The Dockyard clock chimed three, but the spy had not emerged. After another half-hour of watchful silence I saw that Ray began to be anxious. At last the bell rang out four, and scarcely had the last sound died away when we were startled by a splash near us, and next moment discerned a man in white shirtsleeves swimming away.
"Why! That's him!" I gasped. "He's cut a way out of the side of the shed!"
But next moment a boat shot forth from the darkness pulled by a woman who had apparently been waiting close by. The woman was Vera!
In a moment we were both down the steps and pulling in the boat towards the swimming man, who, we saw, was being rapidly approached by a second boat which had also been in waiting until the chiming of the clock.
The spy was exerting every muscle to reach the boat, but we soon overtook him.
Ray called upon him in German to surrender, but he refused, and kept on. Quickly, however, we cut him off from the boat which he was trying to reach, while the rower, seeing the discovery of his friend, pulled away into the darkness.
For some time the spy struggled on, but at last, abandoned and exhausted, he was compelled to obey us and come aboard in order to save his life.
Half dead and helpless he submitted to our search, when in his belt, preserved in an oilskin pocket, we discovered the memoranda and the drawing which I had seen him prepare.
The man, sullen and half drowned, refused to make any statement, though he could speak English well and write it perfectly, as shown by the note on his plan of the new boat; therefore we landed him at the Stony Steps across at Gosport. Before we left him we gave him to understand that if he did not at once leave the country he would be arrested. Yet so absurd is our law that I doubt whether we could have given him in charge even though we had wished!
