off from the Bremen mainline a few miles outside of Wilhelmshaven) I found it again, just as the green water-logged fields and bogs of the "land of the seven _siels_" began to unroll in twin panoramas on either side. Opening the book at random somewhere toward the middle, my eye was drawn to a paragraph beginning near the top of the page facing a much-pencilled chart. "... The mainland is that district of Prussia that is known as East Friesland." (I remember now that it was "Carruthers," writing in the _Dulcibella_, off Wangerogg, who was describing the "lay of the land.") "It is a short, flat-topped peninsula, bounded on the west by the Ems estuary and beyond that by Holland, and on the east by the Jade estuary; a low-lying country, containing great tracts of marsh, and few towns of any size; on the north side none. Seven islands lie off the coast. All, except Borkum, which is round, are attenuated strips, slightly crescent-shaped, rarely more than a mile broad, and tapering at the ends; in length averaging about six miles, from Norderney and Juist, which are seven and nine respectively, to little Baltrum, which is only two and a half." As I turned the book sideways to look at the chart the whole fascinating story came back with a rush. What man who has ever knocked about in small boats, tramped roads and poked about generally in places where he had no business to poke could forget it? The East Friesland peninsula, with its "seven little rivers" and "seven channels" and "seven islands," was the "take off" for the German army which was to cross the North Sea in barges to land on the sands of "The Wash" for the invasion of England. And this very line over which our rickety two-car special was clinkety-clanking--I wished that "Carruthers" could have seen what a pitiful little old single-track it had become--was the "strategic trunk" over which the invading cohorts were to be shunted in their thousands to the waiting deep-sea-going barges in the canalized _siels_. There was Essen, which was to have been the "nodal centre" of the great embarkation, and scarcely had I located it on the map before its tall spire was stabbing the north-western skyline as we drew in to the station.