"I know—I know," said the other. "But I've never thought about it. I'm hard, in some ways. Things seemed to happen much the same whether I held my thumbs or whether I prayed. And now that I'm terrified—now that everything in life just seems to tremble on a thread—how can I start crying out that I believe, I believe...!" Her voice broke at last, and she turned sideways and buried her face in her hands.

"But you do," said Betty with gentle insistence.

The door opened and Mrs. Gascoigne entered. There was moisture in her fine grey eyes. "I'm so glad you two have come to keep me company," she said. She walked to the mirror over the fireplace and turned her back on her visitors for a moment while she appeared to adjust her hat. "I've been helping poor little Mrs. Thatcher to pack. She has had a telegram, poor child, and she's off South by the afternoon train."

She turned round, still manipulating hat-pins with raised hands, and in answer to the unspoken question in her guests' faces, nodded sadly. "Yes," she said. "But they've got his body. She's going to Newcastle."

"Have you had any news yourself?" asked Betty. "We have heard nothing."

"No," replied their hostess. "Nothing, except that the hospital ships went out last night. I expect the Destroyers got back some time before the big ships, and we shall hear later in the day. Rob will telegraph to me directly he gets into harbour, I know."

She spoke with calm conviction, as if wars and rumours of wars held no terrors for her. "And now," she said, smiling to them both, "let's be charwomen and drink tea in the middle of the forenoon!" She moved to the door and opened it, and as she did so a knock sounded along the tiny passage from the door that opened into the street.

Eileen Cavendish was busy in front of the glass, and half turned, holding a diminutive powder-box in one hand and a scrap of swans-down in the other.

"Yes," they heard the voice of Mrs. Gascoigne saying in the passage, "I'm here—is that for me?" There was the sound of paper tearing and a little silence. Then they heard her voice again. "Have you any others in your wallet—is there one for Mrs. Standish or Mrs. Cavendish? They're both here."

"I hae ane for Mistress Cavendish," replied a boy's clear treble. "An' there was ane for Mistress Standish a while syne; it's biding at her hoose."

Betty jumped to her feet. "What's that?" she cried. "A telegram?" Mrs. Gascoigne entered the room holding an orange-coloured envelope and handed it to Eileen Cavendish. "Yours is at your lodging," she said to Betty. Her face was very pale.

With trembling fingers Mrs. Cavendish tore open the envelope. She gave a quick glance at the contents and sat down abruptly. Then, with her hands at her side, burst into peals of hysterical laughter.

"Oh," she cried, "it's all right, it's all right! Bill's safe——" and her laughter turned to tears. "And I knew it all along..." she sobbed.

"Oh," said Betty, "I am glad." She slipped her arm round Mrs. Cavendish's neck and kissed her. "And now I'm just going to rush up to my rooms to get my message." She paused on her way to the door. "Mrs. Gascoigne," she said, "did you get any news—is your husband all right?"

Mrs. Gascoigne was opening the window with her back to the room and its occupants. "He's very happy," she replied gently.

Betty ran out into the sunlit street and overtook the red-headed urchin who was returning to the post office with the demeanour of a man suddenly thrust into unaccustomed prominence in the world. Furthermore, he had found the stump of a cigarette in the gutter, and was smoking it with an air.

He grinned reassuringly at Betty as she hurried breathlessly past him. "Dinna fash yersel', Mistress," he called. "Yeer man's bonny an' weel."

Betty halted irresolutely. "How do you know?" she gasped.

"A juist keeked inside the bit envelope," came the unblushing reply.

* * * * *

The first rays of the rising sun were painting the barren hills with the purple of grape-bloom, and laying a pathway of molten gold across the waters when the Battle Squadrons returned to their bases. A few ships bore traces in blackened paintwork, shell-torn funnels and splintered upperworks, of the ordeal by battle through which they had passed; but their numbers, as they filed in past the shag-haunted cliffs and frowning headlands, were the same as when they swept out in an earlier gloaming to the making of History.

Colliers, oilers, ammunition lighters and hospital ships were waiting in readiness to replenish bunkers and shell-rooms and to evacuate the wounded. All through the day, weary, grimy men, hollow-eyed from lack of sleep, laboured with a cheerful elation that not even weariness could extinguish. Shrill whistles, the creaking of purchases, the rattle of winches and the clatter of shovels and barrows combined to fill the air with an indescribable air of bustle and the breath of victory. Even the blanched wounded exchanged jests between clenched teeth as they were hoisted over the side in cots.

Before the sun had set the Battle-Fleet, complete with coal, ammunition and torpedoes, was ready for action once more. Throughout the night it rested, licking its wounds in the darkness, with vigilance still unrelaxed and its might unimpaired. For the time being its task had been accomplished; but only the enemy, counting the stricken ships that laboured into the shelter of the German mine-fields, knew how thoroughly.

The succeeding dawn came sullenly, with mist and drizzle shrouding the shores and outer sea. As the day wore on a cold wind sprang up and rolled the mist restlessly to and fro across the slopes of the hills.

On a little knoll of ground overlooking a wide expanse of level turf covered with coarse grass and stunted heather stood a man with his hands clasped behind his back. In the courage, judgment and sober self-confidence of that solitary figure had rested the destiny of an Empire through one of the greatest crises in its history: even as he stood there, bare-headed, with kindly, tired eyes resting on the misty outlines of the vast Fleet under his command, responsibility such as no one man had ever known before lay upon his shoulders.

Behind him, in the sombre dignity of blue and gold, in a silent group stood the Admirals and Commodores of the Squadrons and Flotillas with their Staff Officers; further in the rear, in a large semicircle on slightly higher ground, were gathered the Captains and officers of the Fleet.

Where the turf sloped gradually towards the sea were ranged the seamen and marines chosen to represent the Fleet: rank upon rank of motionless men standing with their caps in their hands and their eyes on the centre of the great hollow square where, hidden beneath the folds of the Flag they had served so well, lay those of their comrades who had died of wounds since the battle. A Chaplain in cassock and white surplice moved across the open space and halted in the centre, office in hand:

"I am the Resurrection and the Life..."

The wind that fluttered the folds of his surplice caught the words and carried them far out to sea over the heads of the living—the sea where the others lay who had fought their last fight in that grim battle of the mist. A curlew circled low down overhead, calling again and again as if striving to convey some insistent message that none would understand. From the rocky shore near-by came the low murmur of the sea, the sound that has in it all the sorrow and gladness in the world.

At length the inaudible office for the Burial of the Dead came to an end. The Chaplain closed his book and turned away; a little movement ran through the gathering of officers and men as they replaced their caps. A loud, sharp-cut order from the gaitered officer in command of the firing-party was followed by the clatter of rifle-bolts as the firing-party loaded and swung to the "Present!"

"Fire!" The first volley rang out sharply, and the Marine buglers sent the long, sweet notes of the "Last Post" echoing among the hills. Twice more the volleys sounded, and twice more the bugles sang their heart-breaking, triumphant "Ave atque Vale!" to the fighting dead.

In the ensuing silence the cry of the curlew again became audible, this time out of the peace of the misty hills, gently persistent. Faint and far-off was the sound, but at the last the meaning came clear and strong to all who cared to listen.

"There is no Death!" ran the message, and again and again, "There is no Death, no Death... no Death...!"

The firing-party unloaded, and the empty cartridge cases fell to the earth with a little tinkling sound.



CHAPTER XII

"GOOD HUNTING"

Oberleutnant Otto von Sperrgebiet, of the Imperial German Navy, sat on the edge of a Submarine's conning-tower with a chart open on his knees, and smoked a cigarette. It was not a brand he cared about particularly, but it had been looted from the Captain's cabin of a neutral cargo steamer on the previous afternoon. A man who relies upon such methods to replenish his cigarette case cannot, of course, expect everybody's tastes to coincide with his own.

As he smoked, the German Lieutenant's eyes strayed restlessly round the circle of the horizon. They were small eyes of a pale blue, rather close together and reddened round the rims, with light eyelashes.

The Submarine lay motionless on the surface with the waves breaking over the hog-backed hull. Every now and again a few drops of spray splashed over the surface of the chart, and the Naval man wiped them off with a scrap of lace and cambric that had once been a lady's handkerchief. He had a way with women, that German Oberleutnant.

Nothing was in sight: not a tendril of smoke showed above the arc of tumbling waves that ringed the limit of his vision; the sun was warm and pleasant, and the figure on the conning-tower crossed his legs, encased in heavy thigh boots, and gave himself over to retrospective thought.

There had been a time when Oberleutnant von Sperrgebiet possessed the rudiments of a conscience. It could never have been described as acutely sensitive, and it never developed much beyond the rudimentary stage. Nevertheless, it had existed once: and in the early days of the war it was still sufficiently active to record certain protests and objections in his mind.

The mysterious forces that were at work in Germany, industriously remoulding, brutalising and distorting the mind of Oberleutnant von Sperrgebiet, together with millions of others, had not been blind to the prejudicial effects of conscience to an evil cause. Imperial rodomontade and the inflammatory German Admiralty War Orders had deliberately rejected, one by one, the deep-seated principles of humanity and chivalry in war. It had been done gradually and systematically—scientifically, in fact, and in the majority of cases it succeeded in producing a state of atrophy of the moral sense that was altogether admirable—from a German point of view.

In the case of Oberleutnant von Sperrgebiet, however, these early qualms had a trick of recurring. They pricked his consciousness at unexpected moments, like a grass-seed in a walker's stocking.... And now, as he sat swinging his legs in the warm June sunlight, a whole procession of such reflections trooped through his mind.

For instance, there arose in his intelligence an obstinate doubt as to whether the torpedoing without warning of a liner carrying women and children at the commencement of the war had been quite within the pale of legitimate Naval warfare. He had met the man who boasted such an achievement, and for a long time he carried with him the recollection of that man's eyes as they met his above a beer mug. They had drunk uproariously together, and von Sperrgebiet heard all about it first hand, and even fingered enviously the Iron Cross upon the breast of the teller of the tale. But somehow those eyes had told quite a different story: and it was that which von Sperrgebiet remembered long after the wearer of the Iron Cross had gone out into the North Sea mists and returned no more.

Then there had been the rather unpleasant business of the boat....

It was in mid-winter a long way North during one of the few calm days to be expected at that period of the year. The Submarine was running on the surface when the Second-in-Command (of whom more anon) reported a boat on the starboard bow. They altered course a little and, slowing down, passed within a few yards of it. It was a ship's life-boat, half full of water; lying in the water, rolling slowly from side to side as the boat rocked in their wash, were five dead men. A sixth sat huddled at the tiller, staring over the quarter with unseeing eyes, frozen stiff....

Von Sperrgebiet caught a glimpse of the ship's name on the bows of the boat: it happened to be that of a neutral ship he had torpedoed at the beginning of the previous week during a gale.

The German Admiralty Orders of that period contained a clause to the effect that ships were not to be torpedoed without ensuring the adequate safety of the crew. Which meant that those who had not been killed by the explosion of the torpedo could be allowed to launch a boat (weather permitting) and get into it if they had time before the ship sank....

Von Sperrgebiet had given orders for the boat to be sunk by gunfire, but somehow the memory of that stark figure at the helm persisted. Try as he would, he failed to banish from his mind the staring, sightless eyes and grey, famished face....

Altogether it was an unpleasant business. Other memories of this nature came and went with the smoke from his cigarette. For some reason or other he found himself wondering whether, after all, a Belgian Relief Steamer could have been considered fair game. But he did so hate the word "Belgium," and there was always the theory of a mine to account for the incident.... He torpedoed her by moonlight: a very creditable shot, all things considered.

Another moonlight picture presented itself. A boat-load of terrorised Finns rising and falling on the swell alongside the Submarine, and, half a mile away, an abandoned sailing ship with every rope and spar standing out black against the moonlight. In the stern of the boat stood a mighty Norwegian with a red beard and a voice like a bull. One of his arms rested protectingly round a woman's shoulders, and he shook a knotted fist in von Sperrgebiet's face as his ship blew up and sank.

The woman seen thus in the pale moonlight was young and pretty, and the red-bearded man bellowed that she was his wife. The announcement was not an unfamiliar one to Oberleutnant von Sperrgebiet: they usually were young and pretty when he heard that hot rage in a man's voice. Oberleutnant von Sperrgebiet made himself scarce forthwith, it might be almost said, from force of habit....

The glass was falling, and it was in mid-Atlantic that they left that boat. It blew a gale next day, and the Oberleutnant, who had an eye for a pretty woman, sometimes wondered if the boat was picked up.

His mind revolved for a moment round certain incidents in connection with that affair. A German sailor from the Submarine had been sent onboard to place the bombs; he returned with cigars, a ham, and a pretty silver clock. Also a box of sugar plums, half finished.

Von Sperrgebiet took the clock and the sugar plums. The cigars and the ham (the labourer being worthy of his hire) he allowed the sailor to keep.

But even Submarine warfare against unarmed shipping has its risks. There was the ever-memorable incident of the British tug, and even now von Sperrgebiet winced at the recollection. They had sighted a sailing ship in tow of a tug at the entrance to the Channel; von Sperrgebiet was proud of his mastery of the English tongue, and it was this small vanity that led him to adopt tactics which differed somewhat from his normal caution. He submerged until within a couple of hundred yards of the approaching tow and then rose to the surface, dripping, like some uncouth sea-monster. Armed with a revolver and a megaphone, and with pleasurable anticipation in his heart, the Oberleutnant emerged from the conning-tower with a view to a little preliminary banter with these detested and unarmed English before administering a coup de grace. He was just in time to see a stout, ungainly man tumbling aft along the deck from the wheel-house of the tug. Raising a booted leg with surprising agility, the stout man kicked off the shackle of the tow rope, and as he did so over went the helm; the blunt-nosed tug, released from her 3,000-ton burden, came straight for him like an angry buffalo.

They were not forty yards apart when the tug turned, and quick as the German coxswain was, the Submarine failed to avoid the stunning impact of the bows. A revolver bullet crashed through the glass window of the wheel-house; von Sperrgebiet had an instant's vision of a round face, purple with rage, above the spokes of the wheel, and then the conning tower's automatic hatchway closed. The Submarine was in diving trim, and she submerged in the shortest time on record. They remained on the bottom four hours while the sweating mechanics repaired the damaged hydroplane gear and effected some temporary caulking round certain plates that bulged ominously.

But von Sperrgebiet's hatred of England was real enough before this incident. He had always hated the English, even in his youth when for a year he occupied an inconspicuous niche in one of the less fastidious Public Schools. He hated them for the qualities he despised and found so utterly inexplicable. He despised their lazy contempt for detail, their quixotic sense of fairness and justice in a losing game, their persistent refusal to be impressed by the seriousness of anything on earth. He despised their whole-hearted passion for sports at an age when he was beginning to be interested in less wholesome and far more complex absorptions.... He despised their straight, clean affections and quarrels and their tortuous sense of humour; the affectation that led them to take cold baths instead of hot ones: their shy, rather knightly mental attitude towards their sisters and one another's sisters....

All these things von Sperrgebiet despised in the English. But he also hated them for something he had never even admitted to himself. Crudely put, it was because he knew that he could never beat an Englishman. There was nothing in his spirit that could outlast the terrible, emotionless determination in the English character to win.

Von Sperrgebiet's reflections came to an end with his cigarette. He tossed the stump overboard, and raising a pair of glasses he focused them intently on the horizon to the eastward.

For the space of nearly a minute he sat thus staring. From the interior of the Submarine came the strains of a gramophone playing a German patriotic air, and with it the smell of coffee. The crew were at dinner, and a man's deep laugh floated up the shaft of the conning-tower as if coming from the bowels of the sea.

The Oberleutnant lowered the glasses abruptly. Rolling up the chart he hoisted himself on to his feet and bent over the tiny binnacle to take the bearing of a faint smudge of smoke barely visible on the horizon. This obtained, he lowered himself through the narrow hatchway and climbed down the steel rungs into the interior of the compartment.

"Close down!" he said curtly. The gramophone stopped with a click, and instantly all was bustle and activity within the narrow confines of the steel shell.

The Second-in-Command, who was lying on his bunk reading a novel, sat up and lifted his legs over the edge. He was a spectacled youth with a cropped bullet-head and what had been in infancy a hare-lip. His beard of about ten days' maturity grew in patches about his lips and cheeks.

"A ship, Herr Kapitan?" he asked in a thin, reedy voice, and reached for a pair of long-toed, elastic-sided boots that he had kicked off, and which lay at the foot of his bunk.

His superior officer nodded and snapped out a string of guttural orders. The sing-song voices of men at their stations amid the levers and dials repeated the words mechanically, like men talking in their sleep. With a whizzing, purring sound the motors started, and the ballast tanks filled with a succession of sucking gurgles.

Von Sperrgebiet glanced at the compass and moved to the eye-piece of the periscope. For a while there was silence, broken only by the hum of the motors.

The Second-in-Command hung about the elbow of the motionless figure at the periscope like a morbid-minded urchin on the outskirts of a crowd that gathers round a street accident, but can see nothing. His stolid face was working and moist with excitement.

"Is it an English ship, Herr Kapitan?"

The Oberleutnant made no answer, but reached out a hand to the wheel that adjusted the height of the periscope above the water and twisted it rapidly. For twenty minutes he remained thus, motionless save for the arm that controlled the periscope. Once or twice he gave a low-voiced direction to the helmsman, but his Second-in-Command he ignored completely.

That officer moved restlessly about the Submarine, glancing from dial to dial and from one gauge to another; for a few minutes he stopped to talk to the torpedo-man standing by the closed tube. Finally he returned to his Captain's elbow, moistening his marred lip with the tip of his tongue; his face wore an unhealthy pallor and glistened in the glow of the electric lights.

"Is it an English ship, Herr Kapitan?" he asked again in his high, unnatural voice.

"Yes," snapped von Sperrgebiet. "Why?"

"I have a request to make," replied the Second-in-Command. "A favour, Herr Kapitan. It concerns a promise"—he lowered his voice till it was barely audible above the noise of the machinery—"to my betrothed."

For the first time von Sperrgebiet turned his face from the rubber eye-piece and regarded the youth with a little mocking smile that showed only a sharp dog-tooth.

"Don't say you promised to introduce her to me, Ludwig!" he sneered.

"No, no," said the other hastily. "But she made me promise not to return to her unless I had sunk with my own hands a merchant ship flying the cursed English flag."

"She is easily pleased, your betrothed," retorted the Oberleutnant, and moved back from the periscope. "Your request is granted. But remember I shall demand an introduction when we return.... It is a long shot. Fire when the foremast comes on, and do not show the periscope more than a few seconds at a time. I will give the orders after you have fired."

The Second-in-Command took up his position in the spot vacated by the Oberleutnant. His tongue worked ceaselessly about his lips and his hand trembled on the elevating wheel.

"There is smoke astern," he said presently. And a moment later. "The approaching ship looks like a liner, Herr Kapitan!"

"What of that?" said von Sperrgebiet gruffly.

The Second-in-Command looked back over his shoulder at his Commanding Officer: his face was livid with excitement. "It means women, Herr Kapitan," he said. "Children perhaps...."

Von Sperrgebiet shrugged his shoulders. "They are English," he replied. "Swine, sow or sucking-pig—what is the difference? They learn their lessons slowly, these English. We will drive yet another nail into their wooden heads.... You will drive it, Ludwig," he added thoughtfully: and then, as an afterthought, "for the honour of the Fatherland."

"Thank you, Herr Kapitan," replied the youth, and turned again to the periscope mirror. Silence fell upon the waiting men: the minutes passed while the elevating wheel of the periscope revolved first in one direction and then in another. At last the form of the Second-in-Command stiffened.

"Fire!" he cried: his uncertain voice cracked into a falsetto note.

The stern of the Submarine dipped and righted itself again: the Oberleutnant's harsh voice rang out in a succession of orders. The Second-in-Command leaned against a stanchion and wiped his face with his handkerchief.

A minute passed, and a dull concussion shook the boat from stem to stern. Von Sperrgebiet showed his dog-tooth in that terrible mirthless smile of his. "A hit, my little Ludwig!" he said.

The Second-in-Command clicked his heels together. "For the honour of the Fatherland," he said. "Gott strafe England!"

"Amen!" said Oberleutnant Otto von Sperrgebiet.

The boat had been travelling in a wide circle after the torpedo left the tube, and ten minutes later the Oberleutnant cautiously raised the periscope. The next moment he swung the wheel round again in the opposite direction.

"Another ship?" asked Ludwig.

"Yes," replied von Sperrgebiet. "One of their cursed Armed Merchant Cruisers." He bent over the chart table for a minute and gave an order to the helmsman.

"A fresh attack?" queried the Second-in-Command eagerly.

Von Sperrgebiet returned to the periscope. "When you have been at this work as long as I have," he replied, "you will find it healthier not to meddle with Armed Merchant Cruisers. They are all eyes and they shoot straight. No, for the time being our glorious work is done, and we shall now depart from a locality that is quickly becoming unhealthy." He glanced at the depth gauge and thence to the faces of the crew who stood waiting for orders.

"The gramophone," he called out harshly. "Switch on the gramophone, you glum-faced swine.... Look sharp! Something lively...!"

* * * * *

At seven minutes past three in the afternoon, Cecily Thorogood, that very self-possessed and prettily-clad young woman, was seated in a deck-chair on the saloon-deck of a 6,000-ton liner; an American magazine was open in front of her, under cover of which she was exploring the contents of a box of chocolates with the practised eye of the expert, in quest of a particular species which contained crystallised ginger and found favour in her sight.

At nineteen minutes past three Cecily Thorogood, still self-possessed, but no longer very prettily clad, was submerged in the chilly Atlantic up to her shoulders and clinging to the life-line of an upturned jolly-boat. To the very young Fourth Officer who clung to the boat beside her with one arm and manoeuvred for a position from which he could encircle Cecily's waist protectingly with the other, she announced as well as her chattering teeth would allow that she

(a) was in no immediate danger of drowning;

(b) was not in the least frightened;

(c) was perfectly capable of holding on without anybody's support as long as was necessary.

The chain of occurrences that connected situation No. 1 with situation No. 2 was short enough in point of actual time, but so crowded with unexpected and momentous happenings that it had already assumed the proportions of a confused epoch in Cecily's mind. There were gaps in the sequence of events that remained blanks in her memory. Faces, insignificant incidents, thumbnail sketches and broad, bustling panorama of activity alternated with the blank spaces. The heroic and the preposterous were indistinguishable....

At the first sound of the explosion of the torpedo Cecily jumped to her feet, scattering the chocolates broadcast over the deck. The ship seemed to lift bodily out of the water and then heeled over a little to port. There were very few people on the saloon deck and there was no excitement or rushing about. The shrill call of the boatswain's mate's pipe clove the silence that followed that stupendous upheaval of sound.

A clean-shaven, middle-aged American, wearing a collar reminiscent of the late Mr. Gladstone's and a pair of pince-nez hanging from his neck on a broad black ribbon, had been walking up and down with his hands behind his back; he paused uncertainly for a moment and then began laboriously collecting the scattered chocolates. That was the only moment when hysteria brushed Cecily with its wings. She wanted to laugh or cry—she wasn't sure which.

"It doesn't matter! It doesn't matter!" she cried with a catch in her breath. "Don't stop now—we've been torpedoed!"

The American stared at the handful he had gathered.

"Folks'll tread on 'em, I guess," he replied, and suddenly raised his head with a whimsical smile. "A man likes to do something useful at times like this—it's just our instinct," he added as if explaining something more for his own satisfaction than hers. "I'm not a seaman—I'd only get in peoples' way messing round the boats before they were ready—so I reckoned I'd pick up your candies."

There were very few women onboard, and Cecily found herself the only woman allotted to the jolly-boat. She climbed in with the assistance of the very young and distressingly susceptible Fourth Officer. For a moment she found herself reflecting that his life must be one long martyrdom of unrequited affections. The stout American followed her with a number of other passengers. The Fourth Officer gave an order and the boat began to descend towards the waves in a succession of uneven jolts. The crew were getting their oars ready, and one was hammering the plug of the boat home with the butt of an enormous jack-knife. The stout American surveyed the tumbling sea beneath them distastefully.

"When I get to Washington," he said, "I guess I'll fly round that li'll old town till some of our precious 'too-proud-to-fight' party just gnash their teeth and shriek aloud 'How can we bear it?'"

He suddenly remembered that his pneumatic life-saving waistcoat was not inflated. Seizing the piece of rubber tubing that projected from his pocket he thrust it into his mouth and proceeded to blow with distended cheeks and his serious brown eyes fixed solemnly on Cecily's face.

He was still blowing when they capsized. How the accident happened Cecily never knew: principally because she was concentrating her mind on the bottom of the boat and wondering how soon the pangs of mal-de-mer might be expected to encompass her. But the fact remains that one moment the boat was rising and falling dizzily on the waves and the next, with a confused shouting of orders and a crash, they were all struggling in the water.

Cecily's life-saving jacket brought her to the surface like a cork, and a couple of strokes took her to the side of the capsized boat and situation No. 2 already described. Here she was presently joined by the American, puffing and blowing like a grampus, who was placed in possession of statement (c) referred to above. He appeared either not to hear, however, or to incline to the view that it was a mere theory based upon a fallacy....

The remaining late occupants of the boat attached themselves along the sides and awaited succour with what patience they could. Then a muffled sound like an internal explosion came from within the stricken hull as a bulkhead went. The great ship lurched sickeningly above them as a wall totters to its fall. Cecily looked up and saw for a moment the figure of the Captain standing on the end of the bridge; true to his grand traditions he was staying by his ship to the last. She listed over further and began to settle rapidly. Then, and only then, the Captain climbed slowly over the rail and dived.

The stern of the ship rose slowly into the air, then swiftly slid forward with a sound like a great sob and vanished beneath the surface. One of the life-boats approached the capsized jolly-boat, and the figures that clung to her were hauled, dripping, one by one into the stern.

Then they picked up the Captain, clinging to a grating, an angry man. He scowled round at the long green slopes of the sea and shook his fist.

"The curs!" he said. "The dirty scum.... Women on board.... No warning...." Anger and salt water choked him.

"They wouldn't even give me a gun because I was a passenger ship. Unarmed, carrying women, torpedoed without warning.... I'll spit in the face of every German I meet from here to Kingdom Come!"

A little elderly lady with a bonnet perched awry on her thin grey hair suddenly began a hymn in a high quavering soprano.

"That's right, ma'am," said the Captain approvingly, as he wrung the water out of his clothes. "There's nothing like singing to cure sea-sickness. And we shan't be here very long." He pointed to the high bows of a rapidly approaching ship. "One of our Armed Merchant Cruisers, I fancy." He waved to the other boats to close nearer.

He was no mere optimist; before a quarter of an hour had elapsed the boats were strung out in a line towing from a rope that led from the bows of the Cruiser. A hastily improvised boatswain's stool was lowered from a davit, and one by one the passengers, then the crew, and finally the officers of the torpedoed liner were swung into the air and hoisted inboard while the Armed Merchant Cruiser continued her course.

The sea-sick Cecily, swaying dizzily for the second time that day between sky and water, looked down at the tumbling boats beneath her and for a moment had a glimpse of the stout American and the Fourth Officer. They were both standing gazing up after her as she was whisked skyward. Their mouths were open, and the expression on their faces gave Cecily a feeling of being wafted out of a world she was altogether too good for.

The sensation was a momentary one, however. The davit swung inboard as she arrived at the level of the rail and deposited her, a limp bundle of damp rags—in fact what Mr. Mantalini would have described as "a demmed moist unpleasant body"—on the upper deck of the Armed Merchant Cruiser. With the assistance of two attentive sailors Cecily rose giddily to her feet; most of her hair-pins had come out, and her hair streamed in wet ringlets over her shoulders. She raised her eyes to take in her new surroundings, and there, standing before her with his eyes and mouth three round O's, was Armitage.

Now Cecily had gone through a good deal since seven minutes past three that afternoon. But to be confronted, as she swayed, with her wet clothes clinging to her body like a sculptor's model, deathly sea-sick, red-nosed for aught she knew or cared, with the man who but for her firmness and mental agility would have kept on proposing to her at intervals during the past eighteen months, was a climax that overwhelmed even Cecily's self-possession.

She chose the only course left open to her, and fainted promptly. Armitage caught her in his arms, and as he did so was probably the first and last Englishman who has ever blessed a German Submarine.

She recovered consciousness in Armitage's cabin, with the elderly lady who had sung hymns in the boat in attendance; she lay wrapped in blankets in the bunk, with hot-water bottles in great profusion all round her, and felt deliciously drowsy and comfortable. But with returning consciousness some corner of discomfort obtruded itself into her mind. It grew more definite and uncomfortable. With her eyes still closed Cecily wriggled faintly and plucked at an unfamiliar garment.

Then, slowly, she opened her eyes very wide. "What have I got on?" she asked in severe tones.

"My dear," said the elderly lady, "pyjamas! There was nothing else. They belong to the officer who owns this cabin. I think the name was Armitage. And the doctor said——"

Cecily groaned. A knock sounded, and the ship's doctor entered carrying something in a medicine glass.

"Well," he asked brusquely, "how are we?"

"Better, thanks," said Cecily faintly.

"That's right. Drink this and close your eyes again."

Cecily drank obediently and fell asleep. Twenty-four hours later the Cruiser was moving slowly up a river to her berth alongside a wharf. Cecily, clothed and in her right mind, stood aft in a deserted spot by the ensign-staff and stared at the dingy warehouses and quaysides ashore as they slid past.

Armitage came across the deck towards her; Cecily saw him coming and took a long breath. Then, woman-like, she spoke first:

"I haven't had an opportunity to thank you yet," she said prettily, "for giving up your cabin to me—and—and all your kindness."

Armitage stood squarely in front of her, a big, kindly man who was going to be badly hurt and more than half expected it.

"There is a curious fatality about all this," he said. "It was no kindness of either yours or mine." He glanced over her head at the rapidly approaching wharf ahead and then at her face.

"For eighteen months," he said, speaking rather quickly, "I've been like the prophet Jonah—looking for a sign. I looked to you for it, Miss Cecily," he said, "and I can't truthfully say it showed itself in a single word or look or gesture." He took a deep breath. "I'm not going to let you tell me I'm labouring under any misapprehensions. But this"—he made a little comprehensive gesture—"this is too much like the hand of Fate to disregard. Miss Cecily," he said, "little Miss Cecily, you've just twisted your fingers round my heart and I can't loose them."

"Please," said Cecily, "ah, no, please don't...." Some irresponsible imp in her intelligence made her want to tell him that it wasn't Jonah who looked for a sign.

"Listen," said Armitage. He was literally holding her before him by the sheer strength of his kindly, compelling personality. "When this racket started—this war—I told them at the Admiralty my age was forty-five. It was a lie—I am fifty-two. I've knocked about the world; I know men and cities and the places where there are neither. But I've lived clean all my life and I was never gladder of it than I am at this moment...."

Cecily had a conviction that unless she could stop him she would have to start crying very soon. But there were no words somehow that seemed adequate to the situation.

"I know, dear," he went on in his grave quiet voice, "that at your age money, and all the things it buys, seem just empty folly. But, believe me, there comes a time when being rich counts a lot towards happiness. I'm not trying to dazzle you, but you know all mine is yours—you shall live in Park Lane if you care to—or I'll turn all wide Scotland into a deer forest for you to play in...."

He paused. "But there is one thing, of course, that might make all this sound vulgar and sordid." He considered her with his clear blue eyes. "Are you in love with anyone else?" he asked.

Cecily clutched recklessly at the alternative to absurd tears.

"Yes," she said.

Armitage stood quite still for a moment. His calm, direct gaze never left her face, and after a moment he squared his big shoulders with an abrupt, characteristic movement.

"Then he is the luckiest man," he said quietly, "that ever won God's most perfect gift."

He gave her a funny stiff little inclination of the head and walked away.

* * * * *

Otto von Sperrgebiet did not raise the periscope above the surface again for some hours. The Submarine, entirely submerged, drove through the water until night. After nightfall they travelled on the surface until the first pale bars of dawn appeared in the eastern sky. Von Sperrgebiet was on the conning-tower as soon as it was light, searching the horizon with his glasses.

"It is strange," he said to his Second-in-Command. "We ought to have sighted that light vessel before now." At his bidding a sailor fetched the lead line and took a sounding. Together they examined the tallow at the bottom of the lead, and von Sperrgebiet made a prolonged scrutiny of the chart. "H'm'm!" he said. "I don't understand." Submerging again, they progressed at slow speed for some hours and he took another sounding. The sky was overcast and no sights could be taken.

This time von Sperrgebiet returned from comparing the sounding with the chart, wearing a distinctly worried expression.

The hawk-eyed seaman beside him on the bridge gave an ejaculation and pointed ahead.

"Land, Herr Kapitan!" he said.

"Fool!" replied his Captain. "Idiot! How can there be land there unless"—he glanced inside the binnacle half contemptuously—"unless the compasses are mad—or I am."

He raised his glasses to stare at the horizon. "You are right," he said. "You are right.... It is land." He gnawed his thumbnail as was his habit when in perplexity.

The next moment the seaman pointed again. "The Hunters," he said.

Von Sperrgebiet gave one glance ahead and kicked the man down through the open hatchway of the conning-tower. He himself followed, and the hatch closed. The helmsman was standing, staring at the compass like a man in a trance.

"Herr Kapitan," he said, as von Sperrgebiet approached, "it is bewitched." Indeed, he had grounds for consternation. The compass card was spinning round like a kitten chasing its tail, first in one direction, then in another.

"Damn the compass!" said von Sperrgebiet. "Flood ballast tanks—depth thirty metres—full speed ahead!"

He thrust the helmsman aside and took the useless wheel himself.

"Ludwig," he said, "to the periscope with you and tell me what you see."

The Second-in-Command waited for no second bidding; he pressed his face against the eye-pieces. "There are small vessels approaching very swiftly from all sides," he said. And a moment later, "They are firing at the periscope..."

"Down with it," said von Sperrgebiet. "We must go blind if we are to get through." His face was white and his lip curled back in a perpetual snarl like a wolf at bay. As he spoke there was a splutter and the lights went out.

The voice of the Engineer sounded through the low doorway from the engine-room. "There is something fouling our propeller, Herr Kapitan," he shouted. "The engines are labouring at full speed, but we are scarcely making any headway. The cut-outs have fused."

Von Sperrgebiet cursed under his breath. "Stop the engines," he said. "If we can't swim we must sink." He gave the necessary orders and the boat dropped gradually through the water till she rested on the bottom.

"Now," said von Sperrgebiet. "Turn on the gramophone, one of you, if you can find it."

There was a pause while someone fumbled in the darkness, and a click. Then a metallic tune blared forth bravely from the unseen instrument.

"That's right," said von Sperrgebiet in a low voice, speaking for the last time. "'Deutschland unter Alles!'" His laugh was like the bark of a sick dog.

Twenty fathoms over their heads, under the grey sky, and blown upon by the strong salt wind, a large man in the uniform of a Lieutenant of the Naval Reserve was standing in the bows of an Armed Trawler; his gaze was fixed on something floating upon the surface of the water ahead; but presently he raised his eyes to the circle of Armed Trawlers around him riding lazily on the swell. In the rear of the gun in the bows of each craft stood a little group of men all staring intently at the floating object. The Lieutenant waved an arm to the nearest consort.

"They reckon they'll take it lying down," he said grimly. "Well, I don't blame 'em!" He nodded at the figure in the wheel-house.

"Full speed, skipper!" The telegraph clinked, and they moved ahead, slowly gathering way. Then the Reserve-man turned, facing aft.

"Let her go, George," he said, raising his voice. The trawler fussed ahead like a self-important hen that has laid an egg. There was a violent upheaval in the water astern, and a column of foam and wreckage leaped into the air with a deafening roar.

The Reserve Lieutenant pulled a knife out of his pocket, and, bending down, thoughtfully added another nick to a long row of notches in the wooden beam of the trawler's fore hatch.



CHAPTER XIII

SPELL-O!

Lettigne sat on the edge of his sea-chest contemplating a large fragment of a German shell which he held on his knees.

"Will someone tell me where I am going to pack this interesting relic of my blood-stained past?" he enquired of the flat at large.

The after cabin-flat had all the appearances of the interior of a homestead in imminent danger of occupation by an enemy. In front of each open chest stood a Midshipman feverishly cramming boots and garments into already bulging portmanteaux and kit-bags. The deck was littered with rejected collars, pyjamas and underwear; golf-clubs, cricket-bats and fishing-rods lay about in chaotic confusion.

"Will someone tell me where I'm going to pack anything?" replied Malison, delving into the inmost recesses of his chest. "Fancy being told to pack and get away on leave and given an hour to do it in! It isn't decent. It always takes me a week to find my gear."

"Well, you'd better buck up," interposed the Senior Midshipman. "The boat leaves in ten minutes."

"Help!" ejaculated Lettigne. "I don't care," he added. "I'm not going without my blinking trophy." He removed a pair of boots from the interior of an apoplectic-looking kit-bag and substituted the jagged piece of metal. "It weighs about half a ton, but it very nearly bagged Little Willie, and I want my people to see it." He tugged and strained at the straps. "Make 'em appreciate their little hopeful.... Ouf! There! I only hope this yarn about there being no porters anywhere isn't true."

Harcourt, who had reduced the contents of his suit-case in volume by the simple expedient of stamping on them, had finally succeeded in closing the lid.

"Never mind," he shouted. "What does anything matter so long's we're 'appy!" He brandished a cricket-bat and sang in his high, cracked tenor:

"Keep the home fires burning, Oh, keep the home fires burning, Keep the home fires burning...."

"I dunno how it goes on," he concluded, lapsing into speech again.

"'Cos we're all going on leave!" roared Matthews. "That's how it ends. That's how everything ends. Ain't it all right?" He closed his chest with a bang and sat on the top with his hands in his pockets, drumming his heels against the sides. "Snooks!" he ejaculated, "I haven't felt like this since I was a mere lad."

"What are you going to do on leave?" queried the tall sandy-haired Midshipman popularly known as "Wonk."

"Do?" echoed Matthews. "Do?" He allowed his imagination full rein for a moment. "Well," he said, "by way of a start I shall make my soldier brother take me to dinner somewhere where there's a band and fairies in low-necked dresses with diamond ta-rarras on their heads."

"That sounds pretty dull," objected Mordaunt, affectionately burnishing the head of a cleek with a bit of emery paper. "Is that all you're going to do?"

"Not 't all. After dinner I shall smoke a cigar—a mild one, you know—and then we'll go to a 'Revoo' with more fairies. Lots of 'em," he added ruminatingly, "skipping about like young stag-beetles—you know the kind of thing——" The visionary got down off his chest, and, plucking the sides of his monkey-jacket between finger and thumb, pirouetted gracefully amid the scattered suit-cases and litter of clothes. "Comme ca!" he concluded.

"What then?" demanded Lettigne, growing interested.

"Then," continued Matthews, "then we'll go and have supper somewhere—oysters and things like that. Mushrooms, p'raps...."

"With an actress, Matt?" asked a small Midshipman, known as "the White Rabbit," in half-awed, half-incredulous tones of admiration.

"P'raps," admitted the prospective man-about-town. "My brother knows tons of 'em."

Harcourt burst into shouts of delight. "Can't you see Matt?" he cried hilariously. "Having supper with a massive actress!" He slapped his thighs delightedly. "Matt swilling ginger ale and saying, 'You're 's' dev'lish fine womansh.' ... No, don't start scrapping, Matt; I've just put on a clean collar ... and it's got to last.... All right—pax, then."

"Well," said Matthews, when peace was restored. "What's everyone else going to do? What are you going to do, Harcourt?"

"Me and Mordy are going to attrapay the wily trout," was the reply. "He's going to spend part of the leave with me, and I'm going to spend part with him. We're going to clean out the pond at his place. Topping rag."

"And you, Wonk?"

"Cricket," was the reply. "And strawberries. Chiefly strawberries."

"What about you, Bosh?"

"I shall lie in a hammock, and tell lies about the Navy to my sisters a good deal of the time. And when I'm tired of that I shall just lie—in the hammock. Sorry, I didn't mean to be funny——Ow! I swear it was unintentional. Matt, I swear——"

The furious jarring of an electric gong somewhere overhead drowned all other sounds.

"Boat's called away!" shouted the Senior Midshipman. "Up on deck, everyone. Knock off scrapping, Bosh and Matt, or you'll be all adrift."

There was a general scramble for bags and suit-cases, and, burdened with their impedimenta, the Midshipmen made their way up on to the quarterdeck.

Thorogood, Officer of the Watch, was walking up and down with an expression of bored resignation to the inevitable. Forward of the after superstructure the liberty-men were falling-in in all the glory of white cap-covers and brand-new suits, carrying little bundles in their hands. There was on each man's countenance that curious blend of solemnity and ecstatic anticipation only to be read in the face of a bluejacket or marine about to start on long leave.

A group of officers gathering near the after gangway stood waiting for the boat and exchanging chaff customary to such an occasion.

"Here come the Snotties," said the Staff Surgeon. "Lord, I wish I had a gramophone to record their conversation outside my cabin while they were packing." He raised his voice. "Now, then, James, what about this boat? We shall miss the train if you keep us all hanging about here much longer. Some of us have got appointments in town we don't want to miss—haven't we, Matthews?"

The Midshipman thus suddenly addressed flushed and was instantly the target for his companions' humour. "That's right, sir," confirmed Lettigne maliciously. "Matthews is taking a real live actress out to supper to-morrow night."

"Smoking a mild cigar," added another. "And eating oysters and mushrooms," chimed in a third.

Thorogood walked towards the group of laughing, chaffing boys and men.

"She won't be long, now," he said. "You'll all catch the train; I can promise you that."

He smiled wanly.

"James," said the India-rubber Man, "don't look so miserable! I know how sorry you are for us all. But we're going through with it, old man, like Britons."

"That's right," agreed the Paymaster. "We shall think of you, James, and the Commander, and the P.M.O., and all our happy messmates who are staying onboard for the refit. It makes going on leave easier to bear when we think of your smiling faces."

Thorogood turned away. "You're funny little fellows, aren't you?" he said dourly.

The Young Doctor caught the ball and sent it rolling on.

"We shall think of the pneumatic riveter at work over your heads; we shall think of the blithe chatter of the dockyard maties all over the ship, and the smell of the stuff they stick the corticene down with ... and we shall face the sad days ahead of us with renewed courage, James, old man."

"Thank you all," replied Thorogood gravely. "Thank you for your beautiful words. Give my love to Mouldy if any of you see him"—the speaker glanced over the side. "And now I have much pleasure in informing you that the boat is alongside, and the sooner you all get into it the sooner to sleep, as the song says."

The Midshipmen were already scrambling down the ladder, carrying their bags and coats, and the Wardroom Officers followed. Farewells and parting shafts of humour floated up from the sternsheets; Thorogood stood at the top of the gangway and waved adieu with his telescope as the boat shoved off and circled round the stern towards the landing-place. For a moment he stood looking after the smiling faces and waving caps and then turned inboard with a sigh.

"Liberty men present, sir!" The Master-at-Arms and Sergeant-Major made their reports and Thorogood moved forward, passing briskly down the lanes of motionless figures and shiny, cheerful countenances.

"Carry on," he said, and acknowledged the salute of the Chief of Police and the Sergeant of Marines.

The men filed over the side and took their places in the boats waiting alongside, and as they sheered off from the ship in tow of the launch and followed in the wake of the distant picket-boat, the closely packed men suddenly broke into a tempest of cheering.

The Captain was walking up and down the quarterdeck talking to the Commander. He smiled as the tumult of sound floated across the water.

"I wonder they managed to bottle it up as long as they have," he said. "Bless 'em! They've earned their drop of leave if ever men did." They took a few turns in silence. "I hope to get away to-night," continued the Captain, "if they put us in dock this afternoon. When are you going for your leave, Hornby?"

The Commander ran his eye over the superstructure and rigging of the foremast. "Oh, I don't know, sir," he said. "I hadn't thought about it much.... I think I'll get that new purchase for the fore-derrick rove to-morrow...."

The colour had gone out of the sunset, and in the pale green sky at the head of the valley a single star appeared.

With the approach of dusk the noises of the river multiplied; a score of liquid voices seemed to blend into the sleepy murmur of sounds that babbled drowsily among the rocks and boulders, and was swallowed beneath the overhanging branches of the trees.

The India-rubber Man moved quietly down stream, scarcely distinguishable from the gathering shadows by the riverside; he carried a light fly-rod, and once or twice he stopped, puffing the briar pipe between his teeth, to stare intently at the olive-hued water eddying past.

"Coo-ee!"

A faint call floated up the valley, clear and musical above the voices of the stream. The India-rubber Man raised his head abruptly and a little smile flitted across his face. Then he raised his hand to his mouth and sent the answer ringing down-stream:

"Coo-oo-ee-e!"

He stood motionless in an attitude of listening and the hail was repeated.

"Sunset and evening star,"

he quoted in an undertone,

"And one clear call for me...."

There had been a period in his life some years earlier when the India-rubber Man discovered poetry. For months he read greedily and indiscriminately, and then, abruptly as it came, the fit passed; but tags of favourite lines remained in his memory, and the rhythm of running water invariably set them drumming in his ears.

He turned his back on the whispering river and, scrambling up the bank, made his way down-stream through the myriad scents and signs of another summer evening returning to its peace. The path wound through a plantation of young firs which grew fewer as he advanced, and presently gave glimpses beyond the tree-trunks of a wide stretch of open turf. The river, meeting a high wall of rock, swung round noiselessly almost at right angles to its former course; in the centre of the ground thus enclosed stood a weather-beaten tent, and close by lay a small two-wheeled cart with its shafts in the air.

The India-rubber Man paused for a moment on the fringe of the plantation and stood taking in the quiet scene. The shadowy outline of a grazing donkey moved slowly across the turf which narrowed to a single spit of sand, and here, standing upright with her hands at her sides, was the motionless figure of a girl, staring up the river. Something in her attitude stirred a poignant little memory in the mind of the India-rubber Man. In spite of his nearness he still remained invisible to her against the background of the darkling wood.

"Betty!" he called.

For an instant she stared and then came towards him, moving swiftly with her lithe, ineffable grace.

"Oh," she cried, "there you are!" She slid her fingers into his disengaged hand and fell into step beside him. "Bunje," she said with a little laugh that was half a sigh, "I'm like an old hen with one chick—I can hardly bear you out of my sight! Have you had good hunting? What was the evening rise like?"

"It was good," replied the India-rubber Man. "But it was better still to hear you call."

They came to a tall bush where the blossoms of a wild rose glimmered in the dusk like moths. The India-rubber Man stabbed the butt of his rod in the turf, took off his cast-entwined deerstalker and hung it on a bramble; then he slipped the strap of his creel over his head and emptied the contents on to the grass.

"Five," he said, counting. They knelt beside the golden trout and laid them in a row. "I could have taken more," he added, "but that's all we want for breakfast. Besides, it was too nice an evening to go on killing things.... Sort of peaceful. That's a nice one, though, that pounder. He fancied a coachman..." The India-rubber Man straightened up and sniffed the evening air aromatic with the scent of burning wood. "And I've got a sort of feeling I could fancy something, Bet——"

Betty rose too. "It's ready," she said. "I've put the table in the hollow behind the bush. I've got a surprise for you—'will you walk into my parlour? said the spider to the fly.'"

She led the way into the hollow. A brazier of burning logs stood on the side nearest the river, with a saucepan simmering upon it. Close under the wild-rose bush was a folding table covered with a blue-and-white cloth laid in readiness for a meal, with a camp stool on either side. From an overhanging branch dangled a paper Japanese lantern, glowing in the blue dusk like a jewel.

"You're a witch, Betty," said the India-rubber Man. "Where did you get the lantern?"

"At that village we passed through yesterday. It was a surprise for you!" She made a little obeisance on the threshold of their star-lit dining-room. "Will it please my lord to be seated?" she asked prettily, and bending down busied herself amid the ashes underneath the brazier. "There's grilled trout and stewed bunny-rabbit," she added, speaking over her shoulder.

"Good enough," said her lord. "Sit down, Bet, I'm going to do the waiting." Betty laughed. "I don't mind this sort of waiting," she replied. "It's the other kind that grew so wearisome."

They made their meal while a bat, attracted by the white cloth, flickered overhead, and the shadows closed in round them, deepening into night. When the last morsel of food had vanished the India-rubber Man turned sideways on his stool to light a pipe, and by the light of the match they stared at one another with a sudden fresh realisation of their present happiness and the fullness thereof.

"Isn't it good?" said Betty. "Isn't it worth almost anything to have this peace?" She made a little gesture, embracing the scented quiet. "And just us two ... alone."

The India-rubber Man tossed the match on to the turf where it burned steadily in a little circle of warm light.

"Yes," he said. "Just us two ... Hark, Betty!" He held up his finger.

For a moment they listened to the infinitesimal noises of the night, straining their ears in the stillness. The river wound past them with a faint, sibilant sound like a child chuckling in its sleep; an owl hooted somewhere in the far-off sanctuary of the trees. Betty drew her breath with a little sigh that was no louder than the rustle of the bat's wings overhead. The match burning on the grass beside them flared suddenly and went out.

"You know," said the India-rubber Man presently, "I was thinking to-night—up there, along the river—how good it all is, this little old England of ours. I sat on a big boulder and watched a child in the distance driving some cows across a meadow to be milked.... There wasn't a leaf stirring, and the only sounds were the sleepy noises of the river.... It was all just too utterly peaceful and good." The India-rubber Man puffed his pipe in silence for a moment. "It struck me then," he went on in his slow, even tones, "that any price we can pay—any amount of sacrifice, hardship, discomfort—is nothing as long as we keep this quiet peace undisturbed...." Again he lapsed into silence, as if following some deep train of thought; the sound of the donkey cropping the grass came from the other side of the bush.

"One doesn't think about it in that way—up there," he jerked his head towards the North. "You just do your job for the job's sake, as one does in peace-time. Even the fellows who die, die as if it all came in the day's work." His mind reverted to its original line of thought. "But even dying is a little thing as long as all this is undefiled." He smoked in silence for a minute.

"Death!" he continued jerkily, as if feeling for his ideas at an unaccustomed depth. "I've seen so much of Death, Betty: in every sort of guise and disguise, and I'm not sure that he isn't only the biggest impostor, really. A bogie to frighten happiness.... A turnip-mask with a candle inside, stuck up just round some corner along the road of life."

"You never know which corner it is, though," said Betty. She nodded her head like a wise child. "That's why it's frightening—sometimes."

For a while longer they talked with their elbows on the table and their faces very close, exchanging those commonplace yet intimate scraps of philosophy which only two can share. Then the India-rubber Man fetched a pail of water from the river, and together they washed up.

"I met Clavering away up the river this evening," he said presently. "He said they'd come down after supper and bring the banjo," and as he spoke they heard the murmur of voices along the river bank. Two figures loomed up out of the darkness and entered the circle of light from the brazier.

"Good hunting!" said a girl's clear voice. "Garry was feeling musically inclined, and so we brought the Joe with us."

The India-rubber Man returned from the direction of the tent, carrying rugs and coats which he proceeded to spread on the ground.

"We're pushing on to-morrow," continued Clavering's deep voice. "There are some lakes in the hills we want to reach while this fine weather lasts. What are your movements, Standish? Keep somewhere near us, so that we can have our sing-songs of an evening sometimes."

"We'll follow," replied the India-rubber Man. "Nebuchadnezzar ought to have a day's rest to-morrow, and then we'll pick up the trail. Your old caravan oughtn't to be difficult to trace. Did you do any good on the river this evening...?"

They settled down among the rugs, and for a while the conversation ran on the day's doings. Then Etta Clavering drew her banjo from its case. "What shall we have?" she asked, fingering the strings: and without further pause she struck a few opening chords and began in her musical contralto:

"Under the wide and starry sky..."

The slow, haunting melody floated out into the night, and Betty, seated beside her husband, felt his hand close firmly over hers as it rested among the folds of the rug. The warm glow of the fire lit the faces of the quartette and the white throat of the singer.

"Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill..."

The last notes died away, and before anyone could speak the banjo broke out into a gay jingle, succeeded in turn by an old familiar ballad in which they all joined. Then Clavering cleared his throat and in his deep baritone sang:

"Sing me a song of a lad that is gone Over the hills to Skye,"

A few coon songs followed, with the four voices, contralto and baritone, tenor and soprano, blending in harmony. Then Etta Clavering drew her fingers across the strings and declared it was time for bed.

"One more," pleaded Betty. "Just one more. You two sing."

Etta Clavering turned her head and eyed her husband; her eyes glittered in the starlight and there was a gleam of white teeth as she smiled. She tentatively thrummed a few chords.

"Shall we, Garry?"

Her husband nodded. "Yes," he said, "that one." He took his pipe from his mouth. "Go ahead...."

So together they sang "Friendship," that perfection of old-world romance which is beyond all art in its utter simplicity.

The banjo was restored to its case at length, and the singers rose to depart. Farewells were exchanged and plans for the future, while the four strolled together to the edge of the woods.

"Well," said Clavering, "we shall see you again the day after to-morrow, with any luck."

Etta Clavering turned towards Betty. "Isn't it nice to dare to look ahead as far as that?" she asked with a little smile. "Fancy! The day after to-morrow! Good night—good night!"

Betty and the India-rubber Man stood looking after them until they were swallowed by the darkness. Then he placed his arm round his wife's shoulders, and together they retraced their steps across the clearing towards the tent.

* * * * *

"This is the place," said the Young Doctor. He piloted his companion aside from the throng of Regent Street traffic and turned in at a narrow doorway. Pushing open a swing door that bore on its glass panels the inscription "MEMBERS ONLY," he motioned the First Lieutenant up a flight of stairs. "You wait till you get to the top, Number One," he said, "you'll forget you're ashore."

"Thank you," said the First Lieutenant as they ascended, "but I don't know that I altogether want to forget it."

They had reached the threshold of a small ante-room hung about with war-trophies and crowded with Naval officers. The majority were standing about chatting eagerly in twos and threes, while a girl with a tray of glasses steered a devious course through the crush and took or fulfilled orders. Through an open doorway beyond they caught a glimpse of more uniformed figures, and the tobacco-laden air hummed with Navy-talk and laughter.

The Young Doctor hung his cap and stick on the end of the banisters and elbowed his way to the doorway, exchanging greetings with acquaintances.

"Come in here," he said over his shoulder to the First Lieutenant, "and let's see if there's anyone from the ship—hullo! I didn't expect to see this——" He made a gesture towards the empty fireplace. There, seated upon the club-fender, with his right hand in his trousers pocket and his expression of habitual gloom upon his countenance, sat Mouldy Jakes. His left sleeve hung empty at his side, and from the breast of a conspicuously new-looking monkey-jacket protruded a splint swathed about in bandages. A newly-healed scar showed pink across his scalp.

A laughing semi-circle sat round apparently in the enjoyment of some anecdote just concluded. A Submarine Commander of almost legendary fame stood by the fender examining something in a little morocco case. Mouldy Jakes turned a melancholy eye upon the newcomers.

"More of 'em," he said in tones of dull despair. "What d'you want—Martini or Manhattan?"

"Martini," replied the Young Doctor, advancing, "both of us; but why this reckless hospitality, Mouldy? Are you celebrating an escape from the nursing home?"

The Submarine man closed the case with a little snap and handed it back to Mouldy Jakes.

"We're just celebrating Mouldy's acquisition of that bauble," he explained. "He's been having the time of his life at Buckingham Palace all the morning."

"Not 'arf," confirmed the hero modestly. "Proper day-off, I've been having!" He raised his voice. "Two more Martinis an' another plain soda, please, Bobby."

The First Lieutenant laughed.

"Who's the soda water for—me?"

Mouldy shook his head lugubriously.

"No," he replied, "me. There was another bird there this morning being lushed up to a bar to his D.S.O.—an R.N.R. Lieutenant called Gedge. What you'd call a broth of a boy. We had lunch together afterwards." The speaker sighed heavily and passed his hand across his forehead. "I think we must have had tea too," he added meditatively.

The Young Doctor looked round the laughing circle of faces. "Where is he? Did you bring him along with you?"

Mouldy Jakes shook his head and reached out for his soda water. "No ... he went to sleep...."

The Young Doctor sat down on the fender beside the speaker. "How's the hand getting on, old lad?"

"Nicely, what's left of it. They let me out without a keeper now. Had a good leave? When d'you go back?"

"To-morrow," replied the First Lieutenant with a sigh. "Buck up and get well again, Mouldy, and come back to us. We're all going North to-morrow night, Gerrard and Tweedledum, and Pills here ... and all the rest of 'em. You'd better join up with the party!" He spoke in gently chaffing, affectionate tones. "I don't think we can spare you, old Sunny Jim."

"No," said Mouldy Jakes dryly; "but unfortunately that's what the rotten doctors say." He rose to his feet and extended his uninjured hand, "S'long, Number One! I've got to get back to my old nursing home or I'll find myself on the mat.... S'long, Pills. Give 'em all my love, and tell 'em I'm coming back all right when the plumbers have finished with me." He stopped at the doorway and turned, facing the group round the fireplace.

"I guess you couldn't do without your Little Ray of Sunshine!" His wry smile flitted across his solemn countenance and the next moment he was gone.



CHAPTER XIV

INTO THE WAY OF PEACE

The King's Messenger thrust a bundle of sealed envelopes into his black leather despatch-case and closed the lock with a snap.

"Any orders?" he asked. "I go North at eleven to-night."

The civilian clerk seated at the desk in the dusty Whitehall office leaned back in his chair and passed his hand over his face. He looked tired and pallid with overwork and lack of exercise.

"Yes," he said, and searched among the papers with which the desk was littered. "There was a telephone message just now——" He found and consulted some pencilled memoranda. "You are to call at Sir William Thorogood's house at nine o'clock. There may be a letter or a message for you to take up to the Commander-in-Chief." The speaker picked up a paper-knife and examined it with the air of one who saw a paper-knife for the first time and found it on the whole disappointing. "The Sea Lords are dining there," he added after a pause.

The King's Messenger was staring through the window into the well of a dingy courtyard. He received his instructions with a rather absent nod of the head.

"The house," continued the civilian in his colourless tones, "is in Queen Anne's Gate, number——"

"I know the house," said the King's Messenger quietly. He turned and looked at the clock. "Is that all?" he asked. "If so, I'll go along there now."

"That's all," replied the other, and busied himself with his papers. "Good night."

Despatch-case in hand, d'Auvergne, the King's Messenger, emerged from the Admiralty by one of the small doors opening on to the Mall. He paused on the step for a moment, meditating. The policeman on duty touched his helmet.

"Taxi, sir?"

"No, thanks," replied d'Auvergne. "I think I'll walk; I've not far to go."

Dusk was settling down over the city as he turned off into St. James's Park, but the afterglow of the sunset still lingered above the Palace and in the soft half-light the trees and lawns held to their vivid green. A few early lamps shone with steady brilliance beyond the foliage.

On one of the benches sat a khaki-clad soldier and a girl, hand-in-hand; they stared before them unsmiling, in ineffable speechless contentment. The King's Messenger glanced at the pair as he limped past, and for an instant the girl's eyes met his disinterestedly; they were large round eyes of china blue, limpid with happiness.

The passer-by smiled a trifle grimly. "Bless 'em!" he said to himself in an undertone. "They don't care if it snows ink.... And all the world's their garden...."

Podgie d'Auvergne had fallen into a habit of talking aloud to himself. It is a peculiarity of men given to introspective thought who spend much time alone. Since the wound early in the war that cost him the loss of a foot he had found himself very much alone, though the role of "Cat that walked by Itself" was of his own choosing. It is perhaps the inevitable working of the fighting male's instinct, once maimed irrevocably, to walk thenceforward a little apart from his fellows—that gay company of two-eyed, two-legged, two-armed favourites of Fate for whom the world was made.

For a while he pursued the train of thought started by the lovers on the bench. The distant noises of the huge city filled his ears with a murmur like a far-off sea, and abruptly, all unbidden, Hope the Inextinguishable flamed up within him. Winged fancy soared and flitted above the conflagration.

"But supposing," said Podgie d'Auvergne to the pebbles underfoot, returning to his hurt like a sow to her wallow, "supposing I was sitting there with her on that seat and some fellow came along and insulted her!" He considered unhinging possibilities with a brow of thunder. "Damn it!" said the King's Messenger, "I couldn't even thrash the blighter."

He made a fierce pass in the air with his walking-stick, dispelling imaginary Apaches, and brought himself under the observation of a policeman in Birdcage Walk.

"Any way, I'm not likely to find myself sitting on a bench with her in St. James's Park, or anywhere else," concluded the soliloquist. High Fancy, with scorched wings, fluttered down to mundane levels.

He turned into Queen Anne's Gate, but on the steps leading up to the once familiar door he paused and looked up at the front of the old house.

"That's her window," said the King's Messenger, and added sternly, "but I'm here on duty, and even if she——" He rang the bell and stood listening to the preposterous thumping of his heart.

The door opened while he was framing an imaginary sentence that had nothing to do with the duty in hand.

"Hullo, Haines!" he said. "Where's Sir William?"

The old butler peered at the visitor irresolutely for an instant.

"Why," he said, "Mr. d'Auvergne, sir, you're a stranger! For a moment I didn't recognise you standing out on the doorstep——"

The visitor crossed the threshold and was relieved of cap and stick.

"Sir William said an officer from the Admiralty would call at nine, sir; but he didn't mention no name, and I was to show you into the library. Sir William is still up in the laboratory, sir"—the butler lowered his voice to a confidential undertone—"with all the Naval gentlemen that was dining here—their Lordships, sir." He turned as he spoke and led the way across the hall. "It's a long time since you was last here, sir, if I may say so——" There was the faintest tone of reproach in the old servitor's tones. "I dare say you'll be forgetting your way about the house." The butler stopped at a door. "This way, sir—Miss Cecily's in here——"

The King's Messenger halted abruptly, as panic-stricken a young gentleman as ever wore the King's uniform.

"Haines!" he said. "No! Not—not that room. I'll wait—I——" But the old man had opened the door and stood aside to allow the visitor to enter.

D'Auvergne drew a deep breath and stepped forward. As he did so, the butler spoke again.

"Lieutenant d'Auvergne, Miss," he said, and quietly closed the door.

Save for the light from a shaded electric reading-lamp by the fireplace the big room was in shadow. A handful of peat smouldered on the wide brick hearth and mingled its faint aroma with the scent of roses.

An instant's silence was followed by the rustle of silk, and a white-clad form rose from a low arm-chair beside the reading-lamp.

"I seem to remember the name," said Cecily in her clear, sweet tones, "but you're in the shadow. Can you find the switch ... by the door..." An odd, breathless note had caught up in her voice.

The King's Messenger laid the black despatch bag he still carried on a chair by the door and limped towards her across the carpet.

"I don't think the light would help matters much," he said quietly. "I'm generally grateful for the dark."

"Ah, Tony ..." said the girl, as if he had countered with a weapon that somehow wasn't quite fair. "Come and sit down. We'll leave the lights for a bit, and then we needn't draw the curtains: it's such a perfect evening." She spoke quite naturally now, standing by the side of the wide fireplace with one hand resting on the mantel. The soft evening air strayed in at the open windows, and the little pile of aromatic embers on the hearth glowed suddenly.

The King's Messenger sat down on the arm of the vacant chair, and looked up at her as she stood in all her fair loveliness against the dark panelling. He opened his lips as if to speak, and then apparently thought better of it. The girl met his gaze a little curiously, as if waiting for some explanation; none apparently being forthcoming she shouldered the responsibility for the conversation.

"I'm all alone," she explained, "because Uncle Bill is up in the laboratory. The air's full of mystery, too; there are five Admirals up there, and one's a perfect dear..." Cecily paused for breath. "His eyes go all crinkley when he smiles," she continued.

"Lots of people's do," conceded the visitor.

Cecily shot him a swift glance and looked away again.

"He smiled a good deal," she continued musingly. "And Uncle Bill's awfully thrilled about something. He was up all night fussing in the laboratory, and when he came down to breakfast this morning he hit his egg on the head as if it had been a German and said, 'Got it!'"

The King's Messenger nodded sapiently, as if these unusual occurrences held no mystery for him. Silence fell upon the room again: from a clock tower in Westminster came the clear notes of a bell striking the hour. The sound seemed to remind the visitor of something.

"I was told to come here," he announced suddenly, as if answering a question that the silence held.

The white-clad figure stiffened.

"Told to!" echoed Cecily. "May I ask——"

"They told me at the Admiralty," explained Simple Simon, the King's Messenger, "I was to call for despatches."

"Oh..." said Cecily, nodding her fair head, "I see. I confess I was a little puzzled ... but that explains ... and it was War-time, and you couldn't very well refuse, could you?" She surveyed him mercilessly. "They shoot people who refuse to obey orders in War-time, don't they—however distasteful or unpleasant the orders may be? You just had to come, in fact, or be shot ... was that it?"

The victim winced.

"You don't understand," he began miserably. "There's a very important——"

Cecily interrupted with a little laugh.

"Oh, dear, oh, dear! Tony, if you're going to begin to talk about important matters"—the white hands made a little gesture in the gloom—"why, of course, I couldn't understand. And I'm quite sure they wouldn't ask you to do anything that wasn't really important.... Oh, Tony, you must have had a lot of terribly important things to do during the last two years: so many that you haven't had time to look up your old friends, or—or answer their silly letters even ... at least," added Cecily, "so I've heard from people who—knew you well once upon a time."

The King's Messenger rose to his feet and began to walk slowly to and fro with his hands behind his back. Cecily watched the halting step of the man who three years before had been the hero of the Naval Rugby-football world, and found his outline grow suddenly misty.

"Listen," he said quietly. "I've got to tell you something. It's something I'd have rather not had to talk about.... And I don't know whether you'll altogether understand, because you're a woman, and women——"

"I know," said Cecily quickly. "They're just a pack of silly geese, aren't they, Tony? They've no intuition or sympathy or power of understanding.... They only want to be left in peace and not bothered or have their feelings harrowed.... They're incapable of sharing another's disappointment or sorrow, or of easing a burden or—or anything...."

The speaker broke off and crossed swiftly to the vacated chair. For a moment she searched for something among the cushions and, having found it, stepped to the window and stood with her back to the visitor, apparently contemplating the blue dusk deepening into night.

The King's Messenger stopped and stared at her graceful form outlined against the window. Then he took one step towards her and halted again. Cecily continued to be absorbed in the row of lights gleaming like fireflies beyond the Park.

"Cecily," he began, and let his mind return to an earlier train of thought. "Supposing that I—that you were going for a walk with me."

"We'll suppose it," said Cecily. "I've an idea it has happened before. But we'll suppose it actually happened again."

"I walk very slowly nowadays," added the King's Messenger.

Cecily amended the hypothesis.

"We'll suppose we were going for a slow walk," she said.

"I can't walk very far, either."

"A short, slow walk."

"And supposing," continued the theorist in sepulchral tones, with his hands still behind his back, "supposing some fellow came along and—well, and said 'Yah! Boo!' to you—or—or something like that. Cecily—would you despise me if I couldn't—er—run after him and kick him?"

Cecily turned swiftly. "Yah! Boo!" she ejaculated. "Yah! Boo! Oh, Tony, how thrilling! I'd say 'Pip! Pip!'"

She, too, had her hands behind her, and stood with her head a little on one side regarding him. Her face was in shadow, and he saw none of the tender mirth in her eyes. "Would you let me say 'Pip! Pip!' to a perfect stranger, Tony?—and me walking-out with you!"

"Let you!" he said with a sort of laugh like a gasp and stepped towards her.

For an instant Fear peeped out of the two windows of her soul, and she swiftly raised her hands as if to fend off the inevitable. But the King's Messenger was swifter still and had them imprisoned, crumpled in his somewhere between their galloping hearts.

"My dear," he said, "my dear, I love you!"

Her head dropped back in the shelter of his arm, and she searched his face with eyes like a Madonna on the Judgment Seat.

"I know," she said softly, and surrendered lips and soul as a child gives itself to Sleep.

Through the closed door came the muffled sound of voices in the hall. Uncle Bill was talking in tones that were, for him, unusually loud. Someone fumbling at the handle of the door appeared to be experiencing some difficulty in opening it.

Cecily, released, turned to the window like a white flash and buried her hot face among the roses. The King's Messenger remained where he stood, motionless.

Slowly the door opened, letting in the murmur of voices. Uncle Bill had his hand on the knob and stood with his shoulder turned to the interior of the room, apparently listening to something one of his guests was saying.

In the lighted hall beyond, d'Auvergne caught a glimpse of Naval uniforms and white shirt-fronts.

"... It ought to go a little way towards 'confounding their knavish tricks,'" a man's deep voice was saying.

"Yes," said Sir William. He turned as he spoke and took in the occupants of the room with a swift, keen glance. "'And to guide our feet into the way of peace!'"

THE END