"Yes, the things got up to get more recruits," said Gheena sweetly, flickering a glance at the lieutenant. "I believe some people really believe they are German, sent by the Socialists who are against the war; but we all think here they're only for recruiting. Some always come when we're short of men."
"They who strike the terror, the death-shower! Girl, you rave!" The admiral got up and glared.
"But I was really in England once, Commander, when balloons did come," said Gheena, "and all the stories of misery are invented just for a purpose. You tell your poor cross Kaiser when you go back...."
The admiral sat down again, and his big mouth opened slowly, showing discoloured teeth; a muffled voice somewhere in the background wondered anxiously when the boat would come.
"You see, in England we are never afraid," said Gheena carelessly, but she felt a singing in her ears then when the admiral said something about when she got to Germany.
"You are not going to take me back there," she whispered. Gheena Freyne realized her folly. She would be imprisoned, questioned. She would be a girl alone and friendless. "You have no right to," she said hotly. "I've uncles who are generals, and you've no right. Let me go!"
If—the commander, who was lantern-jawed, cleared his throat—if the gracious Fräulein would answer a few questions intelligently, she might perhaps be landed somewhere on her own coast; they had no desire to be harsh. Every nerve in Gheena's body thumped almost painfully. She feared, above all things on earth now, the thought of going down in this close atmosphere and being taken away a prisoner. Basil Stafford had been right, it was dangerous out alone.
"Your spy," she said unevenly ... "the man ... I know him...."
The commander then said she must certainly be taken along and imprisoned, and, still as in a dream, Gheena realized the folly of this last remark, for the admiral, fading rusty brown again, said something about troublesome prisoners and made unpleasant allusions in German to the bottom of the sea.
Meantime the night was passing. The engineer sent for, suggested that they should sink and someone row in to see what had happened. He thought, in fact, that the Herr Lieutenant knew the cave.