He raised his hat punctiliously in a parting salute and stepped out on to the platform.  His place was taken by a large, loose-limbed man, with florid face and big staring eyes, and an immense array of fishing-basket, rod, fly-cases, and so forth.  He was of the type that one could instinctively locate as a loud-voiced, self-constituted authority on whatever topic might happen to be discussed in the bars of small hotels.

“Are you English?” he asked, after a preliminary stare at Yeovil.

This time Yeovil did not trouble to disguise his nationality; he nodded curtly to his questioner.

“Glad of that,” said the fisherman; “I don’t like travelling with Germans.”

“Unfortunately,” said Yeovil, “we have to travel with them, as partners in the same State concern, and not by any means the predominant partner either.”

“Oh, that will soon right itself,” said the other with loud assertiveness, “that will right itself damn soon.”

“Nothing in politics rights itself,” said Yeovil; “things have to be righted, which is a different matter.”

“What d’y’mean?” said the fisherman, who did not like to have his assertions taken up and shaken into shape.

“We have given a clever and domineering people a chance to plant themselves down as masters in our land; I don’t imagine that they are going to give us an easy chance to push them out.  To do that we shall have to be a little cleverer than they are, a little harder, a little fiercer, and a good deal more self-sacrificing than we have been in my lifetime or in yours.”

“We’ll be that, right enough,” said the fisherman; “we mean business this time.  The last war wasn’t a war, it was a snap.  We weren’t prepared and they were.  That won’t happen again, bless you.  I know what I’m talking about.  I go up and down the country, and I hear what people are saying.”

Yeovil privately doubted if he ever heard anything but his own opinions.

“It stands to reason,” continued the fisherman, “that a highly civilised race like ours, with the record that we’ve had for leading the whole world, is not going to be held under for long by a lot of damned sausage-eating Germans.  Don’t you believe it!  I know what I’m talking about.  I’ve travelled about the world a bit.”

Yeovil shrewdly suspected that the world travels amounted to nothing more than a trip to the United States and perhaps the Channel Islands, with, possibly, a week or fortnight in Paris.

“It isn’t the past we’ve got to think of, it’s the future,” said Yeovil.  “Other maritime Powers had pasts to look back on; Spain and Holland, for instance.  The past didn’t help them when they let their sea-sovereignty slip from them.  That is a matter of history and not very distant history either.”

“Ah, that’s where you make a mistake,” said the other; “our sea-sovereignty hasn’t slipped from us, and won’t do, neither.  There’s the British Empire beyond the seas; Canada, Australia, New Zealand, East Africa.”