Gradually up and up a long gentle incline I rode, with the sound falling below me and a mass of high dark hills rising beyond it. Behind me the sun was now low, and my shadow stretched long on the empty road ahead. For it was singularly empty, and the country-side was utterly peaceful; only at sea was there life—with death very close beside it. And now and then there rose at intervals a succession of dull, heavy sounds that made the earth quiver. I knew what they meant!
Then came a dip, and then a very steep long hill through moorland country. And then quite suddenly and abruptly I came to the top. It was a mere knife-edge, with the road instantly beginning to descend steeply on the other side, but I did not descend with the road. I jumped off and stared with bated breath.
Ahead of me and far below, a wide island-encircled sheet of water lay placid and smiling in the late afternoon sunshine. Strung along one side of it were lines of grey ships, with a little smoke rising from most of their funnels, but lying quite still and silent—as still and silent as the farms and fields on shore. Those distant patches of grey, with the thin drifts of smoke and the masts encrusted with small grey blobs rising out of their midst, those were the cause of all my country's troubles. But for them peace would have long since been dictated and a mightier German Empire would be towering above all other States in the world. How I hated—and yet (being a sailor myself) how I respected them!
One solitary monster of this Armada was slowly moving across the land-locked basin. Parallel to her and far away moved a tiny vessel with a small square thing following her at an even distance, and the sun shining on this showed its colour red. Suddenly out of the monster shot a series of long bright flashes. Nothing else happened for several seconds, and then almost simultaneously "Boom! boom! boom!" hit my ear, and a group of tall white fountains sprang up around the distant red target. The Grand Fleet of England was preparing for "The Day"!
I knew the big vessel at a glance; I knew her, at least, as one of a certain four, and for some moments I watched her gunnery practice, too fascinated to stir. I noted how the fall of her shells was spread—in fact I noted several things; and then it occurred to me abruptly that I stood a remarkably good chance of having a wall at my back and a handkerchief over my eyes if I lingered in this open road much longer. And the plea that I was enjoying the excellent gun-practice made by H.M.S. Blank would scarcely be accepted as an extenuating circumstance!
I glanced quickly round, and then I realised how wonderfully luck was standing by me. At the summit of that hill there were naturally no houses, and as the descending road on either side made a sharp twist almost immediately, I stood quite invisible on my outlook tower. The road, moreover, ran through a kind of neck, with heather rising on either side; and in a moment I had hauled my cycle up the bank on the landward side, and was out of sight over the edge, even should any traveller appear.
After a few minutes' laborious dragging of my cycle I found myself in a small depression in the heather, where, by lying down, I could remain quite out of sight unless some one walked right into me—and it seemed improbable that any one should take such a promenade with the good road so close at hand. By raising myself on my knees I could command the same engrossing view I had seen from the road, only I now also saw something of the country that sloped down to the sea; and with a thrill of exultation I realised that this prospect actually included our rendezvous.