"Nor I," returned his father. "It was the best homing bird we ever had. Some one—why, what is the matter?"
Max was standing rigid, staring dazedly in front of him.
"I was thinking," he said slowly, "wondering—wondering if Mark Redisham——But no, it couldn't be. It's not possible. And yet there was that shot that I heard—a rifle shot—from across the sea! Are you sure the pigeon is not in the loft, father?"
"Never mind the pigeon now." Herr Hilliger drew him out into the stable yard. "Tell me what has happened. What of the Minna von Barnhelm? You signalled her? You went aboard? Why have you come ashore?"
"What?" cried Max in astonishment. "You have not heard? You have not been told? But she is sunk—sunk by the guns of a British cruiser—the Atreus. I was aboard of her—yes. I was picked up. And then the cruiser herself was blown up, sky-high, by one of our floating mines."
"Ah!" exclaimed Herr Hilliger, with a new eagerness. "Then the mines were laid?"
"Hundreds of them!" Max declared. "All along the coast."
"Good!" nodded his father, moving out from the yard into the drive. "We shall succeed."
He came to a halt under the shadow of a sycamore-tree.
"Listen, my son," he resumed, speaking very low. "This morning I have had a secret dispatch from Berlin. Everything goes well. Our brave soldiers are sweeping their way through Belgium. In a week they will march triumphantly into Paris. We shall have taken possession of Calais. The way to England will then be easy. Our battleships and submarines will command the Channel, and all the seas; cutting off supplies so effectually that Great Britain will be starved into submission, even before our transports and Zeppelins land their invading forces. Your opportunities, my dear Max, are even brighter than I had dared to dream."