DREADNOUGHTS OF THE DOGGER (continued 3)

Arnold Bilverstone, nervously gripping the boat's gunwale, was leaning forward, gazing fixedly northward along the coast.

"That's good!" he exclaimed. "There's a couple of destroyers coming out from Buremouth. They'll head her off."

The chase continued. Suddenly the submarine's gun disappeared. The two men on her conning-tower went below. She seemed to be slowing down. A shell from one of the two destroyers fell perilously near her, deluging her with spray.

"She's hit!" cried Seth Newruck. "See! she's sinking!"

"Submerging," corrected Mr. Bilverstone, watching the conning-tower slowly disappear.

The Kingfisher, going at her best speed of twenty knots, was soon abreast of the shrimper, separated by hardly more than fifty yards. Just in time her course was altered; she went abruptly to starboard, and so luckily avoided the torpedo which was aimed at her from the submerged enemy. Seth saw the disturbance of the water as the deadly weapon sped on its fruitless errand.

The gunboat gave up the dangerous chase and steamed a confusing, irregular course until she rounded the southern extremity of Alderwick Shoal, and thus got the protection of the sandbank between her and the submarine. But of the submarine herself and her periscopes no more was seen.

Arnold Bilverstone steered alongside the gunboat. Both he and Seth Newruck were taken on board, their boat being hoisted on deck with its catch of shrimps, which were consigned to the seamen's quarters. Later on that same day, on his way home up the High Street, Seth Newruck encountered Constable Challis.

"I thought you'd be interested to knew," said the constable, "as that dug-out at Green Croft came into use this mornin', when them naval guns were firin'. Mrs. Daplin-Gennery made sure it was the Germans comin' to make an invasion. She got all her household, includin' three Belgian refugees, into the shelter in double quick time; and there they remained until long after the firin' had ceased. Between ourselves, they might have remained comfortable in their beds. There was no cause for alarm. It was only that the Kingfisher discovered an enemy ship layin' explosive mines off the coast and gave chase and sent her to the bottom."

Seth smiled to himself. Constable Challis was curiously astray in his information.

"Did you see what took place, constable?" he inquired, assuming ignorance.

Challis shook his head regretfully.

"I wasn't on duty at the time," he answered. "Anyhow, Mrs. Daplin-Gennery had a rare fright. I'm told, indeed, that she's had a disturbed night from beginnin' to end. No sooner had she got her refugees to bed, when somebody or other had the impudence to knock her up askin' to use her telephone. At two o'clock in the mornin' she was again alarmed by hearin' a rifle shot on the denes. Then there was the naval guns. What the rifle shot was about I don't know. Inspector Jenner was up there on special duty shortly afterwards, but knew nothin' about it."

"Oh!" nodded Seth, with new interest. "And what was the special duty?"

Constable Challis bent nearer to the boy and lowered his voice.

"Strictly between ourselves," he said. "There's a rumour goin' about that one of the Germans has come back to Sunnydene—that secretary—and that he's been up to some spyin' tricks. Inspector Jenner, with assistance, went to arrest him. They broke into the house and made a thorough search, but he wasn't there. There wasn't a trace of him on the premises."

"Still," said Seth, "I suppose the police will keep a watch?"

"You may take it from me," declared Challis, "if that there Seligmann is anywhere about Haddisport, we shall nab him."

CHAPTER XIX.

U50.

"Dainty, ahoy! Show a light at your gangway while I come aboard of you."

It was a dark, boisterous night, with fiercely driving rain. Mark Redisham in his dripping oilskins was pacing the wet deck of the mine-sweeper, lying at anchor in a land-locked bay on the north-east coast.

The Dainty and her consorts had been at their perilous work dredging for explosive mines off the north of Ireland and in the Pentland Firth, battling day by day with stormy seas, incessant rains, and bitterly cold winds. It had been a most uncomfortable trip, and Mark and his shipmates were rejoicing in the prospect of a few days' rest at home. Even the necessity of anchoring at night irritated them because of the delay.

The trawlers were lying now in the midst of a large flotilla of destroyers and light cruisers. Mark had read a flashlight signal from the bridge of one of the cruisers, inquiring which was the commodore of the mine-sweepers, and he had answered it with his electric torch. A pinnace was approaching the Dainty, and it was an officer in the stern sheets who had hailed him.

Mark held a lighted lamp in the open gangway, and the pinnace came alongside. The officer, a sub-lieutenant, climbed on board to speak with the skipper in the shelter of the wheel-house, leaving a midshipman in charge of the boat. Mark was about to enter into conversation with the bluejackets when the midshipman stood up. The lamplight shone in his face.

"Hullo, Rodney!" cried Mark in astonishment, recognising his brother. "What an unexpected meeting! How are you? Have you come off the Levity?"

They clasped hands.

"No," Rodney answered. "No, the Levity is in the repair yard. She got a bit knocked about in the scrap we had with the enemy off Heligoland. But in any case, I was only aboard her temporarily. Destroyers don't carry midshipmen as a rule, you know. I've been appointed to the Dauntless, the new light cruiser out there. Captain Damant is in command of her. She's heaps better than the Atreus; in fact, she's about the best light cruiser in the service. I thought you'd heard of my luck. I wrote to mother about it."

"But I haven't seen mother for over a week." Mark explained. "I expect to see her to-morrow, though."

"I'm afraid you won't," Rodney told him. "I believe you've got to sweep up a new mine-field that the Germans have laid south of the Dogger. That's where the Rapid was sunk this morning."

"The Rapid! Was she mined?"

"Yes, worse luck. No lives were lost, though; and, of course, she was obsolete, and no good for fighting, so it's not very serious. We'd already paid the enemy in advance, seeing that Lieutenant Ingoldsby torpedoed one of their newest destroyers yesterday afternoon. I'm awfully glad to have met you. Give my love to mother and the girls when you get home, and tell them I'm getting to know the North Sea as well as I know our own garden. Good night."

Mark drew back to make way for the lieutenant, who had been giving the skipper instructions for the sweeping of the new mine-field.

At daylight the next morning, having taken in fresh stores, the Dainty and her consorts steamed off.

On arriving at the scene of their duties they found another fleet of trawlers already at work, helped by an aeroplane. They combined in a systematic sweep of the known area and exploded some scores of mines without an accident. The new picking-up net lately introduced was doubtless the reason of this freedom from disaster.

Sweeping the seas for explosive mines indiscriminately laid by the enemy for the destruction of any ship which might run up against them, was not the only work in which the British steam trawlers and drifters were engaged. These stout little vessels, with their hardy crews of North Sea fishermen, were also engaged to act as scouts and messengers patrolling the coasts. Many of them were fitted with wireless masts, by means of which they sent out reports by code of anything suspicious which might be observed.

Thus, while the Dainty was still in the neighbourhood of the Dogger Bank, threading her way through a fleet of English herring smacks, Mark Redisham was able to send out a wireless message intimating that a German submarine of the largest and newest type had been seen. He gave her number as U50, and added that she had been watched taking in a supply of petrol and other stores from a captured English trawler manned by Germans.

Less than an hour afterwards two British destroyers were seen racing at top speed in the direction in which the enemy trawler had disappeared. They went out of sight. There came the sound of gun firing, and Mark afterwards heard that the trawler had been sunk and her German crew taken prisoners.

While the guns were firing and the Dainty was yet within sight of the drifters, Mark again saw the submarine, or, rather, he saw her periscopes moving above the surface about a mile away. At the same time the skipper was watching a confused cloud of black smoke through the rain mist on the western horizon.

"Looks like a big liner," Snowling conjectured. "Give her a signal that there's an enemy submarine prowlin' around."

Before going to his instrument room Mark looked searchingly at the smoke.

"That's not a liner," he decided. "There's too much smoke for a liner. And there's more than one. It looks like a patrol of cruisers."

He sent off his wireless message and got one back to say that it had been received and understood. On returning to the deck he searched for signs of the submarine, but found none. The funnels of three British cruisers were now visible above the line of the sea. The Dainty was steered towards them. When their turrets and hulls came into view, Mark succeeded in identifying the ships as the armoured cruisers Pomona, Graemsay, and Ronaldsay. They were followed by a light cruiser and a division of destroyers. He signalled to them:

"Keep to the eastward of the fishing fleet."

But his warning advice did not divert the warships from their course. They approached at easy speed in line-ahead formation, the Pomona leading.

"They're all right, don't you trouble," observed Skipper Snowling. "I expect that that submarine has made off to Heligoland. They're all of 'em afraid of the very sight of the White Ensign."

The great, three-funnelled cruisers were a noble sight as they steamed along so steadily. Mark Redisham watched them through his binoculars, paying his attention to each one in turn and trying to discover in what small details of structure they differed one from another; for they were all three of the same class. Each was of twelve thousand tons displacement, each carried the same number of heavy guns, and each, as he knew, had the same complement of seven hundred and fifty officers and men.

As the Pomona came nearer he looked at the officers on the bridge. They wore their greatcoats, but he could still make out their respective ranks by their stripes and badges.

Suddenly one of them at the starboard end of the bridge pointed excitedly into the sea and shouted. Instantly there was a loud crash, an explosion. The whole ship staggered.

"Glory be!" cried Skipper Snowling. "That's a torpedo! It struck her amidships!"

In the excitement of the next two hours Mark Redisham got a confused impression of all that happened. He saw the Pomona listing over in a cloud of smoke and escaping steam. She was sinking. The Graemsay and the Ronaldsay were putting out their boats as they closed upon her. Their engines were stopped as they took up positions about four hundred yards apart from her to give assistance.

Hardly had they stopped when there was a second heavy explosion, followed by a third. The Ronaldsay had been torpedoed under her after-magazine. The air was filled with flying wreckage, which fell among her boats.

The Dainty and her consorts, as well as the fishing smacks and steam drifters, hastened to the rescue. Already the cruisers' picket boats and cutters had picked up many survivors from the Pomona. Some were returning to the Graemsay, when she, too, was hit by a fourth torpedo from the hidden enemy.

Looking round in the direction from which, as it seemed to him, the weapons had been fired, Mark Redisham saw the submarine's two periscopes moving along the surface some three hundred yards away. Then the upper part of her conning-tower rose. The gunners on the stricken Graemsay immediately opened fire upon it, and their ship's engines were put full steam ahead with the intention of running her down. But the cruiser was badly holed below water; she heeled rapidly and finally turned keel up.

In the meantime, the light cruiser and her flotilla of destroyers were coming down at racing speed, and the smacks and trawlers were drawing nearer. There were boats in plenty to give help to those who could swim or who had managed to seize upon floating wreckage; but, unfortunately, many had been killed or hopelessly maimed by the explosions, whilst others had not been able to escape from the stokeholds and lower decks, the loss amounting to the terrible total of sixty officers and fourteen hundred men.

"Seems to me," said Harry Snowling, helping Mark Redisham to lift a wounded stoker from the dinghy to the Dainty's deck, "as there must have been a whole crowd of submarines lyin' in wait to do this. 'Taren't proper warfare, like gunfire in an open action."

"I have seen only one," returned Mark, standing up and glancing over the side. "The same one that we saw taking in petrol from that stolen trawler. She's in sight even now, Harry. I can see her plainly, waiting, I suppose, to have a shot at the light cruiser—if she's got any more torpedoes left. I can make out her number. It's the U50. There's a group of Germans on her conning-tower platform. I believe they're gloating over what they've done. One of them's a middy, with his arm in a sling. Ah! They're going below now! They're going to submerge."

He did not guess—he did not dream of the possibility—but had he taken his binoculars, he might have distinguished the features of the "middy" to whom he referred, and recognised them as the features of Max Hilliger.

CHAPTER XX.

PUT TO THE TEST.

"It's astonishing how much more interesting the North Sea has become since the beginning of the war," remarked Vera Redisham, standing at the dining-room window, busily knitting a khaki muffler for some unknown soldier at the Front. "There's a steamer passing now, a neutral, and I'm simply dying to know where she comes from and where she's going, and if she has been in danger from German torpedoes."

Her brother Mark, home on shore leave, was seated at the fireside, making up arrears in his reading of the newspapers. He was dressed in mufti, and looked very different from the rough-clothed signal boy who for weeks past had been battling with autumn storms and the perils of floating mines on the wave-swept decks of the Dainty.

"What flag's she flying?" he questioned, turning in his comfortable chair.

"I can't make out," his sister answered. "It's blue, with a white cross. And the same colours are painted on her side. And, oh, Mark, isn't it sweet of her? She's saluting the Kingfisher!"

"So she ought to," declared Mark, dropping his paper and rising to his feet. "All neutrals ought to salute the White Ensign, seeing what our Navy is doing by keeping the seas clear of the enemy. A Danish ship saluted our squad of mine-sweepers the other day. Blue with a white cross? She must be Greek. I expect she's carrying a cargo of currants. Isn't her name painted on her side?"

He went to the window and looked out upon the sea.

"Yes, she's Greek," he decided. "She's from Pireus. That's the harbour outside Athens, isn't it? Who's this coming in at the gate? A policeman delivering handbills!"

The parlourmaid presently brought in a sheet of typewritten paper, saying that it had been left at the door by a police sergeant. Mark Redisham took it from her and glanced at it. It was an order, issued by the Chief Constable of the county, under the Defence of the Realm Act.

"This ought to keep silly people along the front from showing lights from their windows," he announced. "Listen!"

"All lights visible from seaward shall be effectually obscured. No person shall show a light on the shore or on the land adjoining thereto, or visible from seaward.

"The public are hereby warned that non-compliance with this regulation will render them liable to instant arrest, and that patrols have been instructed to fire at sight and without further warning on any person found signalling."

"That's what should have been done weeks ago."

"Bright lights on motor-cars ought to be prohibited, too," pursued Vera.

"Yes," agreed Mark, "and all Germans ought to be shut up. If innocent Belgian refugees are not allowed to stay in Haddisport, why should we let Germans live in houses overlooking the coast? They ought to be cleared out instead of being given the chance of sending messages over to Germany. It's certain there are spies all along the East Coast. Otherwise, how could the enemy know so well about the movements of our warships?"

He picked up the ball of khaki wool which Vera had dropped.

"I believe they're only waiting their chance to slip across and do a bit of raiding," he went on. "The Admiralty seem to think it possible, anyhow. That's why they have altered the positions of the lightships and buoys. I expect they'll continue to shift them about, so that the enemy may be confused."

"Of course, motor-cars and bicycles, however brightly lighted, can't send messages across the North Sea," Vera reflected.

Mark shrugged his shoulders.

"What's to hinder a motor-car being fitted with secret aerials?" he asked. "The Germans are not children. They're up to all sorts of cunning tricks. Why, only last week one of our Haddisport drifters went out to the herring fishing with a splash of red paint on her starboard bow. Nobody knew who put it there, the crew least of all; they didn't even see it. But when the boats were drifting to their nets on the fishing ground, a German submarine came nosing round, spotted the red splash of paint, and then went off in a bee-line for Heligoland."

"Well?" questioned Vera, not understanding. "What did it mean?"

"Well?" repeated Mark. "I don't know what it meant. But the men on the submarine did. It was a pre-arranged sign—a message. It's an old Scout trick. Darby Catchpole wanted to communicate with me once, by a way we'd fixed upon. I watched for the postman, and when he came past this gate I saw some flour dust on his left arm. That meant 'No.' If the flour dust had been on his right arm, it would have meant 'Yes.' In the same way a German spy could put a secret mark on a railway carriage or a motor-car, going to a known destination, and give information to hundreds of other spies along the route."

"Dear me!" exclaimed Vera. "Perhaps it was a spy who tied the mysterious piece of ribbon to the handle-bar of my bicycle yesterday!"

"Likely enough," surmised Mark. "Perhaps the same one who daubed the paint on that fishing-boat. There's no doubt there are spies around here. And there's a green motor-car that goes dashing about between here and Buremouth with lamps shining like searchlights. The police and the military patrols have had instructions to capture it. Constable Challis has been put on night duty now. Challis is rather too fond of talking, but he's an uncommonly smart policeman."

Mark Redisham's estimate of Constable Challis was justified sooner than he expected.

On the very next night, indeed, Challis was on his beat patrolling the rabbit warren and the dark lanes to the north of the town, when his smartness was put to the test.

Formerly he would have been watching for tramps, suspicious loiterers, and possible burglars; but, since the outbreak of war, crime had diminished, even gipsies were fewer, and he could do nothing so useful as to watch the road for unauthorised vehicles and for spies flashing signals across the sea.

Before ten o'clock he had visited five different houses to alarm the occupants by informing them that lights were visible from their windows.

In three cases it was discovered that the lights were to be seen through the chinks of imperfectly drawn curtains or ill-fitting blinds; in one case a nurse had left the gas burning by mistake, and in the other, where the light came through an open stable door, a groom was attending to a sick horse and had not known of the new regulations. By midnight, however, the whole neighbourhood was in darkness.

Yet, still there were belated cyclists carrying lighted lamps. The worst offenders were the motor-cyclists, and these were mostly military men who, as Challis reflected, ought to have known better. Once a large motor-car dashed along the road at high speed with acetylene lamps which shone for many yards in advance of the wheels, illuminating the trees and hedges on either side of the road.

Much to Challis's surprise, when he stood and held out a warning arm and called to the driver to stop, he was obeyed. Even more to his surprise, he discovered the driver to be Mrs. Daplin-Gennery, and that her companion was her nephew, Lieutenant Ingoldsby.

"Very sorry, ma'am," said Challis apologetically, "but I've got strict orders to stop all cars with high lights. I'm afraid I must ask you to lower yours, or else screen them."

"Quite right, constable," laughed Lieutenant Ingoldsby, jumping out. "I'm glad you stopped us without opening fire upon us."

Challis gathered that Lieutenant Ingoldsby was on the way to Buremouth to visit a friend who had been sent home wounded. When the car had gone on, with greatly reduced lights, he returned towards Haddisport along the edge of the cliff, then made inland to the Alderwick road.

As he approached the road through the intricate maze of bramble and gorse, he became aware of the sound of an approaching car. Could it possibly be Mrs. Daplin-Gennery returning so soon?

Instead of going into the road, he concealed himself within the shadow of a hawthorn-tree and watched. The car was coming slowly—so slowly that it made very little sound; and its lights were exceedingly dim. He waited, feeling instinctively that something was about to happen. It occurred to him that the dimness of the lights and the quiet slowness with which the car was moving were due to the extreme caution on the part of the driver, who evidently wished to escape observation.

In the darkness Challis could hardly see the vehicle itself, only the two tiny lights which were like the glimmer of candles. Suddenly, just opposite to him, it stopped, then backed and curved towards the farther side of the road.

Only at that moment did the watcher realise that just at that point was a narrow lane leading to Alderwick Hall. It was into this lane that the car was backing, obviously for the purpose of concealment. When its whole length was within the lane, hidden under the overhanging trees, it stopped.

The driver got out, stood for some moments as if listening, then went softly to the front of the car to extinguish the lamps. As he bent down to the first of them, the light shone in his face.

Challis hitched his cuffs back from his wrists. His eyesight was very keen. He had seen the man's face and recognised it. It was the face of Fritz Seligmann, the German spy!

With the stealthy softness of a cat stalking its prey, the policeman crept forward, and, just as Seligmann had raised his hand to turn out the second light, leapt upon him, gripping him from behind by the two arms.

There was a heavy gasp from the astonished German as he went down on his knees, the policeman's weight on top of him. He writhed and struggled to free himself, and succeeded in getting his right hand to his hip pocket, from which, with an effort, he drew his loaded revolver.

Challis guessed rather than knew what was in the man's hand. In an instant he had seized the German's wrist, twisted the hand under it, and secured the weapon from the helpless fingers.

"Now," he said, speaking for the first time, "I think I've got you. If you move I'm goin' to use this here pistol. You're an enemy, and you may take it from me I don't care if I shoot you dead here and now no more than if I killed you on the field of battle."

Seligmann was lying with his face to the grass, panting, writhing, heaving under the weight of the constable's knee planted in the small of his back, while the cold ring of the revolver muzzle was pressed against the bone behind his ear and the policeman's forefinger was twitching at the trigger.

Thus they remained for some minutes, the one utterly helpless, the other resolute, alert, and astonishingly strong.

In those tense minutes Challis wondered what he was going to do. He did not want to use the revolver as anything else than a menace, and yet he knew that if he should move there would be a struggle, during which, by some trick or dexterity, his captive might escape.

In the back pocket of his overcoat was a pair of handcuffs. But how could he get hold of them without dropping the revolver? How could he hope to fix them on the German's wrists?

But if he could not get at the handcuffs, at least he could summon help. There were houses within call. The nearest was Sunnydene, for which Seligmann had no doubt been shaping; the next was Green Croft, then Major Redisham's. He managed to draw out his whistle, while his captive straggled more desperately than ever to get free. Just as he raised the whistle to his lips, he heard the quick patter of feet along the road. He blew a long, shrill blast.

Seligmann heaved himself upward with a mighty effort; but the revolver muzzle was pressed yet more forcefully against his skull, and the constable's knees were almost breaking his back.

The footsteps approached swiftly, and at length the flash of an electric torch shed its slanting ray upon the desperately struggling pair.

"What's up? Hullo, Challis, I've been searching for you."

It was the voice of Mark Redisham. He had received a telephone message from the police-station, bidding him find Constable Challis and help him to waylay this same suspected motor-car, coming from Buremouth.

"Quick! Feel in my back pocket for the handcuffs," Challis ordered, dropping the revolver and seizing his prisoner's two wrists. "Right. Now hold his head while I put 'em on. Then you can drive him and me to the police-station."

There was a sharp clip as the steel rings were locked upon the German's wrists. Mark went to the car, turned up the lights, and got ready. They bundled the prisoner into the body of the car, where Challis sat with him, covering him with the revolver. Mark drove off through the town, and soon brought up at his destination. In the car they discovered a complete wireless outfit, a signalling lamp, and a handbag containing certain compromising documents.

"Yes," said the Superintendent, when Seligmann was safely locked in a cell. "He has been busy with that wireless apparatus to-night. Some of his messages were jammed, but not all of them. Not all."

CHAPTER XXI.

THE RAIDERS.

Whether Seligmann's wireless messages had anything to do with the matter or not can only be conjectured. But it is true that at earliest dawn on that same misty, November morning the fishermen of the Haddisport herring fleet, at work with their drift nets south of the Dogger Bank, were surprised by the sudden appearance in their midst of a squadron of eight grey-hulled Dreadnoughts and cruisers, bearing due westward at breakneck speed.

Looming out of the mist, they tore onward through the nets, regardless of the damage they caused. They showed no lights, even from their cabin portholes; they flew no flags.

One of the skippers, watching them, was so sure that they were British battleships that he waved his morning teapot at them in greeting; but some of the Englishmen shook their heads in doubt. There were peculiarities in the structure of the ships which were not familiar.

They passed so close to the Mignonette that Sam Quester, perched on the roof of the cuddy scuttle, saw the faces of the officers on bridge and quarterdeck, and was able afterwards to assert that he was almost sure one of the officers on the leading Dreadnought was Max Hilliger's father.

By the time they had passed out of sight into the mist the fishermen had come to the correct conclusion that the squadron was a part of the German High Sea Fleet. But what was their purpose? Where were they going at such a headlong rate? And where in the meantime was the British Fleet?

Twenty miles farther to the westward the Germans were again seen, flying the White Ensign, this time by a patrol of English mine-sweepers, which immediately sent out a wireless message of warning. The enemy flagship tried to jam the message. Nevertheless it was picked up by His Majesty's torpedo gunboat Kingfisher, lying at anchor in Buremouth Roads. The Kingfisher sent the warning onward, to be repeated and repeated north and south about the sea.

How did it happen that the Germans knew so well that on this particular morning they were in no danger of being intercepted by British cruisers? Had this been the secret of Fritz Seligmann's activity that night?

The wireless message from the Kingfisher reached the naval bases of Buremouth and Haddisport. Off Buremouth two destroyers were at anchor. They at once got up steam and pushed out in the wake of the gunboat. At Haddisport there was a submarine—the H29. She was ordered to follow. But where was her commander, Lieutenant Ingoldsby?

By the merest chance, Mark Redisham heard the question asked. He had come to the naval base to report the arrest of Fritz Seligmann, using Seligmann's car, which he had left at the pier-head. Constable Challis had told him that Lieutenant Ingoldsby had gone with Mrs. Daplin-Gennery to Floxley Hall, outside Buremouth.

Mark gave the information to Mr. Bilverstone, who telephoned to Green Croft and got a prompt answer. Mrs. Daplin-Gennery had just returned; but had left her nephew at the bedside of his wounded friend.

"All right, sir," said Mark, "I'll go and fetch him."

It was a journey of nineteen miles there and back, but Seligmann's car was a powerful one, well supplied with petrol, and Mark Redisham was an expert and cautious driver. He posted off to Floxley Hall at top speed.

Meanwhile, the enemy Dreadnoughts and cruisers were still being watched from the decks of the patrolling trawlers. They were racing towards the English coast, their tall funnels belching black clouds of smoke, their officers and men all at their fighting quarters, their heavy guns loaded, their torpedo-tubes charged.

"They look as if they was skelterin' away from an enemy," observed one of the English skippers. "But hold hard! They'll go slap into our mine-field, sure's a gun, the course they're makin'. Taren't possible they can hit the open lane."

A field of defensive contact mines had been laid for the protection of the coast, with secret gaps or passages which were supposed to be known only to naval men and responsible pilots. It was clear, however, that the Germans were well aware, not only of the exact locality of the mined area, but also of the open lanes through which they might pass in safety, for without slackening speed the ships rushed through in an unbroken procession, never swerving until they came within sight of the Alderwick lightship.

Here they separated into two divisions, the one steering direct for Buremouth, the other for Haddisport.

The Kingfisher, steaming out to inquire into the truth of the wireless message she had received, made her presence known by flashing her searchlight through the gloom of the early morning mist. The enemy flagship, bearing west-by-south, instead of answering the signal, opened fire upon the British gunboat, at the same time showing the German flag in place of the White Ensign.

Confronted by so formidable an antagonist, the little Kingfisher, with her smaller four-inch guns, could not attempt to engage. She fired seven shots, which all dropped short, while shells were falling all round her. One struck her foremast and smashed her aerials, another exploded under her bridge, fatally injuring a seaman at her steering-wheel and cutting the compass in half.

The two destroyers raced up to her help, making as much smoke as possible to hide her. All three, hopelessly outranged, could only steam about in a zig-zag course at their fullest speed and at length take refuge in the mist.

The battleships did not follow in pursuit. It was not their intention to enter into a sea fight, if one could be avoided. Theirs was the sinister purpose of bombarding defenceless towns and spreading "frightfulness" amongst unoffending civilians.

While one division of the squadron branched off to pour their devastating shells into the houses of Buremouth, the other steamed abreast of Alderwick Shoal, and from the security of the deep water sent salvo after salvo into the buildings of Haddisport.

From the bridge of the flagship Heinrich Hilliger bent his binoculars upon his own house to seek for a signal which he failed to discover, or, rather, which was never displayed, his faithful secretary being at the time securely confined within the narrow walls of a prisoner's cell in Haddisport police-station.

Not finding the expected signal, Herr Hilliger transferred his attention to the business in hand, indicating the particular houses and buildings at which he desired the gunlayers to take especial aim: first, Green Croft, associated in his mind with the mischievous submarine commander, Lieutenant Ingoldsby, whose torpedoes had robbed the Kaiser's High Sea Fleet of at least two important ships; and then in turn the lighthouse, the parish church, the town hall, the chief hotels, the harbour, and finally the naval base, with its wireless station and battery of guns.

Mark Redisham and Lieutenant Ingoldsby, tearing in their motor-car along the deserted highroad, had heard the booming of heavy guns out at sea. The alarming sounds drew nearer and nearer, from two directions.

"They're bombarding Buremouth as well as Haddisport, sir," Mark declared, leaning forward to increase his speed.

"Faster! faster!" cried Ingoldsby. "Give her all she can do. Let her rip. But keep your head—keep cool—keep a sharp look-out!"

Mark had no need to be urged or cautioned. He had perfect control of the machine; he knew every turn and curve, every dip and rise of the road. The telegraph poles flashed by as if they had been park railings set side by side, and there was no traffic to interfere with his onward, headlong pace.

As they left Alderwick village behind, and dashed along the open highway across the moorland, the first shell from the German battleships shrieked over their heads; a second crashed into one of the houses on the esplanade; another laid the lighthouse in ruins.

In the town shells were falling thick and fast, exploding with deafening noise. In the market-place a big hotel was on fire, and the car was checked by a crowd of excited people; but Mark made his way through, sounding his hooter, and arrived without hurt at the harbour, where the submarine was waiting ready for her commander to jump aboard.

The bombardment lasted some thirty minutes. The ships, dimly visible through the mist and smoke, steamed southward abreast of the town, firing their eleven-inch shells from starboard. Then they returned and repeated the manoeuvre, firing from their port sides and ending where they had begun. It was not safe for them to continue any longer, since every moment added to the danger of their retreat being cut off by a squadron of British Dreadnoughts racing towards them in response to urgent wireless messages.

Favoured by the fog, they took to flight, the battleships leading in order to give the smaller cruisers in the rear the opportunity of dropping some hundreds of explosive mines in their wake.

Already submarine H29, with Lieutenant Ingoldsby at his post in the conning-tower, had entered into pursuit, making for the gap in the British mine-field through which alone the enemy ships could pass. But he had not counted on their hasty retreat or calculated the speed of their flight.

As they crossed in advance of him, not seeing his periscope, he fired his two bow torpedoes, and missed. He got astern of them and fired two more. But just as the missiles left their tubes there was an ominous crash and a fierce explosion.

The submarine had run up against one of the Germans' floating mines, which broke her like an egg, and the H29 and all who were in her sank to their last resting-place at the bottom of the North Sea.

CHAPTER XXII.

CUT AND RUN.

Seth Newruck, who lived at the north end of the town, had been to Alderwick Hall to take certain reports and accounts to the Scout Commissioner, and was returning across the fields when he heard the firing of naval guns from somewhere out at sea.

He had previously seen the gunboat leave her anchorage, and he believed at first that her gunners were practising, or that perhaps some of the patrolling trawlers were exploding floating mines. He was not alarmed.

But very soon the loud, insistent booming convinced him that the guns were heavier than those of the Kingfisher, and that some sort of naval engagement was going on out there beyond the curtain of sea mist.

He began to run. Coming out upon the highway, he crossed the warren to the edge of the cliff and stood looking out to sea. He could see the flashes of the guns, flickering through the fog like summer lightning.

If ships were firing upon the Kingfisher, then assuredly they were enemies—a squadron of the German Fleet! Perhaps they were even engaged with a division of our British Dreadnoughts! The thought thrilled him in all his nerves.

After a while there was a lull. Seth went on, beyond the ravine, beyond Sunnydene. When he got close to the front gate of Green Croft, and again looked searchingly outward, he distinguished the shadowy forms of three great battleships, led by two light cruisers. They were steaming southward, with their broadsides towards the land.

Suddenly, from the foremost battleship, there came a flash. She was hidden in a cloud of smoke. He heard a shrill shriek, and saw a high fountain of spray rise from the deep water inside Alderwick Shoal, where a shot had fallen. At the same moment there was a terrible, ear-splitting, earth-shaking boom.

Seth trembled from head to foot; less with fear than with boyish excitement. Was it possible that he was, after all, going to witness at first hand some actual incident of the great war? His heart was beating furiously against his ribs; he went hot and cold by turns. He knew that he stood in danger. The next shot might come farther than the sea!

"I wonder if I'm afraid?" he asked himself.

Then he thought of the people in the houses near him, and of his duty as a Scout. If the danger should come nearer, how could he give help? He remembered the refuge trench which he had helped to dig in Mrs. Daplin-Gennery's garden. Now most surely was a time for it to be used!

He ran in at the gateway and up the gravelled drive. The window blinds were down, the front door was shut. He went round to the back entrance and was about to hammer at the kitchen door when it was flung open.

Mrs. Daplin-Gennery stood in the passage, wearing a blue dressing-gown. Her long, black hair hung loose over her shoulders, making her face look very white. Her arms were bare, and he saw that she held a revolver in her right hand. Behind her were other women—her lady's maid, the Irish cook, the parlourmaid, and two others.

Seth Newruck raised his hand in the Scouts' salute.

"You'd better all get into the trench, ma'am," he advised. "There's a lot of German warships out there beyond the sandbank."

Even as he spoke there came the loud, whistling rush of a shell overhead and a terrific explosion rent the air as the thing fell somewhere in the fields beyond. The servants screamed. Mrs. Daplin-Gennery alone was calm.

"Are there troopships and Zeppelins with them?" she questioned. "Are they going to land? Is it an invasion?"

"No." Seth shook his head. "I don't think so. But, anyhow, you'd better take shelter in the dug-out."

Mrs. Daplin-Gennery stood aside, thrusting the others in advance of her. They had more than once rehearsed this scene. One by one they obediently and very quickly rushed forward and disappeared into the sap trench. Their mistress followed, but hesitated half-way down the sunken ladder.

"You must come, too," she called to Seth. "There is plenty of room."

Seth drew back a step and turned as if to leave.

"As soon as you're all safe in the dug-out," he responded quietly, "I'm going to run home, to look after my mother and sisters. Father's out with the Fleet."

There was another loud boom of a gun; but this time it came from the direction of Buremouth.

"Quick! Come into the trench!" urged Mrs. Daplin-Gennery, now at the foot of the ladder and out of sight. "You'll get killed if you don't. And if they land troops—if it's an invasion—you must stay and defend us helpless women. You're the only male person here. Besides, you're a Scout; you know what to do if any of us are wounded."

This argument presented a new aspect of the situation. Seth descended the ladder, and as he turned into the darkness of the sap trench the pistol was thrust into his hand.

"If a German shows his face, shoot him!" he was ordered.

"They won't land, ma'am," he declared with confidence, following along the covered way to the refuge of the sunken bicycle shed under its protecting mound of sandbags and earth. "They couldn't land through shoal water."

His further assurances were cut short by a deafening explosion. The earth shook, there was a prolonged roar and clatter of tumbling masonry, mingled with the splitting of timber and the crashing of glass.

"Wirra-wirra!" cried the Irish cook. "It's the house they've struck, and we'll all be kilt entirely!"

A shower of loose sand, dislodged by the concussion, fell through the cracks in the roof of the shelter, the support timbers creaked ominously. Then suddenly all was silent except for the cries of the frightened kitchenmaid.

Seth ran back along the covered way and found the entrance blocked by a confusion of fallen bricks and garden soil. But there was a second exit which admitted light and air to the refuge, with a second ladder. Up this ladder he climbed and thrust out his head above ground to see what damage had been done and discover if the house were on fire.

His nostrils were assailed by the pungent fumes from the exploded eleven-inch shell. Clouds of drifting smoke and dust obscured his view; but as they cleared he saw that the gable end of the house had fallen, carrying with it a chimney-stack and some of the wrecked furniture of an upper room. The windows were all smashed. The shell seemed to have burst somewhere between the adjoining stables and the conservatory, both of which were a mass of ruins.

"It's a good thing nobody is hurt," he said, returning to report on what he had seen. "You're quite safe now. I don't suppose a second shot will be aimed at the same place."

There was another fierce explosion, very near. Again and again the guns boomed out their thunder. The sounds of bursting shells came clear and sharp, repeated again and again as the bombardment of the town was continued.

"I can't be of any more use here," said Seth, returning the revolver to Mrs. Daplin-Gennery. "When the firing stops, you can get out all right. I must go now. I believe Major Redisham's house has been struck. They're firing their broadsides right into the heart of the town now! Listen!"

He was back at the ladder; but the lady's maid held him.

"Don't leave us!" she implored agitatedly. "It's not all over yet. Stay where you are."

He yielded to her entreaties. The enemy ships had gone about and were returning abreast of the town, firing salvos as they passed, steaming very quickly. They must already have got some inkling or suspicion that a squadron of British cruisers was coming down in hot haste from the northward, for abruptly they ceased firing and turned outward, disappearing into the mist. They had run risks out of all proportion to the gain of such a cowardly raid.

Straight across from Wilhelmshaven they had made their bold dash for the English coast to bombard a couple of undefended towns which they might attack without venturing too far south or too far north, or lingering too long. If they stayed no more than one brief hour in English waters and then fled for very life, they had reason. Quick of heel and heavy of hand as they were, they owed their escape wholly to the fog which shielded them.

Coming out from the trench, Seth Newruck ran through the front garden to the edge of the cliff and saw the Kingfisher returning to port with her topmast broken and her bridge badly battered.

He turned in at Major Redisham's gate, hoping to find Mark. The house had not been touched by the shell fire. Mrs. Redisham and her two daughters and servants had taken refuge in their dug-out. They were excited, but not frightened. Their chief anxiety was about Mark, who had gone out after supper on the previous night and not come back.

Seth offered to make inquiries concerning him, saying he was sure to be all right somewhere, and ran off again.

At the top of the town he encountered Mark in a strange motor-car. Mark pulled up at sight of him.

"Do you know if my people are safe?" he asked.

"Yes. I've just seen them," Seth answered. "They're only worried a bit to know where you've been all night. Whose car have you got?"

"I'm not quite sure," Mark laughed. "I suppose it may be considered a prize of war. We captured it last night, Challis and I, along with the German spy who was using it. Jump in! There's no real need for me to go home, now that I know they're safe. I will telephone to them from the post-office. It's pretty awful down there. Ever so many people have been killed and injured. Mr. Bilverstone has got a whole troop of nurses and stretcher-bearers at work. Come along, we can help."

Seth jumped up beside him. They drove past the lighthouse, where a shell had struck and exploded, doing considerable damage, then turned aside to ascertain that Seth's mother and sisters were safe.

Some dwelling-houses near the Town Hall had been wrecked. Windows were smashed everywhere; an hotel in the market-place was in ruins.

Mark made room for two women and three children who were seriously injured, and conveyed them to the hospital; then he went about the town, using the car for ambulance work and giving first-aid where he could.

The hospital staff, the doctors, with the police, the local Scouts, and many other willing helpers were kept busy. Over thirty persons had been killed, more than a hundred were severely injured. The damage to property could not easily be measured, but the most serious destruction was in the crowded quarters of the old town where the fishermen lived. In the course of his work of taking the injured to the hospital, Mark Redisham called at the police-station. A side of the building had been shattered by one of the German shells. The wall and a part of the roof had fallen in, burying a warder and two prisoners in the ruins. Men were engaged in clearing away the debris of bricks and tiles and heavy wooden joists. They had rescued the warder and one of the prisoners, only slightly hurt.

Mark waited until the third victim should be found. A heavy beam of timber had to be lifted. It was moved at last, and Mark saw what was beneath it.

"It's the German spy!" he cried. "It's Fritz Seligmann. He's dead—quite dead!—killed by his own friends!"

CHAPTER XXIII.

STRIKING THE BALANCE.

In their hurried flight from Haddisport and Buremouth, the raiding Germans had made a novel and unexpected departure from the recognised methods of warfare. By dropping floating mines in their wake, they showed that their battleships may be more dangerous in retreat than when advancing.

Retreat is not an inspiring proceeding; it depresses the spirits of officers and men, and this would be very evident in the case of the German seamen who had so long boasted of the great things they would accomplish when a naval war came. But if when their ships were in flight the crews knew that they were laying snares to trip up their pursuers their retreat would be robbed of its depressing effects. Any British vessels of war venturing to follow on their heels would inevitably be destroyed.

They were not yet hidden in the fog when Lieutenant Ingoldsby's submarine, manoeuvring to torpedo them, ran up against one of their mines and was instantly sunk, with the loss of her gallant commander and every one of his crew. Hardly had the H29 disappeared when two of the patrolling trawlers, steaming up to her rescue, were also sent to the bottom.

The German light cruisers must have been fitted for this purpose of mine sowing. When the battleships were advancing, these smaller, high-speed scouts would act as a screen, and in retreat they would keep astern of the big ships, dropping a trail of small mines overboard as they fled.

The sacrifice of the H29 and the two trawlers was a serious disaster; but at the same time it taught our Navy a valuable lesson in tactics. Never again would any British warship pursuing a German follow directly in the wake, but always on a parallel course.

It was the wounded Kingfisher which brought into Haddisport the news that a new mine-field had been sown. A fleet of mine-sweepers, led by the gunboat Stormcock, was at once sent out. It included the Dainty, with Mark Redisham on board, and throughout the rest of that exciting day the people on shore were startled by repeated loud detonations as the floating mines were one after another exploded by gunfire from the trawler's decks.

The Dainty and three of her consorts remained at sea for a week, doing patrol duty—cruising between the English coasts and the Bight of Heligoland in search of enemy ships or ships carrying contraband of war. They were now armed with machine-guns and could defend themselves in emergency.

At this time the chief interests of the war were centred upon the commerce destroyers on the outer seas and the military operations in France and Flanders. The Germans were making their great effort to force a way through to Calais. Their navy was hemmed in by the watchful British Fleet, and for a long time after the bombardment of Haddisport the North Sea was clear of their ships. There was no target for British naval guns.

Some few of their destroyers and submarines, it is true, contrived to steal out from the protection of their fortified harbours, and two British cruisers—the Hawke and the Hermes—were sunk by their torpedoes.

Fearing to risk their battleships in an engagement on the open sea, the enemy were using their small craft in the pirate work of sinking innocent merchantmen and fishing boats. They had seized the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, and were making this a base for submarines.

It was surmised that they intended also to station a force of torpedo boats at Antwerp, in spite of the breach of Dutch neutrality which the use of the River Scheldt would imply. But to enter either seaport they had to run the gauntlet of our North Sea patrols, and on at least one occasion they met with complete disaster.

A patrol of English trawlers was cruising off the Dutch coast, not far from the mouth of the Scheldt. Mark Redisham, on board the Dainty, was enduring as best he could the dull monotony of his confined life on a small vessel pitching uncomfortably on a rough sea in a bitterly cold wind. He was walking the wet deck, his oilskins dripping with rain, when he saw smoke on the dim horizon to the north. It came from the funnels of four torpedo-boat destroyers.

Mark watched them, and presently determined that they were Germans, making for the Scheldt.

"You'd best rap out a wireless message," said Skipper Snowling.

"I don't think there's any need," returned Mark. "Look what's coming along behind them!"

He indicated a second cloud of smoke, much greater in volume than the first, and blacker. The Germans also had evidently seen it, for they had put on full steam, doing their best to escape. Whatever their pursuers might be, they were quickly lessening the distance that divided them from their prey. Mark watched the chase excitedly.

The four enemy boats were small compared with British destroyers; but they were going at quite twenty-six knots speed. Each was armed with three quick-firing guns and two machine-guns, and carried a crew of sixty officers and men. They flashed past, paying no attention to the trawlers.

Through the black oil smoke in the distance could now be distinguished a British light cruiser and four destroyers, rushing along like railway trains, with their high prows smothered in white spray. They were overhauling the Germans hand over hand.

"They can't escape! They can't escape!" cried the skipper.

Apparently the fugitives realised this; for they turned abruptly to starboard and at once opened fire on their pursuers. The distance between was about four miles, and it was at this range that the British cruiser, and her consorts, extending themselves into line abreast formation, began their cannonade. The shells from the two opposing sides crossed in front of the patrol of trawlers, which stood by, witnessing the fierce combat.

It lasted hardly more than an hour, a running fight in which everything depended upon marksmanship and in which the superiority of the British gunnery was from the first apparent.

A few moments after the action began, the leading German boat was struck in a vital part. Clouds of wreckage and smoke filled the air about her as the British lyddite shells hit her and exploded, smashing the thin steel plating of her hull. When the smoke cleared, there was nothing left of her but a few survivors struggling in the waves.

The remaining three vessels, still going at full speed, tried to dodge the shots, while their own guns were kept at work. The British destroyers had selected each her own target, and continued pounding away at it from a distance. Superior range and weight of guns soon proved their advantage. The second of the German boats was sunk, then the third, and finally the fourth; the Kaiser's Navy was poorer by the loss of four useful units.

Promptly, when the first of them went down, the trawler patrol hastened to the spot to pick up survivors. From all four some few were rescued, to be taken to England as prisoners.

Three officers and ten men had been saved by the Dainty when the cruiser steamed near, stopped, and dropped one of her boats. As the boat came alongside, Mark Redisham glanced instinctively at the men's caps and was surprised to read the name H.M.S. Dauntless. He looked at the midshipman in the stern sheets. It was his brother Rodney.

"So that's your new ship?" said Mark when they had greeted each other. "She's a smart one. I hope there are not many casualties."

"Hardly any to speak of," Rodney answered. "One officer and four men slightly wounded, that's all; and hardly a scratch on any one of the ships. We've wiped off an old score, anyhow. What we've just done will balance the loss of the Atreus."

"Yes," interposed one of the German officers who had been listening very attentively. "But the balance is still considerably in favour of Germany. You are forgetting what our Emden has done; you are forgetting how our Admiral von Spee annihilated a squadron of your Dreadnoughts, how one of our tiny submarines recently sent three of your best cruisers to the bottom. Did we not sink two more of your cruisers only last week? Have we not successfully bombarded your fortified coast towns——?"

What more he would have said was left unspoken, for at that moment one of the bluejackets in the boat leapt from his seat and seized him by the throat with one strong hand, while he lifted the other to strike him.

"Stop that! Stop that!" cried Rodney Redisham in a voice of stern command.

The seaman instantly let go his hold and stood back abashed.

"Beg pardon, sir," he said humbly, touching his cap; "but my brother Tom went down with the Atreus; my mother and sister were killed by a German shell in Haddisport, and I didn't reckon I was doin' no harm in goin' for the first German as have come within reach of my fist."

"It is not English to strike a prisoner, however," the midshipman reminded him.

For some reason which Mark Redisham did not understand, none of the prisoners were left on board the Dainty. They were distributed among her three consorts, which followed the flotilla towards Harwich, leaving the commodore to return alone to Haddisport.

Skipper Snowling took her northward along the Dutch coast before making a slant across the Silver Pit. He had not gone many miles when a German destroyer came in sight, bearing down towards him.

"Looks as if she was a straggler from that other lot," Snowling continued, and he altered his course to get nearer to a Norwegian steamer to the west of him.

To his surprise and annoyance, the destroyer also altered course and gave chase. Snowling put on more steam, and, as a precaution, got his machine gun ready for action, with Mark Redisham at the breech. In their weeks of mine-sweeping work Mark had proved himself an excellent shot. He had seldom failed to explode a mine when firing at it.

The German signalled to the Dainty to stop and haul down her flag, but the White Ensign remained proudly at the trawler's masthead and her engines never went so well.

The destroyer opened fire and there was an immediate reply from the gun on the trawler's deck. Mark aimed with cool precision and made many direct hits in vital parts, while shots from the German fell thick around him.

The two vessels blazed away at each other as hard as they could for about a quarter of an hour, no great damage being done on either side. But the destroyer, with her greater speed, was quickly overhauling the mine-sweeper, and at last the two came broadside to broadside.

"Look out, chaps!" cried Mark. "She's going to torpedo us!"

All the hands wore their safety collars and lifebelts, and the boat was swung out ready over the quarter rail. The skipper was at the steering wheel.

"Keep cool all," commanded Snowling. "Let 'em know as we're Britons. Give her another peppering, Mark!"

Mark and his assistants had already shown that they were better gun-layers than their enemies, and their next cannonade sent splinters flying from the destroyer's decks. Her wireless machinery and aerial was already wrecked. Her guns were silent for a while as she manoeuvred to discharge a torpedo.

Suddenly Harry Snowling put his helm hard over, the Dainty swung round bow on, and she raced forward like a mad animal direct for the destroyer and crashed into her amidships, her powerful prow smashing like a battering-ram into the steel plates.

The destroyer's bridge fell over, and the five officers and men who had stood upon it were flung headlong into the sea.

The trawler's engines were reversed. She backed out of the gaping hole she had made and then stood still as if to take breath after her exertion. The German boat, badly damaged, but not injured below water, just turned round, and, without waiting to pick up any of her men in the sea, made off as fast as her condition would allow her in the direction in which she was originally going.

"And now," said Harry Snowling, when the survivors had been picked up and stowed safely below, "I reckon we may as well steer straight for home and get a coat of paint over them scratches on our bows."

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE MEETING ON THE CLIFF.

"Beautiful view from here," remarked the stranger, dropping the stub of his cigarette on the pavement of the esplanade. "I should say it must be sharming in der spring, ven der gorse vos all in bloom. It minds me of Scotland."

He spoke very softly, with a slightly Scotch accent—or was it merely broken English? Mr. Croucher took it to be Scotch; but he was not very quick at recognising accent, and perhaps it was the reference to Scotland which gave him the idea.

"Yes," he agreed, "nice, pure air, too. It's what I call clean air."

"But in ze vinter," the stranger resumed, "it is probable ze beople in dese houses get much more air than zey vant."

Mr. Croucher turned with his back to the sea and contemplated the houses referred to. They had a new interest for him this morning. It was the first time he had seen them since the visit of the German raiders. The house directly opposite him was as seriously damaged as if an earthquake had shaken its foundations. The windows were smashed and boarded up, a large part of the roof had fallen in; the gable end was in ruin, and some of the bulging walls were shored up with beams of wood.

The stranger also had turned and was regarding the wrecked dwelling curiously, with his watery, blue eyes blinking through gold-rimmed spectacles.

"You have had a fire here, it seems," he casually observed, standing slightly back so that Mr. Croucher should not look into his face and penetrate its disguise.

It was a flabby, clean-shaven face, with a double chin which was partly hidden by the wide, turned-up collar of his heavy overcoat. He was a tall, robust man. At first sight of him Mr. Croucher had supposed him to be a naval officer in mufti.

"No," explained Mr. Croucher, "it wasn't a fire. All that devastation is the result of the bombardment the other morning. It was awful while it lasted. They started firing just opposite here," he pursued; glad to have a listener, and proceeded to give an ample account of the bombardment and its results, concluding with a reference to the sinking of submarine H29. "Her commander, Lieutenant Ingoldsby, lived in the very house we're now looking at," he added.

From Green Croft the stranger transferred his attention to Sunnydene, a little farther towards the end of the cliff.

"That house wasn't touched," Mr. Croucher informed him. "They didn't aim at it. You see, it belongs to a German, the brother of one of the Kaiser's admirals, and of course they had instructions to do it no harm. I don't know what amount of truth there may be in it, but it's whispered in the town that German spies were busy along here on the night before the raid."

"Indeed?" The stranger had taken out his cigarette-case and opened it. He took one for himself and politely held the case in invitation towards Mr. Croucher.

"Thank you, but I don't smoke," said Mr. Croucher, watching the other strike a light.

Just for an instant, as the man turned to shield the flaming match from the wind, it occurred to Mr. Croucher that there was something not altogether unfamiliar in his face and figure. And surely it was not the first time that he had seen that same fat hand with its diamond ring, holding a flaming match and lighting a cigarette in that same way! But he dismissed the idea as impossible. No, this was a perfect stranger.

"Spies? But you amaze me!" the other exclaimed, dropping the dead match. "Have not all alien enemies been interned—as certainly they should be? Or are some of our own beople vorking for Germany?"

This expression of concern for the Empire's safety gave Mr. Croucher confidence.

"No," he declared warmly. "They have not by any means all been interned. That very house along there—Sunnydene—has been a nest of plotting spies all along. Hilliger and that secretary of his—a fellow named Seligmann—had caused no end of mischief before Seligmann was arrested."

A look of eager interest leapt into the stranger's face, which, however, he contrived to conceal from Mr. Croucher.

"So?" he said, controlling his excitement. "They arrested him, did they? Ven vos dat?"

"Two or three nights ago," Mr. Croucher innocently answered. "The night before the bombardment, it was. In the ordinary course of things, I suppose he would have been tried and hanged as a spy. He was imprisoned in Haddisport gaol; but the next morning, when the German battleships were bombarding the town, one of their shells struck the police-station, burying him in the ruins, and he was taken out dead."

"Dear me!" exclaimed the stranger; and with surprising abruptness he saluted and went off, walking very quickly towards the end of the cliff, where he turned inland and disappeared among the bushes beyond Sunnydene.

He had been gone only a few moments when Mark Redisham and Seth Newruck came along, with telescopes under their arms. They were on coast-watching duty.

"I wish you two Scouts had been here five minutes ago," said Mr. Croucher, as they drew near him. "There was a stranger in conversation with me very much interested in the bombardment. You might have been able to tell him more about it than I could—especially about the arrest of Seligmann."

"I don't see what a stranger could want to know about Seligmann," said Mark. "What was he like? Was he English?"

"English? I suppose so; either English or Scotch. He spoke with a sort of accent. He was tall, fair, rather stout, and wore spectacles."

"Are you sure he wasn't German?" questioned Seth. "Perhaps he was a spy—a friend of Seligmann's wanting to know what had become of him."

"Nonsense," objected Mr. Croucher.

"He lighted a cigarette, didn't he?" said Mark, observing a dead match on the pavement.

"How do you know it wasn't a pipe or a cigar?" asked Mr. Croucher sharply. He was always being tripped up by these Sea Scouts, who seemed to know things by an extraordinary instinct.

"Because there's the fag end of a cigarette lying at your feet, with some ash beside it that the wind hasn't yet blown away," Mark Redisham quietly answered.

He had the curiosity to pick up and examine the fragment before handing it to his companion.

"What do you make of it, Seth?" he inquired meaningly.

"Crumbs!" cried Seth. "Why, it's the same brand as those we found in the silver cigarette-case—marked 'Vafiadi, Cairo'! I wonder if the stranger was Herr Hilliger?"

"That's just what I was wondering, too," nodded Mark. "It's possible."

Mr. Croucher stared at the two Scouts indignantly.

"Do you suppose I shouldn't have known him?" he demanded. "Herr Hilliger wears a beard and has long hair. This man was clean-shaven, and his hair was quite short. Besides——"

"It wouldn't be impossible to shave off a beard and get a short crop," declared Mark. "Which way did he go?"

Mr. Croucher indicated the direction. The two Scouts went off hurriedly. Mark led the way across the warren to the Alderwick road and the little cross lane.

"It was just here that we captured Seligmann," he explained.

They searched the ground and discovered in the soft mud the newly impressed marks of the tyres of a motor-car and of a man's boots.

It was useless, of course, for them to attempt to track the car. Had they been able to do so, the trail would have led them many miles away, through village after village and town after town, northward along the coast. They might have run the car to earth at last on a desolate stretch of moorland where it had halted. Thence they might have followed Heinrich Hilliger's tracks to a pile of ruins—the ruins of an old-world castle—on the edge of a steep precipice overlooking the sea.

At the foot of the precipice was a tiny bay of deep, clear water, fringed with rocks. Between two of the rocks a small boat was drawn up on the shingle—a curious, collapsible boat made of water-tight canvas stretched on a steel frame. A pair of sculls lay across the thwarts. Nobody was in charge of it.

Heinrich Hilliger looked down into the depths and saw the boat as he passed along the edge of the cliff and made his way through the heather to the ruin. He gave a long, low whistle and a whistle came back to him in response.

"You have managed it, then!" cried a young voice; and from beyond a corner of the grey stone wall his son Max ran out, dressed in the uniform of a German naval officer.

The father and son embraced. Then Max laughed, looking at his father in amusement.

"It's as well you gave me the signal," he said, speaking in German. "I should hardly have known you without your beard. Well, you have been to Haddisport? What news of Fritz?"

"The worst news," answered Herr Hilliger. "He was caught. He was taken to prison. More than that, when we bombarded the town, one of our shells struck the prison-house and poor Fritz was killed! It seems like fate."

"Killed! By our own guns! Father, are you sure?"

"Absolutely. It is in the newspapers, and I have had confirmation of it from Old Croucher, whom I met outside Sunnydene. He did not recognise me; but he saved me the risk of showing myself in the town."

Max clenched and unclenched his hands.

"This is what comes of the silly, useless notion of bombarding open towns!" he declared. "What good has it done, to knock a few shops and hotels to pieces, to smash the windows of a few seaside villas, and to take the lives of a lot of innocent women and children? There was no military advantage in it! You have not even frightened the English people. They are only laughing at us for using our battleships to fire their shells into unfortified places instead of going out boldly to face the enemy in a fair and open fight!"

"You forget, my son," returned Herr Hilliger, "we sank a British submarine; we sowed many hundreds of explosive mines. There was some good in that, eh?"

"Not that I see," retorted Max. "The commander of that submarine was once my friend. He has dined at your own table. And from what I understand, the English mine-sweepers exploded all the mines before the day was out. I don't agree with sowing explosive mines on the high seas. It's not playing the game."

"Bah! Don't talk to me about playing the game, my dear Max. It is not a game; it is war. If we mean to beat the English we must not be hampered by any childish ideas of fair play. As for the killing of Fritz, it is of course unfortunate; but it could not have been foreseen. We must get some one to take his place, yourself, perhaps."

"No." Max shook his head resolutely. "I am not a spy. I shall do nothing underhand. Let us fight fairly and openly, not hit below the belt. I have my duties on the submarine, and I don't want to set foot in England until the war is over. I should not be here now, but that I have come to take you away—to give you a passage back to Wilhelmshaven. Are you ready? The submarine is lying submerged in the next bay, waiting for my signal."

"My dear Max," returned Hilliger, "I cannot go back with you. My place is here, in England, where I have been stationed. Since Fritz is dead, it is all the more important that I remain on this side. Our Zeppelins are preparing to come over, only waiting until I shall send a message to say that the wind and weather are suitable. When the time is favourable I must be on the spot with a car to guide them by its light to the places where they shall drop their bombs."

Max curled his lip contemptuously.

"And you call that war, I suppose," he sneered—"dropping fire-bombs on farmhouses and in kitchen-gardens! I could see some sense in it if we aimed at their aeroplane sheds, their dockyards, or their ammunition factories, or if we sank some of their Dreadnoughts and troopships. Why, if every house and inhabitant of Haddisport were destroyed, it wouldn't make a pin's difference in the progress of the war."

Herr Hilliger shrugged his shoulders and turned the subject by saying:

"I see, my dear Max, that you are wearing the Iron Cross. I congratulate you. I am proud. No doubt it is a reward for sinking those three British cruisers?"

Max nodded. "We shall sink others, too," he averred. "I shall not be satisfied until we have put a torpedo into one of their great battleships—one of their boasted Dreadnoughts."

He strode to the edge of the cliff and looked down into the water. The submarine was emptying her ballast tanks and was already in the awash condition. He moved his arms, signalling by semaphore to Lieutenant Körner standing on the conning-tower platform. Then, again embracing his father, he climbed down the difficult slope of the cliff to the collapsible boat, stepped into it, and pulled out to the submarine.

CHAPTER XXV.

MAX HILLIGER'S SATISFACTION.

Max Hilliger's declaration that he would not be satisfied until Lieutenant Hermann Körner and he had put a torpedo into a British battleship was not long in being fulfilled.

How they discovered that such a ship was to be found in a particular position on the North Sea at a particular time is a matter which cannot be explained. It is certain that the Germans succeeded in discovering many of the movements and intended movements of the British Fleet which were believed to be secret, and of which even many highly-placed British naval officers were profoundly ignorant. Doubtless their spy system and their methods of communication were perfectly well organised and established long before the outbreak of war.

By whatsoever means he received his information, Lieutenant Körner expected the squadron to pass southward, and he prepared to carry out his instructions by bringing his submarine within striking distance at the anticipated moment.

It was a wild, dark winter's night, bitterly cold, with a fierce wind blowing from the north-east. Submarines are not commonly supposed to be of great use in the darkness; their periscopes are then blind. But Körner boldly kept the U50 on the surface, trusting to the high waves to hide her betraying conning-tower from watchful eyes and from the beams of searchlights.

But as an additional measure of protection and deception he had hoisted a pair of brown lugsails on her two temporary masts, so that from a distance she might have the appearance of an innocent fishing boat. This ruse was a development and improvement of Max Hilliger's idea of concealing a submarine within the body of a larger boat.

Hour after weary hour went by; but no light, no steamer's smoke; could be seen through the inky darkness. Still he waited, while the submarine rocked and tossed and rolled on the giant waves, and the wind shrieked angrily.

Towards midnight a tiny masthead light blinked fitfully through the curtain of driving sleet.

"They come!" said Körner from his post in the conning-tower. He had seen a green starboard light gleam wanly against an approaching vessel's black hull.

"It is only a fishing trawler making for home," Max Hilliger declared with a shiver. "Let us submerge and get out of the cold and wet."

"Not yet, not yet," returned Körner. "They will surely come. We are in their track. They cannot have turned back. Our own battleships could weather a worse storm than this, and so could they. Whatever else the cowardly English are afraid of, they are not afraid of the sea. I believe the blood in their veins is made of salt water. If you are cold, my friend, go below and warm yourself. Already it is a long time since you had supper."

Max crept below like a dog into its kennel and took some food and a drink of hot coffee in the warmth of the engine-room. The warmth made him sleepy, and he did not return to the conning-tower until he was called.

Körner and the quarter-master were at their posts. From their point of observation they had seen the black shapes of an advancing squadron of battleships, light cruisers, and torpedo-boat destroyers. They could be British only, since no German warship larger than a destroyer was permitted to put to sea. No lights were displayed, but a reflected glow from the furnaces mingled with the smoke rising from the blackness of the funnels, and the wash of spray as the vessels cut through the water showed whiter than the whiteness of the breaking waves.

The German seamen were at their quarters, the officers at the control stations, the engineers at work with the petrol motors, the gunners at the air-compressors for charging the torpedo tubes. All was quiet but for the ceaseless rattle of cranks and pistons and the whining of well-oiled wheels. The submarine was manoeuvred round as if to cross the bows of the British ships.

A couple of the destroyers went past, then a light cruiser. Next came the towering bulk of a Dreadnought, looming out of the darkness. Sparks of fire floated amid the thick volume of coal smoke from her foremost funnel; a shaft of light came through an open doorway on her high bridge.

"I believe it's the Triumphant!" said Max Hilliger, at the lieutenant's elbow.

It was at a point forward of the bridge, on the starboard side, that the torpedo was aimed. There was no possibility of its missing so huge a target. But to make certain of hitting a vital part well below the armoured belt a second torpedo was to be fired, and then the submarine would submerge and make good her escape.

On board the Triumphant the larger number of her officers and crew of nearly eight hundred men were below asleep when the fearful crash came. Hammocks and bunks were jerked up by the shock. The torpedo had missed the magazine by a few feet, but it burst through the stout plates, entering the dynamo-room, and all electricity, both for lighting and for wireless instruments, was shut off. The great ship at once listed over, and the order was given: "All hands on the upper deck."

Two minutes after the first alarm, word was sent up from the engine-room to the captain on the bridge that flooding had begun in the boiler-room, and that no more steam could be got up. There could be no hope of running her towards land and beaching her. It was seen from the first that she could not be saved.

The engines were stopped and the engineers and stokers were ordered up on deck. They were scrambling up the ladders when the second torpedo struck her. Distress signals were fired, but her consorts were advised to stand off at a safe distance in case of a further attack.

For want of steam to work the hoists the boats had to be got clear by reeving a big rope round the deck and hauling upon it. With perfect discipline the men performed this difficult operation in total darkness while the sinking ship was being washed by mountainous waves.

All woodwork that could be seized upon and everything that would float was brought on deck for the men to cling to. They waited, hoping that the watertight compartments would keep her afloat until daylight; but at length the captain sang out:

"Into the water with you; she's going!"

Then it was a matter of every man for himself. Some reached the boats before the ship went down, some were drawn under by the suction; many were picked up by one of the cruisers; but of all the ship's company not more than two hundred came to land in safety, and even these, scantily clothed, had suffered terribly from exposure in the open boats.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE GUIDING LIGHT.

The municipal authorities in Haddisport had for a long time past displayed great vigilance in keeping the town dark at night. The street lamps were not lighted; shopkeepers incurred penalties if they failed to keep their premises so dimly lighted that you could not distinguish the difference between butter and cheese; the tramway cars were muffled in thick curtains; on the sea-front you were liable to reprimand if you struck a match to light your pipe.

Most of the houses were lighted by electricity, and it was recognised that in the event of an imminent raid upon the town by German airships the electricity should be turned off at the power-house, where a screeching hooter would be sounded to warn the inhabitants to take cover in their basements or their garden trenches.

Many of the occupants of houses facing the sea abandoned their front rooms after sunset. Even the thickest of curtains and blinds and the most cunning lamp-shades were not always proof against some chink or slit revealing the light within, and then there was sure to be an alarming visit from the sentries patrolling the beach or the policeman on his beat, or Sea Scouts on watch duty.

"I should say the Germans had something else to do than cross the North Sea in their Zeppelins to drop bombs on a harmless town like Haddisport," remarked Vera Redisham, one night at supper.

"They might do it for the sake of spreading panic," observed her mother.

"Or by way of preliminary experiment before making an air raid in force upon London," added Mark. "That's what they're planning, of course. They'd consider it as good as a naval victory if they could set London on fire. Hullo! what's wrong with the electric light? I put new bulbs on only yesterday!"

The light flickered for a moment or two and then went out, plunging the room in darkness.

"The hooter's sounding!" cried Vera. "Listen!"

"We'd better all get down into the basement," recommended Mrs. Redisham. "You mustn't go outside, Mark."

She had hardly spoken when the whole house shook, the windows rattled, and the air was split by a resounding explosion.

"Ah!" shouted Mark. "Zeppelins! Zeppelins!"

Mrs. Redisham made her way down the stairs to the basement to get the servants into a place of safety.

A second bomb sounded, and then there came the firing of an anti-aircraft gun.

Mark ran up the staircase to the half landing where there was a window above the hall door, from which he could look out in the direction of the town. His sister Vera followed him.

"We're as safe here as anywhere else," she said in excuse for her presence. "Can you see anything?"

"I saw a flash just now," Mark answered. "I believe it was the Zeppelin's searchlight. Oo! did you hear that! It must have struck some building. What's that glow of light over there? They've set some place on fire!"

He afterwards learnt that an incendiary bomb, aimed at the naval signal station, had fallen in a timber yard and set the stacks of wood in flames.

Vera counted ten explosions in all. Then the bomb-dropping ceased.

"They haven't stopped long," she sighed in relief. "I do hope nobody has been hurt. What are you looking at? Can you see the airship?"

"Yes. It's like a big sausage high up in the air, just over St. Nicholas' Church. Have a look!"

Mark moved aside to make room for Vera.

"I see it! I see it!" she cried. "And, oh, Mark, it's chasing a motor-car!"

Mark peered out into the darkness and saw the brilliantly-lighted lamp of a motor flashing along the Buremouth road. The beam of the light was shed upward. The car was travelling at a tremendous pace.

"Chasing it?" said Mark. "I don't think it's a chase. That car is acting as a pilot—showing the airship which way to go, and where to drop its bombs! I shouldn't wonder in the least if the man driving it were Heinrich Hilliger!"

CHAPTER XXVII.

SURVIVORS.

As the motor-car, with its flaring headlight, went out of sight beyond the projection of the window from which they had watched it, Mark and Vera Redisham ran farther up the staircase and along the passage to Rodney's room, on the north side of the house.

Mark crossed to the large door-window and flung it open. It led out to a roofed balcony overlooking the garden. Rodney had used this balcony as a study, from which he could watch the ships, pretending that it was an admiral's gallery at the stern of a line-of-battle ship. On summer nights he had had a hammock slung across from side to side and had slept in the open air.

Mark caught at the balcony rail now, and bent forward, looking up into the night sky, searching for the Zeppelin by the purring of its machinery.

"There it is! There it is!" he cried. And taking hold of Vera's arm he drew her to him and pointed.

Even though it was very high, the airship looked large. It was not travelling quickly; it seemed for a time to be hovering like a hawk. Against the blue darkness of the sky the two cars could be distinguished beneath the cigar-shaped structure. The rattling noise of the engines and the hum of the propellers could be clearly heard.

"It's queer to think that there are Germans in it," said Vera, "and that they're there with the intention of killing people! I suppose they're going to Buremouth now, after dropping their horrid fire-bombs on Haddisport."

"Look!" exclaimed Mark. "There's that motor-car again! I'm almost certain it's acting as a pilot. See how the headlight is turned upward into the sky, so that the airmen can see it! I ought to go downstairs and telephone to the Buremouth police. Hullo!"

He had seen and heard a second motor-car, dashing along the nearer Alderwick road, followed by a couple of motor-bicycles. Presently there was an upward spurt of fire from the car and the crackle of a machine-gun.

"They're firing up at the Zeppelin!" cried Vera. "Oh, I hope they'll hit it!"

A thin streak of brilliant light flashed downward from the airship. Something seemed to fall with a thud, a dull explosion, and immediately there was a blaze of fire in the midst of the withered gorse and brambles about a mile in front of the armoured motor-car.

"They've dropped an incendiary bomb," Mark explained, "but nowhere near the road. The car can get past."

The firing from the anti-aircraft gun continued; but soon the Zeppelin steered round and went westward over the land, and the armoured car dropped out of range. More bombs were launched; but they fell harmlessly in ploughed fields where there were no houses. The pilot car by this time had disappeared.

The military car was returning, led by the motor cyclists. Just as the latter emerged from the woodland on the near side of Alderwick village, the Zeppelin again turned towards the sea and sailed outward immediately above the machine-gun, which again opened fire with a prolonged stream of bullets.

"I believe our men have hit it!" Mark declared. "Look at that long jet of smoke! And the whole thing is wobbling like a winged pheasant."

Whether the airship was struck or not, neither Mark nor the men in the armoured car could tell with certainty. They watched the ponderous vessel flying out to sea until it faded from sight, mingling with the blackness of a heavy cloud in the far east. Going downstairs again, Mark telephoned to the naval base and got into communication with Mr. Bilverstone, from whom he learnt that the worst material damage done by the bombs was at a timberyard near the harbour. Some big stacks of timber had been set on fire, and a company of Territorials were helping the seamen of H.M.S. Kingfisher in the work of subduing the flames.

So far as Mr. Bilverstone had yet heard, no one had been seriously injured. Two horses had been killed at the railway goods station, and a great many window-panes had been smashed.

News had been received, however, that there had been a second Zeppelin. The pair of them had come across the North Sea in company until land had been sighted, when they had separated, one coming to Haddisport, the other making a much wider circuit, dropping both explosive and incendiary bombs on three coast towns in succession.

Late on the following afternoon, Mark Redisham and Darby Catchpole were at the naval base, waiting for instructions, when a flotilla of mine-sweepers came into the harbour. One of them was the Mignonette. As she came alongside the quay, Mark and Darby saw two very bedraggled young men in shabby naval uniform standing with the skipper abaft the wheel-house.

"They look like German prisoners," Mark said below his breath.

"They've been in the water," added Darby, "picked up from a sinking submarine, I dare say. There's Ned Quester. Let's ask him about them."

Ned was climbing along the port bulwark, dragging the end of a heavy mooring-rope. Having secured it round a bollard, he turned and saw the two Sea Scouts.

"See those two chaps down there?" he began. "They're Deutschers. They look rather sad, don't they? We rescued them early this morning, this side of the Dogger. Just before dawn, we saw two rockets go up—a red and a blue. We made for the place, thinking it was a vessel in distress. So it was, but not the sort of vessel we expected. It looked like an immense dead whale, seen in the dim light. When we got nearer we were still puzzled by the shape of it, and could only guess that it was a wrecked airship."

"What?" cried Mark Redisham, "a Zeppelin?—the Zeppelin that was over Haddisport last night, dropping bombs? Then the anti-aircraft gun must have hit it, after all!"

"That's right," nodded Ned. "Major Proudfynski—that's the older of the two, who speaks English, of a sort—told us that they had done heaps of damage, and killed he didn't know how many people, and that a whole battery of artillery had fired up at them. Of course, we knew he was exaggerating. However, when we got out the boat and pulled alongside the thing, we knew it could only be a Zep that had come to grief. One of the propellers was above water. We could see some of the bent and tangled framework, supported by a section of the still inflated gas-bag. Afterwards we fired a shot into it, letting the gas escape, and then the wreckage went down. But before that, we'd seen these two chaps clinging to the framework, and we got them off and took them aboard the Mignonette. They were so exhausted by the exposure that they couldn't speak, and the younger one had to be worked at for a long time before he came to his senses."

"But there must have been a whole crowd of others," said Mark. "Those Zeps have a crew of thirty or forty at least."

"Yes, I know," returned Ned. "The rest were all drowned under the wreckage. These two had the sense to jump out when she was falling and get clear of the stays. They could swim. What puzzled our skipper was how they managed to send up the two rockets. But it seems the airship fell by the bow with her stern sticking up above water for a time, and the major got into one of the gondolas, where there was a box of rockets and things—matches, as well, I suppose."

Officers from the naval station had come to the edge of the wharf. One of them spoke to the Germans, asking them to come ashore.

"What are you going to do with us?" questioned the elder of the two.

"Oh, you'll be all right!" he was told. "You are prisoners; but that doesn't mean that you will be ill-treated."

"Prisoners?"

"Yes. You don't imagine that we are going to let you go back to Germany, do you? Not after what you did last night. You came across to England to pay us a visit; why should you hurry away? We'll show you what it's like to live in a civilised country."

An escort of armed bluejackets had been drawn up on the quay. The two prisoners were conducted to the base, where they were questioned briefly before being given the honours of war and taken to the hotel. After they had had a good dinner they were sent, still under escort, by a special train, to a destination far removed from the unfriendly sea.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE WAY TO CALAIS.

Darby Catchpole was with Mark Redisham now for a particular reason. He had lately joined the Royal Naval Reserve, and had been appointed a signal-boy for duty on one of the mine-sweepers. In order that he might gain some experience of the work, however, he was to go for a preliminary trip with Commodore Snowling on the Dainty, which was to steam out to sea at sundown.

"I only hope we shall be going somewhere in sight of our Dreadnoughts," he said to Mark, while they waited on the wharf for the skipper. "I should love to see a naval action."

"Not much chance of that," Mark told him. "We shall not see an enemy ship of any sort—except possibly a submarine. I dare say we shall only be on ordinary patrol duty, steaming to and fro along the coasts like soldiers on sentry-go. It isn't always exciting. We don't have an adventure every trip, unless you call it an adventure to have a green sea come over you, or to have your clothes frozen like iron plates on your back. Sometimes it's exceedingly uncomfortable and monotonous. I hope you've brought some books to read. Your kit bag looks pretty full."

"It's full of eatables, mostly," Darby answered. "Mother has the idea that mine-sweepers go out with no provisions aboard."