Dawson laid the letter and the telegram upon his breakfast-table, and bent his head over them. In a few minutes he had weighed them up, sorted out their relative significance, and spoke. "We have here, Froissart, two distinct people. I am almost sure of that. My man of the dockyard who wants leave to bury his mother in Essex has not yet received permission from his Chief. He would not therefore be telegraphing about his train. He does not know yet whether he will be permitted to go at all. Your man is quite confident that his movements are in no way restricted. As I read between the lines I judge that my man, who knows the actual truth about the docking and sailing of the battle-cruisers, wants to reach the East Coast, whence he has means of transmitting the priceless news to Germany. Your man is of one of the Towns; he has seen the dummy cruisers ashore in the Sound; he believes them to be genuine, and he also wants to transmit the news to his paymasters in Germany, He will be an ordinary German agent. The identity of place whither both wish to go is partly a coincidence, and partly explained by its excellence as a jumping-off place for fast motor-boats, which, during these long autumn nights, could race over to and get back again between sunset and dawn. We have coast watchers always about for the very purpose of stopping such lines of communication. You shall accompany your own man, and make sure that he is allowed to get through. If he does not himself cross, arrest him as soon as his boat has gone. If he does go, watch for his return and arrest him, and his boat and all on board, the moment that they return. In any event the boat and its crew must be seized upon return to Essex. Are you quite clear about what you have to do?"

"Quite," said Froissart. "The spies and their boat must be caught red-handed, but not till after the false news of the mining of the battle-cruisers has been carried to Holland. But how shall we make certain that the sleepless English Navy will not butt in and catch the boat at sea before it gets across to Holland. The Narrow Seas swarm with fast patrols."

"I will provide for that. I will write at once for you a letter to the Inspector of police at Burnham, and enclose copies of my credentials from the Admiralty. I will also wire to Lord Jacquetot in private code. You will find on arrival that the responsible naval authorities of the district will be entirely at your service. That motor-boat with the news of the great spoof shall be shepherded across most craftily, but when it comes to return will find that the way of transgressors is very hard. Get ready and be off, Froissart; we depend upon your skill and discretion. Get a good view of your man—the police will point him out—before he boards the train, and then don't let him out of your sight. Take two plain-clothes officers with you. Run no unnecessary risks of being spotted. You are rather easily recognisable with those shining black eyes and black beard, but no one here has seen you officially, and you should pass unsuspected as a Scotland Yard man. Can I trust you?"

"Mais certainement," said Froissart crossly. "This is simple police work, which I have done a thousand times. I could do it on my head."

"Your train leaves at 10.8; the South Western station. I will give you the letters at once, and then you can start."

Within a quarter of an hour Dawson—his breakfast forgotten—had given Froissart his letters, sent a long telegram by special messenger to the Commander-in-Chief for despatch in code to Jacquetot. Not even to Dawson would the Admiralty entrust its private cypher. Then, as soon as Froissart had disappeared, he called up the Chief of the Dockyard on the telephone and arranged to come at once to his office.

"I had given the easy job to Froissart," he explained to me long afterwards. "It was, as he called it, simple police work. He had, without arousing suspicion, to make smooth the path for his spy just as you and I opened the door to the Hook for the late-lamented Hagan, and escorted him across in the mail-boat. We have helped false news over to the Germans scores of times. It is grand sport. My job was something much more tricky. I had to get plain proof that my man was a spy in the dockyard, to keep him playing on my line to the very last minute, but to make dead certain of stopping him at the fifty-fifth second of the eleventh hour."

"Why did you not cut out your difficulties by just stopping him from going to Essex? At a word from you his Chief would have refused leave."

Dawson smiled at me in a fashion which I find intensely aggravating.
He has no tact; when he feels superior, he lets one see it plainly.

"The fat would have been in the fire then," exclaimed he. "Suppose he lay low for a day or two, took French leave, and went. I should have been off his track. Shadowing is all very well, but it does not always succeed in a crowded district like the Three Towns. If he had got away without me beside him, the man might have reached Essex and done there what he pleased. Besides, he might have had accomplices unknown to me. No, it was the only possible course to give him leave and follow him up close. Then whatever he did would be under my own eye."

Dawson gulped down a cup of coffee, sadly regarded his rapidly congealing bacon, and skipped off to the dockyard. "Who is this man of yours whose mother has died at so very inconvenient a moment for us? What the deuce is he doing with a mother in Essex at all? He ought to be a Devon man."

"He isn't, anyway. I have been making close inquiries. Though he has been with us for sixteen years, he did come originally from somewhere in the East. The man is one of the best I have—never drinks, keeps good time, and works hard. He makes big wages, and carries them virtuously home to his wife. He has money in the savings bank, and holds Consols, poor chap, on which he must have wasted the good toil of years. I can't imagine any one less likely to take German gold than this man Maynard. Sure you haven't a bee in your bonnet, Dawson? To a police officer every one is a probable criminal, but some of us now and then are passably honest. I will bet my commission that Maynard is honest."

Dawson sniffed. "The honest men, with the excellent characters and the virtuous wives, are always the most dangerous because least likely to arouse suspicion. How do you know that Maynard hasn't a second establishment hidden away somewhere in the Three Towns? The upper and middle classes have no monopoly in illicit love affairs. Their working class betters do a bit that way too."

"All right. Have it your own way. We will assume for the sake of security that Maynard is a spy, that he has no dead mother whom he wants leave to bury, and that he has sold his country for the sake of some bit of fluff in Plymouth. The point is: what am I to do? Shall I grant leave?"

"Yes," said Dawson, "and do it handsomely. Give him four days and run the sympathetic stunt. Offer him a Service pass by the Great Western. Say how grieved you are and all the rest of the tosh. Have him up now, and put me somewhere close so that I can take a good look at the swine when he comes in and when he goes out."

The Chief of the Dockyards shrugged his shoulders, placed Dawson in an adjoining room, and summoned Maynard from the yard. The man, who was dressed in the awful dead black of his class when a funeral is in prospect, came up, and Dawson got a full sight of him. Maynard was about thirty-five, well set up—for he had served in the Territorials—and looked what he was, a first-rate workman of the best type. Even Dawson, who trusted no one, was slightly shaken. "I have never seen a man who looked less like a spy," muttered he; "but then, those always make the most dangerous of spies. Why has he a mother in Essex, and why has she died just now? Real mothers don't do these things; they've more sense."

Maynard received his third-class pass, respectfully thanked his Officer for his kindly expressed sympathy—which in his case was quite genuine—and disappeared. Dawson jumped into the room again to take a word of farewell. "I should know him anywhere," he cried. "I am going by the same train in the same carriage. Good-bye."

Maynard reached the Great Western station in good time, and found a carriage which was not overcrowded. He was carrying a small handbag. At the last moment before the train started a prosperous-looking passenger, with "commercial gentleman" written all over him, stepped into the same compartment and seated himself in a vacant seat opposite the bereaved workman. It was Dawson in one of his favourite roles. "There is nothing less like a detective," he would say, "than a middle-aged commercial traveller. They are such genial, unsuspicious, open-handed folk. This comes of wandering about the country at other people's expense."

The 10.15 fast express from the Three Towns to Paddington is an excellent one, and the journey was not more tedious than five hours spent in a train are bound to be. All through the journey Dawson, from behind his stock of papers and magazines, studied Maynard, and became, not, perhaps shaken in his conviction, but certainly puzzled. "He looked," he explained to me, "like a sick and sorrowful man. One who had really lost a beloved mother far away would look just like that. But so might one who had been unfaithful to a trusting wife and was now risking his neck to pour gold into the greedy lap of a frowsy mistress. One must never judge by appearances. A man may look as sick over backing the wrong horse as at losing an only son in the trenches. Human means of expression are limited."

"It takes time to learn that you are not such a beast as you pretend,"
I observed. Dawson grinned.

At Paddington Maynard took the Tube to Liverpool Street, and did not observe that his fellow passenger of the brown tweed suit and the fat, self-satisfied, rather oily face followed by the same route. Dawson, who was famished, rejoiced to see Maynard make for the refreshment-room. He could not lunch on the train, since the workman, upon whom he attended, had economically fed himself upon sandwiches put up in a "nosebag."

"No breakfast, no lunch," groaned Dawson. "What a day!" He did his best during five minutes in the refreshment-room at Liverpool Street to fill up the howling void in his person, and then watched Maynard enter a train for Burnham-on-Crouch. In two minutes he had opened up communications with a station Inspector of Police, made himself known, and secured the services of a constable to travel in Maynard's carriage. He did not wish to be seen again himself just at present. He yearned, too, for a first-class compartment and an ample tea-basket. Dawson's brain is a martyr to duty, but his stomach continually rises in rebellion. It was a fast train which would not stop until the Essex coast was reached, so that Dawson did not doubt that his quarry would be upon the platform when he himself got out So he was, and so, too, was a girl in deep mourning who had come to meet him. Dawson was staggered; a girl, also in funeral blacks, upset the picture which he had painted to himself. The man and girl talked together for a few minutes, and then walked slowly arm in arm out of the station towards the village. Dawson picked up his police assistant and followed. He gave no explanation of the reasons for his shadowing of the man Maynard, for he was just beginning to feel uneasy. Slowly the party of four threaded through the pretty little place, bright under the pleasant autumn twilight. Maynard and the girl were in front, Dawson and his policeman followed some fifty yards behind. In a side street, at the door of a small cottage—one of a humble row—the pair of mourners stopped, opened the iron gate, and entered. Dawson waited, watching. He could see through the windows into a little parlour where some half a dozen people, all in deep black, were gathered. Presently, as if they had waited only for the arrival of Maynard—which indeed was the fact—the heavy steps of men clumping down wooden stairs resounded from the open door, and there emerged into the street a coffin borne upon the shoulders of six bearers. The moment that the coffin appeared Dawson realised his blunder. Maynard had really lost his mother, and, like a dutiful son, had come all the way from the Three Towns to bury her! Off flew Dawson's hat, and he nudged the policeman hard in the ribs. "Take off your helmet, you chump," he growled savagely. "Don't you see that it's a funeral." The man, rather dazed—he had been plucked away from Liverpool Street at a moment's notice and sent upon what he thought was police service—did what he was told. The group of mourners formed behind the coffin, which was carried to the cemetery not far off. Still following, with their heads bowed, Dawson and the bewildered policeman attended the funeral, heard the beautiful service read, and the last offices completed. Then they turned away and made for the railway station.

"Why, sir," asked the policeman, looking sideways rather fearfully at his superior officer's stern face—"why, sir, did we come to this place?"

"Why? Haven't you seen?" snapped Dawson. "To attend a funeral, of course."

* * * * *

I have never met that policeman. To have conversed with him and to have sought to chop a way through the tangled recesses of his mind would have gratified me hugely. For, if police constables think at all, in what a bewildered whirl of confused speculation must his poor brain have been occupied during the return journey to London! Dawson tossed him into a compartment of the first train which came along, one of extreme slowness, and then dismissed him into cold space without a scrap of remorse. The humble creature, discharging his station duties with the precision of daily habit, had swung into the overpowering orbit of Chief Inspector Dawson, been caught up, dumped without instructions upon an unknown journey in attendance upon an unknown workman. Then when the train had stopped, he had been spewed out upon a strange country platform, led through strange mean streets, and forced with head bared to the autumn chill of evening, to attend the obsequies of a total stranger. At the end, without a word of explanation, still less of apology, he had been returned as an empty rejected package to the platform at Liverpool Street. Yes, I should dearly love to have met and cross-questioned that policeman, and have listened to the bizarre solution which he had to offer to it all. But most probably, in his stolid, faithful way, he never gave the subject any thought at all. To be tossed about at the whims of superiors was an experience which he would take as composedly as he would those exiguous weekly wages which were the derisory compensation.

Dawson went to the small hotel which he had picked out with Froissart as a convenient rendezvous. There he sat for hours doing nothing, for he was far too wise a man to push his head into another man's business, even though that one were a subordinate and a foreigner. He had failed once; he could not afford, by deputy, to fail a second time. Besides, he knew nothing of the movements of Froissart and his quarry. They had not appeared within the visible horizon of Burnham-on-Crouch, though they had had ample time in which to arrive. I am afraid that his temper got the better of him, and as the night drew on, unsolaced by a word from Froissart, and unrelieved by any literature more engrossing than old railway time-tables and hotel advertisements, he consigned to the Bottomless Pit the Chief of the Devonport Dockyard, the disgustingly virtuous and unenterprising Maynard, and even the harmless soul of his lately buried mother. Dawson in a royal rage is no pleasant spectacle.

It had gone half-past eleven before Froissart came, a boisterous, triumphant Froissart, bragging of his skill and his success in the manner of a born Gascon.

"It was tremendous, mon ami," roared Froissart, unchecked by Dawson's scowls. "I have done the blooming trick: the boat has gone to Holland, and the filthy spy is in the strong lock-up. My vigilance, my astuteness, my resource unfathomable, my flair, my soul of an artist, my patience inexhaustible, my address so firm and yet so delicate, my mastery of the minds of those others less gifted, my—"

"Oh, stow it!" roared Dawson.

"Unfailing insight, mon esprit francais, my genius for the service of police, my unshakable courage and elan, have had their just and inevitable reward. The boat with the message so false has gone to Holland for the German Kaiser to gloat over, and the filthy spy is in the safe lock-up. I took him with my own hands—I, le Comte de Froissart, I bemired my hands by contact with his foul carcase. The boat it flew down the river; ma foi, like a flash of the lightning, going they said thirty knots, presque cinquante kilometres par heure. The glorious Marine Anglaise will see that it reaches les Pays Bas, and then when it is of return your sailors so splendid, with sang-froid so perfect, will gobble it up. Just gobble it up. As I will gobble up this cold beef upon your table. Peste, I am of a hunger excruciating. I have not eaten for five, six, ten hours."

Froissart sat down at Dawson's table, where still lay the cold remains of his supper—he had had the decency to reflect that his colleague Froissart might be hungry upon arrival—and fell to eating copiously and loudly. The French are least admirable when they are seen devouring food.

Froissart ate while Dawson writhed. Though his colleague's success would plant laurels upon his own brow—little would he ever say at the Yard of that journey to Burnham and the preposterous funeral—he was jealous, bitterly jealous. I am by special appointment the Boswell of Dawson, yet I do not spare the feelings of my subject. Rather do I go over them with a rake—for the ultimate good of Dawson's variegated soul. He was bitterly jealous, but from natural curiosity yearned to know the details of those feats of which Froissart prated so triumphantly. And all the while, unconscious, heedless of his wrathful exasperated chieftain, Froissart devoured food in immense quantities. It was a disgusting exhibition.

Satisfied at last, Froissart broke away from the table, lit a cigarette, and sat himself down beside Dawson before the fire. It was well past midnight, but to these men regular habits were unknown, and the hours of work and of sleep always indeterminate.

"Now," exclaimed Froissart, "I will tell to you, my friend Dawson, the true histoire of my exploits so tremendous and unapproachable. I reached the station at Plymouth at ten hours, my spy was upon the platform. I knew him, for those who had kept him under watch had informed me of him. I had with me two police officers en bourgeois, what you call plain clothes, and I distributed them with the acumen of a strategist. It was un train a couloir. The spy disposed himself in a compartment. I placed one of my officers in the same compartment with him, the other in the compartment contiguee towards the engine, myself in that a derriere. He was thus the meat in our sandwich. If he passed into the corridor and walked this way or that he was seen by me or by my man in advance; all his movements while within his own compartment were supervised every moment. So we travelled. He did himself well that spy so atrocious. He partook of his dejeuner in the buffet du train, and we all three took our dejeuner there also. That was the last meal of which I ate before this my supper here. The journey was without incident, but when he arrived at Waterloo the trouble began. He was not taking risks, that spy. He knew not that he was under watch, but he took not risks. He began to perform a voyage designed to throw any man, except one of the vigilance and resource of Froissart, completely off his track. I was not learned in your Metropolitain before this day, but now I know your Tubes as if a map of them were printed in colours upon my hand. At Waterloo that spy, so astute, burrowed into the earth and entered a train of the railway called Bakerloo, in which he journeyed to Golder's Green. Then he crossed a quai and returned to the town called Camden. Again he descended, passed through tunnels, and emerging upon another quai proceeded to Highgate. All the while we three followed, not close, but so that he never escaped from under our eyes. At Highgate he turned about and returned to Tottenham Court Road. Thence he departed by another line to the Bank, and, rising in and ascenseur, emerged upon the pavements of your City. He looked this way and that, not perceiving us who watched, walked warily to the Lord Maire's station of the Mansion House, boarded the District Railway, and did not alight till Wimbledon. It was easy to follow, but my friend, the billets, the tickets, were une grande difficulte. I solved the problem of tickets by my genius so superbe. We at first tried to take them, but apres we abandoned the project so hopeless and travelled sans payer. When asked at the barriers or in the lifts, we offered pennies, and the men who collected took them joyfully, asking not whence we came. It was une procedee tres simple. It is possible that these wayward uncounted pennies dropped into their own pockets. They rejoiced always to receive them. From Wimbledon we returned to Earl's Court, and then, descending by an electric staircase, which moved of itself, again found ourselves in the Tubes. I loved that escalier electrique; one day I will return and ascend and descend upon it for hours. From Earl's Court we went to Piccadilly Circus; there we made another change for Oxford Circus; there we again got out, and at last, after penetrating the bowels of your London, travelled to Liverpool Street. By this time it had become dark, and the spy's passion for underground travel had spent itself. He crossed the street, descended to the grand station of the Eastern Railway, and took a ticket for Burnham-on-Crouch. Exhausted, but ever vigilant, Froissart and his faithful men took also tickets for Burnham-on-Crouch.

"I will not weary you more with our wanderings, but after many hours, at ten o'clock, we at last arrived at this place. The spy was met upon the quai by another villain, with whom he held converse, and the pair of them, ignorant that the vengeance of Froissart overshadowed them, marched heedlessly, openly, to the river side and entered a large house of which the gardens ran down to the water. I left there my two faithful but weary ones on watch, and hastened to the salle de police. There an Inspector and a young officier anglais—a sub-lieutenant of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve—were awaiting my arrival with impatience. To them I told my story with the brevity that I now recount it to you. They were intrigued greatly, and the sous-lieutenant struck me violently upon the back and said, ma foi, that I was a 'downy old bird,' It was a compliment tres 'bizarre mais tres aimable. I was, it appeared, an old bird of the downiest plumage. I had noted the name of the house, and the Inspector seized a Directory. 'We have suspected that house for some time,' said he. There is a big boat-house at the bottom of the garden containing a large sea-going motor-boat. The proprietor calls himself English, but does not look like one. He is doubtless a snake, one whom they call naturalise, a viper whom we English have warmed in our bosoms.' So spake the Inspector. The Sub-Lieutenant whistled. He said only, 'Send for little Tommy; it is a job for him.' A call was sent forth, and there came into the room a scrap of an infant, habited in short pantaloons and a green shirt. The child carried a long pole and stood stiffly at attention. 'Ma foi, do I see before me a Boy Scout?' I asked. 'You do,' replied the Sub-Lieutenant. 'This is little Tommy, the patrol leader of the Owls.' 'Mon Dieu' I cried, 'an Owl! Un Hibou! Is he then stupid as an owl?' I could see that the Tommy so small frowned savagely, but the Sub-Lieutenant laughed. 'You will see presently if he is stupid. I have forty miles of coast to watch, and I do it all with Boy Scouts like this one.' 'Nom d'un chien,' I cried. 'You English are a great people.' 'We are,' agreed the Sub-Lieutenant, 'devilish great.' Tommy grinned.

"Then the officer so youthful—his age could not have exceeded nineteen years—gave orders to the little Tommy. He was to go to the house, to enter the garden, to squeeze his tiny person into the boat-house, and watch. When the spy and his associates went towards the boat, Tommy was to warn us with a hoot—like an owl—and we were to take charge. At least so I understood the orders given in a strange sea language. Tommy saluted, and vanished. If he had ten years, I should be astonished; but he was a man, every inch of him. Wait till I have finished.

"We followed quickly behind Tommy, but saw him not, and joined my men, who still watched the house. The Sub-Lieutenant and I moved warily, climbed over the wall of the garden, and crept along the grass, soft like moss to our feet, till we could see the boat-house stand out against the dull shine of the river. There was no sign of the presence of le petit Hibou. Suddenly the door of the house, which gave upon the garden, opened, and four men walked down to the boat-house and entered stealthily. My heart turned to water—what a calamity if they should find and slay the pretty little Owl! The minutes passed, perhaps five, perhaps ten, and then quite close we heard the soft low hoot of an owl. The Sub-Lieutenant hooted a reply, and from among some bushes there came out that serene, intrepid infant with the pole! He joined us, and whispered eagerly to the officer. I could not hear what he said. Afterwards the Sub-Lieutenant told me that the men had entered, three had got into the boat, one remaining on land. It was a forty-foot boat, reported Tommy—who seemed of wisdom and knowledge encyclopaedic—it had a big cabin forrard, the engine was a Wotherspoon, ten cylinders set V-fashion, the power a hundred horses. So Tommy had observed and reported, and so I repeat to you. As we watched we saw the boat push out into the river, turn towards the sea; the engine so powerful buzzed like a million bees, a wave curled up in front, and it sped away for Holland like the shot of an arrow. The night was fine, the sea calm; it would complete the voyage in safety. But upon return what a surprise has been prepared for that motor-boat and its detestable owner! What a surprise, ma foi. I yearn to hear of the denouement.

"'We will nab the fourth man who has stayed behind,' whispered the officer, and we crept towards the boat-house. We were ten yards away when he issued forth and turned to lock the door. Then we sprang upon him. He was very quick—like the big snake that he was. He heard us, spun round, and struck two blows of his fist. The Sub-Lieutenant got one upon his beautiful nose; I got the other here under the jaw. We were shot, sprawling, upon the grass, one to each side, and the villain, springing between us, started to flee. I was struck down, but not stunned; I was alert, undefeated, eager to resume the battle. I rose to my knees. I saw the villain fleeing up the grass. Ah, he would escape! But I had not reckoned upon the patrol leader, the little Owl, the Hibou of a Boy Scout so deft and courageous. The spy fled, but into his path sprang the tiny figure of the Owl, his pole in rest like a lance. They met, the man and the little Owl, and the shock of that tourney aroused the echoes of the night. The man, hit in the belly by the point of the pole, collapsed upon the grass, and the Owl, driven backwards by the weight of the man, rolled over and over like un herisson. He was no longer an Owl; he was a round Hedgehog! I was consumed with admiration for the gallant Owl. I got to my feet, I jumped across the lawn, and fell with both knees hard upon the carcase so foul of the spy whom I had pursued all day. He lay groaning from the grievous pain in his belly, and I put upon him the handcuffs before that he could recover. The little Tommy, the Hedgehog, picked himself up, staggered to the body of his enemy, and there, leaning upon the admirable pole which he had not released in his somersaults, gave forth a hoot of victory. It was the Day of Tommy. But for that morsel of a wise Owl the spy would have escaped. I embraced Tommy, who wriggled with discomfort; the Sub-Lieutenant shook his hand, which he appreciated the more. 'Good work,' said the officer. 'Thank you, sir,' said Tommy. That was all; no emotion, no compliments, no embraces. 'Good work.' 'Thank you, sir.' Ma foi, what a people are the English!

"We locked up the spy. The Sub-Lieutenant told me that wireless orders had gone out to the patrols spread far over the seas. The boat, of which we had the name and description, would arrive at Holland, but upon its return on the morrow it would be seized and escorted to Harwich. If by mischance it eluded the patrols, it would be captured when it arrived in the river Crouch. All was provided for. The false news has gone to Holland, and Froissart has done good work. I ask for no reward; I will be like the English—cold, implacable. When the officer said at parting to me, 'Good work, M. Froissart, we are much obliged to you,' I replied calmly, 'Thank you, sir,' I had, you will observe, modelled myself upon the little Owl.

"And you, Mr. Dawson," concluded Froissart, wiping his face, for the effort of talking so much English had brought out the sweat upon him, "have you also succeeded?"

"Yes," said Dawson curtly, "I have also done my work, but it was not exciting. My man was no spy, and the real news about the Intrepid and Terrific will not get through to Germany."

"Saved," roared Froissart, springing to his feet. "We are colleagues most perfect. We have done work of the most good. Embracons nous, mon ami." Then occurred that deplorable incident which has already been related. Froissart in his enthusiasm embraced the unresponsive Dawson, and was laid out by a short-arm jab upon the diaphragm. It was really too bad of Dawson; but then, as I have said, his temper was atrocious.

* * * * *

The two battle-cruisers remained upon the shoals of Picklecombe Point all through November and well into the following month. The great salvage steamer with the arc light went away, but others remained. Work seemed to proceed, though it was unaccountably slow in producing a result. The Three Towns lost interest in the derelicts until one evening there fell upon them a blow which set them gasping for coherent speech. The newsboys were crying in the streets a Special Edition, very Special. Set in dirty type in an odd column, headed with the mysterious words "Stop Press," appeared an announcement by the Admiralty that far away in the South Seas the battle-cruisers Intrepid and Terrific, under the command of Vice-Admiral Stocky, had met and sunk the lately victorious German Squadron! It was glorious news, but the Three Towns thought little at the moment of the glory. They urgently hungered for an explanation of the inscrutable means by which two battle-cruisers, mined and cast upon the shoals below Mount Edgecumbe under their very eyes, could race hot foot to the South Seas and there lay out a German squadron. As soon as the winter dawn broke an immense crowd surged upon the Hoe gazing into blank space. The two battle-cruisers, which for a month had lain helpless before them, were gone! Gone, too, were the salvage steamers and the patrol boats. The waters which had been so active and crowded were void! Then the Three Towns understood; they grasped, men, women and children, the great spoof of which they had been the interested victims, and their approving laughter rose to Heaven. For in all that appertains to the Royal Navy every one born within the circuit of the Three Towns is very wise indeed.

PART IV

THE CAPTAIN OF MARINES