four o'clock
After lunch , and after Kloster had said some more regrettable things , being much moved , it appeared , by the palace facing him and by some personal recollections he had of the particular Hohenzollern it contained , while I lay looking up along the smooth beech-trunks to their bright leaves glancing against the wonderful blue of the sky -- oh it was so lovely , little mother ! -- and Frau Kloster sometimes said _ Aber _ Adolf , and occasionally announced that she had slain another mosquito , we motored on towards Brandenburg , along the chain of lakes formed by the Havel . It was like heaven after the Lutzowstrasse . And at four o'clock we stopped at a Gasthaus in the pinewoods and had coffee and wild strawberries , and Herr von Inster paddled me out on the Havel in an old punt we found moored among the rushes . It looked so queer to see an officer in full Sunday splendour punting , but there are a few things which seem to us ridiculous that Germans do with great simplicity . It was rather like being punted on the Thames by somebody in a top hat and a black coat . He looked like a bright dragon-fly in his lean elegance , balancing on the rotten little board across the end of the punt ; or like Siegfried , made up to date , on his journey down the Rhine , -- made very much up to date , his gorgeous barbaric boat and fine swaggering body that ate half a sheep at a sitting and made large love to lusty goddesses wittled away by the centuries to this old punt being paddled about slowly by a lean man with thoughtful eyes .