For the present they had eluded pursuit but a cordon was being drawn round the isolated hostile ships. On both sides of the Atlantic British warships were lying in wait. Retreat both to Germany and to neutral ports was cut off. Capture or destruction seemed inevitable.
Better still, the attempted raid upon the east coast of England ended in a fiasco. Warned by wireless, the British battle-cruisers issued forth from their bases—not in pursuit of the Auldhaig raiders, as the Germans fondly hoped, but across the North Sea to meet the main hostile warships.
Greatly to the disappointment and disgust of the British tars, the Germans declined battle, and, turning, made off at full speed for the shelter of the guns and minefields of Heligoland.
Early on the second morning of Tressidar's enforced detention in the temporary sick-quarters the sub. was taken into the grounds for an airing. Lying comfortably in a wheeled chair, he was deep in the contents of a newspaper when a bandaged man in hospital clothes and accompanied by a nursing sister and an orderly was wheeled in his direction.
The sister was Doris Greenwood, but the sub. had not the faintest idea of the identity of the patient.
"This man wishes to speak to you, Mr. Tressidar," said Doris demurely.
"You don't remember me, sir?" began the invalid.
"No, I can't say that I do," replied the sub. To tell the truth, he wished both the man and the orderly to Jericho, until he realised that it was solely in an official capacity that Doris was present.
"You pulled me out of that hole the night before last, sir," said the patient, indicating the ruins of the hospital buildings, of which the crumpled masonry and fragments of shattered walls were visible from the grounds. "I'm no hand at a speech, sir, but I want to thank you."
"That's nothing so far as I was concerned," replied Tressidar modestly. He hated a fuss being made merely for doing a plucky action. "You're getting along all right?"