"Dulce et----" began the admiral, then, coming to the conclusion that he was a trifle premature, he exclaimed: "Dash it all, Crosthwaite, strange things happen at sea! They may turn up after all."
"It's the suspense," added Crosthwaite. "Look here, I'll take the car right slap on to Edinburgh, and go on to Rosyth. Are you game?"
"Carry on," said Admiral Sefton. "I'm with you."
[CHAPTER XVI--The Struggle in the Mountain Pass]
Near the summit of Blackstone Edge, an unfrequented road running at a height of between 1200 and 1300 feet over the serrated Pennine Hills, five men were lying upon the short, dark-green grass in a slight hollow within ten yards of the highway. There was little about their appearance that demanded attention. A casual observer might in pardonable error have taken them for a party of Lancashire mill operatives out for a day's enjoyment.
At intervals one of the party would roll over on his side, produce a pair of prismatic glasses from his pocket, and peer with considerable caution over the ridge of the hollow, focusing the binoculars upon the winding ribbon-like "slag" road that ascended steeply from the town of Rochdale, the factory chimneys of which were just discernible through the murky Lancashire atmosphere. Then, with a guttural grunt that betokened disappointment, he would replace the glasses and relapse into a stolid contemplation of his silent comrades. The hot sun pouring pitilessly upon the heavily-clad men did not tend to improve their physical comfort. Several times they cursed the tormenting flies, expressing their murmured epithets in the German tongue.
At last one of the men spoke.
"Are you sure that he is coming this way, Hans?" he asked, addressing the man with the binoculars. "Perhaps he has taken it into his head to take the other road--the Stanedge Pass, it is called."
"These Englishmen are so pig-headed that they rarely change their minds," replied Hans. "It is often as well that they do not. I have it on excellent authority that he leaves Liverpool at nine, addresses a conference at Bolton at eleven, and receives a deputation at Rochdale at two. Now, is it conceivable that he would go a roundabout way to Halifax when this is the shortest and easiest route?"
"He may take the railway train," suggested another of the band, as he shifted an automatic pistol from his hip pocket, where it seriously interfered with his ease, to his breast coat pocket.