"We may succeed yet," he said. "Come quickly."
A minute later they were standing on the lee of the reef. Bernstein blew a whistle thrice. It was answered from the darkness by another, shrill as the cry of a sea-gull; and in five minutes more, the four men and the collapsible boat were aboard their submarine. It submerged at once, and went due south at twelve knots an hour below the unrevealing seas.
Commander Pickering, the officer on duty at the naval base, was not sure whether it was worth while paying any attention to the message from the old man at the Hatchets'. He went to the window and looked at the starry flash of the light-house in the distance.
"Old Peter probably sighted a school of porpoises. They frightened him into a fit," he said.
The two men of the naval reserve who were waiting for orders, watched him like schoolboys expecting a holiday; but he could not make up his mind. He left the window and studied the big chart on the wall, where the movements of a dozen submarines were marked in red ink from point to point as the daily reports came in, till the final red star announced their destruction. He chewed his lip as he pondered. There was a fleet of submarine destroyers in Westport Harbor at this moment, but they had only just come in from a long spell, and he was loath to turn them out on a wild-goose chase.
"Confound the old idiot," he muttered again. "He can't even talk straight. Wanted to say that he had seen submarines, and starts jabbering about Germans in the light-house. Ring him up again, Dawkins, and find out whether he is drunk or talking in his sleep."
Dawkins went to the telephone. For five minutes, he alternately growled into the mouth-piece and moved the hook up and down.
"Don't get any answer at all, sir."
"That's queer. He can't be asleep yet after that beautiful conversation."