"It was a wonder that your wet clothes did not give you away," remarked von Loringhoven.
"They certainly gave me a cold," admitted the spy, suppressing a sneeze. "You should have seen me, Otto, stripped to the skin in a secluded hollow, and wringing out my garments one by one. It was a chilly business donning the damp things, but I walked briskly over the moors until the wind dried them to a state of comparative respectability. Then I struck the high road towards Poldene station. There were patrols and police out, but they never suspected me, as I was proceeding towards the scene of my frustrated attempt. And here I am. Well, have you picked up any information?"
The ober-leutnant shook his head. He was too wily a bird to impart an important piece of news even to a compatriot, so the matter of the date of departure of the "Tantalus" was withheld.
"No," he replied. "I have been having a rest, that is all. I go back to my work with renewed zest. I drink, von Gobendorff, to the confusion of England. Hoch, hoch, hoch!"
At half-past ten the ober-leutnant left the house, declining the spy's offer to accompany him part of the way. Without encountering a single person, for he knew the actual times at which the cliff patrol passed, he gained the little cove. By the luminous hands of his watch he had nearly an hour to wait, and waiting in the darkness, with only the sullen thresh of the surf and the eerie cries of innumerable seabirds to break the silence, was tedious, especially as he dared not smoke.
Presently, above the noise of nature's handiwork, came the bass hum of an aerial propeller. The ober-leutnant gazed upwards between the narrow walls of the rocky inlet.
"Too slow for a seaplane or a flying-boat," he muttered. "It must be one of those infernal coastal airships. Himmel! I hope she hasn't any suspicions of U 254 lying off the shore. I've waited quite long enough to my liking. Ach, there she is. I thought so."
At an altitude of less than two hundred feet above the summit of the cliffs the "Blimp" glided serenely, the suspended chassis being invisible against the greater bulk of the grey envelope that showed darkly against the starlit sky.
The airship was flying against the wind, and was proceeding at a rate not exceeding fifteen miles an hour "over the ground"—the ground in this instance being the sea. At that comparatively slow speed she appeared to the watcher in the depths of the cove to be almost stationary, and the sight filled him with misgivings.
Suddenly a searchlight flashed from the vigilant guardian of the coast, stabbing the darkness with a broad blade of silvery radiance. Instinctively von Loringhoven averted his face. He could see the grotesquely foreshortened shadow of himself cast upon the rocks. He wondered whether an alert observer had him "fixed" with his powerful night-glasses. He was afraid to move lest his action would satisfy any lurking doubt in the mind of the watchers above. Supposing the Blimp sent a signal to the nearest coastguard station, reporting a suspicious character in the cove?