He disappeared into the Pill Box and came back in a moment with field-glasses. Then he focused on the horizon and began to sweep it carefully from west to east. He had covered three-quarters of the arc when he stopped and stared for a full minute, suddenly rigid.
“And there she blows,” he muttered.
He handed her the binoculars and pointed north-east.
“See what you make of it.”
“It looks like a couple of masts sticking up.”
“Motor ship—no funnels,” he explained. “The Bristol shipping passes here, but we’re back in a sort of big bay, and I don’t think they’d stand in as near as that. But we’ll just make sure.”
He took the glasses from her again and went into the Pill Box, and she followed. He fossicked about in the kitchen till he found a piece of board, the remains of a packing-case, and this he settled in one of the embrasures, truing it up level with little wedges of newspaper. Then he put the field-glasses on it and took a sight on one of the masts by means of a couple of pins stuck in the board.
“We’ll give her five minutes.”
She grasped his meaning at once.
“You think they’re waiting to come in after dark?”