After dark that night, Ned, clothed in an old suit of civilian clothes, and carrying in a small handbag some necessary instruments and a sketch block for recording his impressions, clambered down into the gig and was rowed ashore by two members of the crew who had been sworn to secrecy.
Once ashore, where there was a community of summer cottages and hotels, he engaged a gasoline launch to take him to a small island known as Civic Island, not far from the Neck, to which it was joined, in fact, by a bridge.
Going ashore at Civic Island, Ned turned in at a hotel and early in the morning rose, secured some provisions which he placed in his small handbag, and then set out on foot for the scene of his observations.
The Neck was a lonely place and very little frequented. On one end of it was the fort, between which and some wooded heights in which it terminated, stretched the sandy, brush-covered peninsula of the Neck, scrawny and thin as that of a giraffe.
Ned was provided with field glasses, of course, and having reached a point from which he could command a clear view of the fort, he surveyed it for some time to get his bearings. Meanwhile, of course, he concealed his body behind some bushes.
He could see the tug perfectly plainly. There was a big crane at its bow and it was hoisting on board large metallic shapes of globular form that he knew were mines.
At the top of the mast floated the flag of the quartermaster's department, so that Ned knew that he had the right craft spotted.
"Well, they are in no hurry, anyhow," he said to himself, as he watched the leisurely way in which the craft was being loaded. "I reckon I'll sit down and take a rest. I didn't sleep much at that hotel last night, and I'd be glad of a seat in the shade. I can keep my eyes open just as well under this bush here as standing out there in the sun."
But alas for good intentions! As he cast himself down in the shade, Ned appeared to slip gently out of the present and into the land of Nod. How long he slept he had no idea. But it could not have been very long, for when he opened his eyes again the tug, loaded with the big, black bulks of the submarine mines, was just leaving the fort.
"Gracious! Lucky I woke up in time! A fine thing it would have been if I had blissfully slept right on!" exclaimed Ned to himself in mortified tones.