[Illustration: cover art]

THE MYSTERY SHIP

GLORIES OF SEA
AND AIR SERIES
By
PERCY F.
WESTERMAN
THE MYSTERY SHIP
THE RIVAL SUBMARINES
BILLY BARCROFT OF THE R.N.A.S.
A WATCH-DOG OF THE NORTH SEA
Publishers
PARTRIDGE
LONDON

["THE MYSTERY BOAT WAS MOVING SLOWLY, HER TRIPLE TORPEDO-TUBES READY WITH THEIR DEADLY COMPLEMENTS.">[

THE MYSTERY SHIP

A STORY OF THE "Q" SHIPS
DURING THE GREAT WAR

BY

PERCY F. WESTERMAN

Author of
"The Fritzstrafers," "Billy Barcroft of the R.N.A.S."
"A Watchdog of the North Sea," "A Sub of
the R.N.R.," etc., etc.

ILLUSTRATED BY A. MORROW

Publishers
PARTRIDGE
London

Made in Great Britain
First published 1920

CONTENTS

THE MYSTERY SHIP

CHAPTER I

THE TWO SUB-LIEUTENANTS

"Below there! You in, George?"

George—otherwise Kenneth Meredith, sub-lieutenant R.N.V.R. and second-in-command of H.M. Motor Launch 1071—deliberately blotted five lines of his weekly epistle to the fond ones at home. Unperturbed by a heavy fusillade upon the deck—the sound being caused by a broken golf club vigorously manipulated by an as yet invisible person—Meredith dexterously threw into envelopes and blotting-pad into a conveniently placed rack, rammed the cork into the glass ink-bottle, and thrust his fountain-pen, which either "founted" like a miniature Niagara or else obstinately refused to "fount" at all, into the breast pocket of his monkey-jacket.

Interruptions are many and varied on board the M.L.'s. At almost any hour of the day and night when the little craft were lying alongside the parent ship, casual visitors were apt to drop in, to say nothing of callers on more or less urgent Service matters. An officer is supposed to receive visitors with complete equanimity whether he be in the midst of shaving, dressing, having a meal, or even a bath. Privacy is practically non-existent. Almost the only exception is when the lawful occupant of the cabin is engaged in private correspondence.

Hence Meredith's hurried preliminaries before replying to the noisy summons on deck.

"Come in," he shouted. "Visitors are requested to leave sticks and umbrellas in charge of the hall porter—Oh, dash it all! That's my toe!" he ejaculated, as the steel-shod end of the golf club was dropped through the hatchway and fell with a dull thud upon the Sub's foot.

Seizing the lethal weapon, Meredith stood up and prepared to take summary vengeance upon the lower portions of its owner, who was descending the vertical ladder leading to the diminutive ward-room of M.L. 1071.

Instinctively the newcomer must have realised that reprisals were in the air, for, grasping the rim of the coaming, he dropped lightly to the floor and faced the second-in-command.

"Cheerio!" exclaimed the visitor. "Where's everybody? Where's Wakefield this fine evening?"

Kenneth, without replying, opened the door leading into the after-cabin and took a lengthy survey; he repeated the tactics in the galley at the for'ard end of the ward-room. Then, going on his knees, he lifted the blue baize table-cloth and peered under the swing table.

"'Fraid he's not here, old man," he remarked. "Now I think of it, I believe he went on the beach at seven bells. Have a cigarette?"

"Thanks.... Wakefield wasn't on the links this afternoon. Strange—very. What's his little game, Meredith? Don't tell me he went ashore in his Number Ones, with his trousers creased an' all that sort of thing! 'A wedding has been arranged and a subscription-list will follow in due course,' eh?"

Jock McIntosh lit his cigarette and took stock of the ward-room, looking for evidence to confirm his suspicions of the absent Wakefield's mysterious visits "to the beach."

Sub-lieutenant McIntosh and Sub-lieutenant Meredith were widely different in appearance. The former was a tall, raw-boned Scot with fair features and close-cut sandy hair that even in its closeness evinced a tendency to curl. Never cut out for a seafaring life, he found himself much against his will in the uniform of an R.N.V.R. officer, while his brother Angus, who simply loved the sea and was part-owner of a yacht and knew how to handle almost every type of small craft afloat, was given a commission in a line regiment.

Jock would have made an ideal platoon commander: Angus would have shone as a skipper of an M.L.; but since from time immemorial the powers-that-be who run the Admiralty and War Office delight in putting square pegs in round holes, Jock McIntosh was manfully sticking to a job that was obviously uncongenial, while his brother was doing likewise; and each envied the other.

Meredith, on the other hand, was literally "made for the job." Slightly above middle height, broad and square-shouldered, heavy-browed and with a firm and somewhat prominent jaw, Kenneth looked and was a sailor-man, every inch of him. At the age of twelve he could handle a sailing dinghy with a skill that was the envy and admiration of many so-called yachtsmen, who would be hopelessly at sea in a double sense without the assistance of their paid hands. Between the ages of twelve and fifteen he spent every available holiday afloat in his father's ten-ton yacht, until he knew intimately the art of fore and aft sailing, and incidentally gained first-hand information of practically every harbour and creek on the south coast of England.

Then came the outbreak of the Great War. Promptly the Ripple, Mr. Meredith's cutter, was laid up, while her owner, exchanging a yachting suit for a khaki uniform, went to India as second-in-command of a Territorial battalion.

Kenneth went back to school, bitterly bewailing the fact that he had not been born three years earlier. Fellows from the senior form—in many cases physically inferior to him—donned khaki and disappeared into the mists of Flanders. At intervals some turned up at the old school, bronzed, aged and ballasted with a more than nodding acquaintance with life and death: others never returned—their names figured prominently in the School Roll of Honour as fingerposts to the path of Higher Duty.

At length Meredith's chance came. He had to admit that it was influence that did the trick. A certain retired Admiral whose name Kenneth had never heard, but who knew Mr. Meredith years ago, worked the oracle, and the lad found himself a full-fledged sub-lieutenant of the R.N.V.R. The only fly in the ointment was the fact that Meredith had been appointed to a northern M.L. flotilla, where, in strange and remote waters, there appeared to be little chance of seeing the "actual thing." He had hoped to be appointed to the Dover Patrol, where his intimate knowledge of the Channel would be a decided asset and where the prospects of smelling powder would be almost certain to materialise.

M.L. 1071, one of the fifteen motor launches belonging to the Auldhaig Patrol, was lying next but one alongside the parent ship Hesperus, an obsolete second-class cruiser. It was early in May. Already the northern evenings were drawing out and the nights becoming shorter and shorter. In the land-locked firth the lofty serrated hills were capped with fleecy mists that threatened with the going down of the sun to steal lower and lower and envelop the placid water in a pall of baffling fog.

"The main object of my visit this evening," remarked McIntosh ponderously—he was rather prone to verbosity—"is to enlist your assistance in the matter of this mashie."

"I thought it was a patent lead-swinging device," interposed Meredith drily—"a sort of means of getting me on the sick-list with a pulverised instep."

"Not at all, laddie," continued Jock, unruffled by the interruption. "D'ye ken, I'm no hand at splicing, and I'm not giving myself away by asking any of my merry wreckers to take on the job. Perhaps you'll be kind enough to do it to-morrow."

"When do you want this instrument of torture?" asked Meredith, as he examined the fractured ends.

"By three on Wednesday afternoon," replied McIntosh.

Kenneth shook his head.

"Can't be done, old son—that is, if you want me to tackle it to-morrow."

"Why not?"

"'Cause I'm on patrol to-night."

A terrible reverberation as the engine-room staff gave a preliminary run with the powerful motors corroborated Meredith's statement.

"But I'll do it now, if you like," he added. "You might ask Coles to bring along some seaming-twine and beeswax."

"Don't envy you, old thing," remarked Jock, returning with the required articles. "It's coming on thick. Personally, I'm jolly glad."

"Why?"

"The matter of those X-lighters," replied McIntosh. "We are handing them over to the R.A.F., and we've been expecting some one from that crush down to inspect 'em. And we look like going on expecting. 'Tany rate, the S.N.O.'s fed up with the lighters, so I've orders to take 'em round to Donnikirk and dump 'em on the R.A.F. people. Hanged if I want the job! Plugging along with four-knot barges isn't in my line, so I hope it's foggy."

Meredith nodded sympathetically, as his deft yet horny fingers waxed the twine and began the intricate task of "whipping" the broken pieces of the golf club. He little knew the part those unwieldy X-lighters would play in his subsequent experiences afloat.

The X-lighters were almost flat-bottomed barges, about a hundred feet in length and with a beam of roughly twenty feet. Originally built for work in connection with the naval river flotillas in Mesopotamia, they had found their way to a northern base. Then as a result of negotiations between the Admiralty and the Air Ministry, the former expressed their intention of turning over the lighters to the Royal Air Force for kite-balloon work.

Anxious to get rid of the cumbersome craft, which occupied a large amount of valuable mooring-space in Auldhaig Harbour, the Senior Naval Officer had decided not to await the long-delayed visit of the Air Force representative, but to send the barges round to their new base.

"You're quite right, old man," observed Meredith, when, the task of mending the golf club completed, he accompanied Jock McIntosh on deck. "It's going to be a beast of a night. An' No. 1071's doing the Outer Patrol stunt this time."

"Well, good luck!" exclaimed McIntosh.

Kenneth smiled sourly.

"Good luck!" he echoed bitterly. "Nothin' doin', I'm afraid. It's out nosing through the fog, seeing nothing and doing nothing. Haven't had so much as a sniff at a strafed U-boat yet, and don't seem like doing so until the end of the war—whenever that comes off."

"Sooner the better as far as I'm concerned," said McIntosh. "I'm fed up to the back teeth absolutely."

"Think so?" asked Meredith quietly. "From a purely personal point of view, we'll be jolly sorry when the war is over. Most of us will be wishing ourselves back in the M.L.'s before many weeks have passed."

"I'll risk it," rejoined Jock. "Give me the piping times of peace any old day—s'long as we win, which we're bound to do. Hello! here's Wakefield. Now the fun's about to commence. I'll hook it."

And with a friendly gesture of greeting to the returning officer commanding H.M.M.L. 1071, McIntosh leapt over the rail, crossed the deck of an intervening craft, and ascended the accommodation-ladder of the parent ship Hesperus.

CHAPTER II

ON PATROL

"Bright sort of evening, Meredith," was Wakefield's greeting as he came on board. "I see you've had the engines running. Any trouble down below?"

Cedric Wakefield was a burly, pleasant-faced youth of twenty-four, upon whose broad shoulders rested the weight of responsibility of M.L. 1071, her crew and equipment. In those far-off days before practically the whole civilised world was plunged into the throes of war Wakefield was farming in Canada. Had anyone suggested that within a few months he would be treading the deck of a diminutive warship flying the White Ensign, Wakefield would have scouted the idea. The peril of the German menace had hardly made itself felt as far as Western Canada was concerned; while the young Englishman, coming straight from a Public School to the thinly populated slopes of the Rockies, little thought that the call of duty would bring him home hot-foot to fight for King and Country.

But when war broke out with startling suddenness Cedric promptly "packed up," worked his passage from Quebec to Liverpool as a fireman, and upon arrival in the Old Country promptly joined the R.N.V.R. as an ordinary seaman. In less than twelve months he was granted a commission, and after a brief course in gunnery and navigation was given command of a motor launch.

Quiet-spoken, he found that the fact of being in command was not without its disadvantages. At first he possessed hardly sufficient self-confidence to give an order loudly and peremptorily. But by degrees the force of authority asserted itself, and when necessary he could bellow like a bull and make himself heard in a gale of wind. He was daring, but at the same time cautious. He could make up his mind in an instant, and rarely was his judgment at fault, while his courageous bearing in many a tight corner had won the admiration and confidence of his crew.

Judging by their previous occupations, the crew of M.L. 1071 were a "scratch lot." There were two clerks, a butcher, a chauffeur, an insurance agent, a London County Council schoolmaster, an hotel porter, a theological student and a poacher, although the latter was camouflaged under the designation of farm labourer. And these men, volunteers all, had been banded together under the White Ensign to do their level best to make things mighty unpleasant for Fritz by means of a quick-firer and an assortment of particularly obnoxious depth-charges. True, up to the present, opportunities for direct action had been denied them, but nevertheless it was not for want of trying.

It was certainly a beast of a night. The moon had risen, but her light hardly penetrated the white eddying wreaths of vapour. Viewed from the deck of M.L. 1071, the hull of her parent ship appeared to terminate twenty yards away, while her steel masts and fighting-tops, grotesquely distorted by the erratic mists, were visible at one moment like pillars of silver, while at another they appeared to be cut off at less than fifteen feet above the deck. Already three of the six vessels detailed for the forty-eight hours' patrol had been swallowed up in the mist, as with lights screened they groped their way blindly towards the invisible mouth of the harbour and the seemingly boundless expanse of sea and fog beyond.

With the air reverberating with the roar of the exhausts and the deck quivering under the pulsations of the throttled motors, Wakefield and Meredith made their way to the diminutive wheel-house, where the coxwain (ex-theological student) was standing by the steering-wheel and peering with a studied professional manner into the dimly illuminated compass-bowl.

"All ready?" inquired the skipper in stentorian tones. "Let go for'ard!... Let go aft!"

The engine-room telegraph bells clanged as Wakefield thrust the starboard indicator to easy ahead and the port one to half-speed astern. Literally spinning round on her heel, M.L. 1071 edged away from the Hesperus, the towering hull of which was quickly swallowed up in the mist.

"Good enough, Sub!" exclaimed Wakefield. "We're right in the wake of the next ahead. Now carry on. It's my watch below. Give me a shout if anything's doing, and get them to call me at four bells."

Left in charge, Meredith prepared to make the best of his four hours' "trick." Experience had long since taught him that warmth and dryness were absolutely essential on night patrol. Clad in two thick woollen sweaters, serge-trousers and pilot-coat, and wearing woollen gloves, sea-boots, muffler, oilskins and sou'wester, he was well equipped for the work in hand. The three-sided erection known as the wheel-house afforded little protection from the spray, as the windows had to be kept wide open otherwise the moisture settling on the glass panes would render the mist still more baffling than it actually was.

Right for'ard the dim outlines of the look-out could be discerned, as, crouching to dodge as far as possible the clouds of spray, the man peered through the darkening mist. It was his duty to see that M.L. 1071 kept fairly in the bubbling wake of the boat next ahead. Fifty yards astern another M.L., unseen but plainly audible, was likewise making use of the swirl of No. 1071's twin propellers as a guide through the fog-laden water.

So well, so good. Provided the flotilla kept station in "single column line ahead," there was little cause for the science of navigation except on the part of the navigating officer of the leading M.L. It was a case of seamanship, a sort of marine follow-my-leader work, until on arriving at a certain rendezvous the boats had to work independently; and No. 1071 had been detailed for the Outer Patrol stunt.

At a reduced speed of ten knots and an M.L. is a difficult craft to handle at slow speed—the flotilla plugged seawards.

The short steep tide rip at the harbour's mouth gave place to the long sullen undulations of the North Sea. Although navigation was carried on without steaming lights, the chances of collision were hardly worth taking into consideration, since the noise of the exhausts could be plainly audible for a distance of a couple of miles.

For the best part of an hour the flotilla held on then just before midnight came an order from the leading M.L. for the boats to proceed independently.

Meredith, hitherto inactive, roused himself.

"Port fifteen!" he ordered. "Course east a half north!"

"East a half north it is, sir," repeated the coxwain.

In obedience to the Sub's order, a man made his way aft and paid out the patent log-line. The mileage as recorded by this instrument and the course as determined by the magnetic needle were the sole factors used to take the M.L. to her appointed station, four miles from a prominent headland and right in the steamer-track of vessels proceeding northwards from the Firth of Forth. Kenneth felt no particular enthusiasm for this kind of work. It was Duty, spelt with a capital D. Whether the patrol were essential to safeguard shipping had yet to be proved. For the best part of a twelvemonth M.L.'s were constantly on duty off the headland, yet on no occasion had a U-boat been definitely sighted. There had been false alarms. A boat-hook stave floating perpendicularly and drifting with the tide had caused the waste of a couple of depth-charges and incidentally the slaughter of thousands of fish; a derelict fore-topmast had been responsible for the expenditure of twenty rounds of six-pounder ammunition.

On the other hand, what might have happened had the Auldhaig M.L. Patrol not been in existence can well be conjectured. The slow-moving tramps chartered by the Admiralty to take naval stores to the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow would have afforded easy targets to U-boat commanders but for the constant vigilance on the part of the M.L.'s. In effect, the little patrol boats had frightened off the modern pirates, thereby performing a useful though somewhat monotonous rôle in the question of Sea Power.

"'Tany rate, I'm afloat," soliloquised Meredith. "Better than sitting tight in a muddy trench and being strafed day and night by Boche artillery; but I wish to goodness I'd been in the Dover Patrol. There's no Zeebrugge this end of the North Sea to make things a bit lively."

"Wireless message, sir."

Meredith turned abruptly to find an operator proffering a leaf from a signal pad.

"Anything important?" he asked.

The lad—he was one of the two ex-bank clerks—smiled.

"Looks like business this time, sir," he replied. "A U-boat's been shelling Aberspey. One of our blimps nearly got one home, and Fritz sheered off and was lost in the mist."

Switching on an electric torch, Meredith read the message. It was couched in matter-of-fact official terms and left much to the imagination. Briefly, the U-boat was believed to be damaged and incapable of submerging. It was last sighted at 22.30 (half-past ten), steering eastward and apparently on fire aft.

"Very good; inform the skipper," said Kenneth. "Yes; we stand a chance of seeing something this time."

In less than a couple of minutes Wakefield was on deck.

"Some wheeze, this, Meredith!" he exclaimed gleefully. "With luck we may spot little Fritz. I don't think it's much use following the directions given in this signal. There'll be a swarm of destroyers and all that sort of fry buzzing around already, and if the skipper of the U-boat is up to snuff he'll have altered course to the south'ard. We'll just stand on and keep our wits on the alert. If he's legging it to the south'ard he'll cut athwart our course. I'll try what luck we can get with the hydrophone first."

The M.L.'s engines were stopped, and the boat rolled heavily in the oily swell. Over her starboard side a weird contraption of wires was lowered, the wires terminating in submerged metal plates, while inboard they led to a complicated device known as a hydrophone. In the wireless-room a man sat with receivers clipped to his ears. He was not listening to wireless messages, but for the sound of a U-boat's propellers.

"Anything doing?" inquired Meredith for the twentieth time, as the minutes slowly passed.

This time the listener did not shake his head.

"Fancy I hear something, sir," he reported. "Would you like to listen?"

Kenneth took the proffered ear-pieces and clipped them to his head. Very faintly he could hear the characteristic thud of a marine motor.

"Evidently she's knocking around," he observed, as he handed the apparatus to the operator. "All right; carry on."

Slowly the man revolved a handle until the thudding sound reached a maximum intensity. A glance at the compass showed that the hydrophones were pointing east by south. Still turning the handle, he noted that the volume of sound gradually decreased until a certain point; then it began to increase again, reaching a state of maximum intensity in a bearing south by east. That was all the operator required. Experience had taught him that the source of emission of the sound came from a direction midway between the two maxima, while a further test revealed the fact that the U-boat was moving in a southerly direction.

"If only this blessed fog would lift!" exclaimed Wakefield when his Sub communicated the result of the hydrophone test.

"Get the gear inboard, Meredith. See that the ammunition is brought up and the gun cleared for action. Now for a game of blind man's buff."

"None of our submarines are about here, I suppose?" asked Meredith.

"Not within seventy miles," replied the skipper. "So if we do have the luck to run across a submarine, we'll go for the brute bald-headed."

"And if Fritz can't dive?"

"Then, of course, we'll have to try our best to tickle his ribs with a shell while he's on the surface. Tricky work, but we'll keep him fully occupied with our little pea-shooter"; and Wakefield indicated the six-pounder, by the side of which the gun-layer was standing ready and alert to train the weapon upon its objective.

A quarter of an hour passed. Both officers realised that in this game of hide-and-seek the U-boat stood a better chance, since she could hear the noisy explosions of the M.L.'s exhausts, especially if she floated motionless with her motors switched off. Again, if it came to a trial of gunnery, the odds were tremendously in favour of the Hun, since the U-boat mounted a couple of 4.7-inch or even 6-inch weapons.

Wakefield was counting on the chance of catching his foe napping, and that, if the U-boat were able to dive, she would submerge precipitately. It was then that the depth-charges would play their deadly part.

Conscious of a peculiar sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, Meredith confessed to himself that "he had the wind up." Faced with the possibility of going into action for the first time, he both dreaded and welcomed the chance. Fervently he gave thanks for the fact that it was dark, and that none of his comrades could see his face. For his own part, he felt that every vestige of colour had vanished from his usually bronze features.

Again M.L. 1071 was brought to a standstill and recourse made to the hydrophone. The result was disappointing. Except for a faint rumbling that could only be ascribed to the surf lashing the distant cliffs, not a sound was recorded. Apparently the U-boat was again capable of submerging, and was lying doggo on the bed of the North Sea, while the destroyers engaged in hunting her had passed beyond the range of the M.L.'s hydrophone.

"We'll just carry on," decided Wakefield. "The fog looks like lifting."

Overhead the moonlight was streaming down through a thin layer of mist, while the range of visibility varied from fifty to five hundred yards as banks of dispersing vapour bore down before the light easterly wind.

Wiping the moisture from the lenses of his powerful night glasses, Meredith raised the binoculars and scanned the limited expanse of visible sea. Even as he did so a weird greyish object swept across his field of vision.

"By Jove!" he ejaculated.

"By Jove, what?" asked Wakefield sharply. "Good heavens! Yes, there she is!"

He jerked the telegraph indicator to full speed ahead.

"See her, Clarkson?" he shouted to the gun-layer. "Two points on your starboard bow. Let her have it."

CHAPTER III

SUNK IN ACTION

A blinding flash and a deafening roar, followed by a sickening lurch of the little patrol boat as the lightly built hull reeled to the recoil, announced that the action had commenced. Almost immediately the breech-block of the six-pounder was jerked back and the still smoking metal cylinder clattered noisily on the deck. The air reeked of burnt cordite as the excited gun's crew, who had never before been in action, loaded and fired like men possessed.

With the first shot Kenneth's sense of nervousness fell from him like a cast garment. Up to the present the foe had not replied to the M.L.'s fire, but it was not to be supposed that she would decline the combat. Glowing steel messages of death would presently be hurtling through the air with the avowed object of wiping out the little M.L. and her crew. Kenneth fully realised this, but beyond a curious feeling of elation the Sub was as cool as if bringing No. 1071 alongside her parent ship.

Her antagonist's reply was not long delayed. With a lurid red flash that completely eclipsed the wan moonlight, her after quick-firer let rip. A shrill whine as the projectile passed overhead caused every man on the M.L.'s deck to duck his head.

"If she can't do better than that it's time she packed up!" shouted Wakefield. "Keep it up, men! Let her have it properly in the neck!"

A provoking wreath of vapour drifting down hid the misty outlines of her opponent from the M.L.'s crew. Only the constant flashes of the former's guns gave the six-pounder's gun-layer an inkling of her direction. Whether five hundred or a thousand yards separated the combatants remained a matter for speculation, and whether the foe was "legging it" or closing upon Wakefield's command was equally a speculative proposition.

"That's a near one," thought Meredith, as a shell literally scraped the searchlight mounted on the roof of the wheel-house.

Hitherto the opposing craft had been firing with too much elevation. Apparently realising her mistake, her gunner was lowering the sights.

Kenneth's thought was also shared by his skipper. Wakefield decided first to increase the distance in order to baffle the enemy gun-layers, and then make a dash for his opponent and thus bring the depth-charges into action.

Grasping the telegraph levers, he intended to signal full ahead on the starboard and full astern on the port engine in order to spin the M.L. on her heel in the shortest possible time. But at the critical moment the mechanism failed badly: both levers became interlocked.

Savagely Wakefield wrenched at the refractory indicator. Manoeuvring under engines alone was out of the question. The use of the helm was the sole solution of the difficulty.

"Cease fire!" shouted the skipper, judging that the absence of flashes from the puny six-pounder would mystify the hostile craft, and give the M.L. a better chance to close and use her depth-charges. "Stand by aft, Meredith, and give an eye to things. If those fellows get jumpy and fool about with the firing key, we're in the soup."

Promptly the Sub obeyed, yet as he did so he almost involuntarily crouched under the lee side of the "tin" dinghy that was hanging inboard from the davits. Then he laughed at what he had done. The idea of imagining that the thin galvanised steel plates of the dinghy would stop a 4.7-inch shell struck him as the height of absurdity.

Yet even as he sidled past the dinghy a concussion shook the M.L. from stem to stern. It was a far different concussion from that caused by her own quick-firer. This time her opponent had got one home.

M.L. 1071 stopped dead, like a man who receives a knock-out blow between the eyes. Pungent smoke enveloped her, as she rolled sullenly on the long swell. Then the pall of smoke was rent by a furious blast of red flame. An unlucky shot had struck her amidships, playing havoc in the engine-room and igniting one of the petrol-tanks.

Nor was that the worst of the business. A fire could be subdued with little difficulty by means of patent extinguishers; but the projectile, luckily without exploding, had passed completely through both sides of the wooden hull of the M.L., tearing jagged holes that were admitting volumes of the North Sea into her engine-room.

Valiantly the artificers, directly they recovered from the disconcerting effects of the projectile, strove to quench the flames until, knee-deep in water on which floated patches of blazing petrol, they were compelled to evacuate their untenable posts. Scorched and almost suffocated by the fumes from the chemicals, they gained the deck and collapsed.

"Fall in aft!" roared Wakefield. "Swing out the boat! Look lively there, men!"

The crew needed no second bidding. Every man on board, save the two unconscious engine-room ratings, who were unceremoniously dragged aft by their messmates, knew that M.L. 1071 was doomed. It was a question whether she would blow up or founder, for the flames were momentarily increasing in violence and threatening to explode the magazine, while already the waves were lapping over her foredeck.

Quickly, yet without a vestige of panic, the men swung out the dinghy and lowered her from the davits. The two casualties were then lifted in, and the rest of the crew followed—Meredith and Wakefield being the last to leave.

"She's going down with flying colours at all events," exclaimed the skipper. "Give way, lads!"

The men pulled with a will. There is a powerful incentive to do so when in the vicinity of a couple of depth-charges that might at any moment be detonated with disastrous results.

"What's Fritz doing?" inquired one of the rowers, when at length the order was given to "Lay on your oars."

No one knew. The enemy had ceased fire, but when he did so none of the late M.L.'s crew could say. In the excitement of abandoning ship, the fact that they were under shell-fire hardly concerned them.

"Pushing off at the rate of knots, he is," hazarded another. "Unless we've given him gyp. P'raps he's been knocked out, same as us."

"Shouldn't be surprised," remarked Clarkson, the gun-layer. "I'll swear I got half a dozen home in his hide before the fog came on again. Otherwise he'd be sniffing around and giving us a dose of machine-gun fire. That's Fritz's little joke when a fellow can't hit back. If——"

A terrific roar caused the man to break off suddenly. Somewhere within the radius of a mile, although the now increasing fog gave no indication of direction, an explosion of no slight magnitude had occurred. For nearly a minute came the sound of falling debris, and then deep silence.

"Is that Fritz or us?" inquired one of the men, as the rowers resumed their task.

"How far is it to Auldhaig?" asked another. "Lucky for us we aren't in the ditch. 'Twould be a longish swim."

Wakefield let the men talk. It helped to keep up their spirits, although they were not apt to be down-hearted. For his part, he was kept busily employed in steering the boat by means of a small compass that was little better than a toy. By a fortunate chance, he had found it with a miscellaneous assortment of small articles in the inside pocket of his monkey-jacket. A fortnight previously he had been induced by an attractive damsel at a bazaar in aid of the Auldhaig Seamen and Fishermen's Society to buy what then occurred to him to be an utterly useless article, but now he found himself trusting implicitly to the doubtless highly erratic magnetised needle. It was a sorry substitute for the boat-compass that ought to have been in the boat, but wasn't; but even in the baffling fog Wakefield knew that he was provided with a means of direction. With reasonable luck, the boat ought to hit the Scottish coast somewhere, if the survivors were not picked up by one of the other patrol-boats known to be cruising in the vicinity.

At frequent intervals Wakefield bade the men rest on their oars, taking advantage of the silence to listen for sounds indicating the presence of other craft; but beyond the lap of the water against the metal sides of the boat the stillness was unbroken.

It was an eerie experience, climbing the slope of the long rollers and sliding down into the trough beyond, the while encompassed by a fog now so dense that at twenty yards sea and air blended into nothingness. Fortunately there was little or no wind, and the boat rode the swell without shipping as much as a pailful of water, but both Wakefield and Meredith knew full well that those sullen rollers portended a storm at no distant date. The while the pale rays of the moon penetrated with little difficulty the relatively thin stratum of fog overhead, the ghostly light adding to the weirdness of the scene.

"Prop.!" exclaimed Kenneth laconically.

A tense silence fell upon the boat's crew. Through the mists came the unmistakable thud of a vessel's propellers, but whether from north, south, east or west the baffling atmospheric conditions gave no clue.

Then the subdued sound ceased abruptly.

"Give a hail, lads!" exclaimed Wakefield; but before the bowman could stand and give vent to a bellowing "Ahoy!" the skipper countermanded the order.

"We'll put a stopper on the hailing business," he remarked, without giving any further explanation. "Ah, there it is again!"

"Nearer this time," announced Meredith. "Voices, too."

"Too jolly guttural for my liking," added Wakefield. "It's a Fritz surface cruising. We'll lie doggo."

"Wish they'd push along out of it," said the stroke in a low tone. "We want to get another move on."

These sentiments were shared by the rest of the boat's crew. Every man knew what detection meant. A machine-gun turned upon the boat, or perhaps a bomb thrown with the whole-hearted generosity that Fritz was wont to display towards a boat-load of helpless seamen.

"Silence!" hissed Wakefield, holding up his hand to impress upon the men the necessity for absolute noiselessness.

A minute passed in breathless suspense. Although the unseen craft had again switched off the ignition, the plash of water against her bows was distinctly audible.

"Stand by to give way, men," whispered the skipper. "If she spots us we may be able to give her the slip in the fog."

Even as he spoke a sudden gust of wind swept over the boat. As if by magic the hitherto enfolding pall of mist was torn relentlessly aside, revealing in the full light of the moon the outlines of a U-boat at less than fifty yards from the survivors of M.L. 1071.

CHAPTER IV

THE SPY

"Fifteen metres fine grey sand, Herr Kapitan."

Ober-leutnant Hans von Preugfeld, commanding officer of U 247, was typically Prussian in his thoroughness. Carefully he examined the sand adhering to the "arming" of the lead line that the leadsman held up for his inspection.

He grunted a sort of congratulatory reply and, turning his back upon the black oilskinned seaman, addressed himself to the second-in-command.

"Good, Eitel!" he exclaimed. "We are not far from the spot. But caution the men to keep their ears open and to stop running at intervals. I am in no mood to fall in with any of those hornets, nor do I want an English destroyer cutting us in twain."

Eitel von Loringhoven, unter-leutnant of the Imperial German Submarine Service, nodded his head comprehendingly. He, too, fully realised the perils that beset pirate unterseebooten, for, despite all possible precautions, Germany's under-water fleet was in a bad way. It came home to him in a very personal manner, too, for he was the last survivor of five brothers who had gone out into the North Sea mists at the behest of Admiral von Tirpitz. Four had never returned. Of the manner of their demise he was in total ignorance. Perhaps some day, if he survived the period of hostilities, the British Admiralty might enlighten him, but until then his knowledge of how four von Loringhovens simply vanished was merely a matter for conjecture. And the very mystery of it all was both nerve-racking and terrifying not only to Eitel von Loringhoven but to every officer and man serving in the unterseebooten flying the dishonoured Black Cross Ensign.

Throughout the day U 247 had been feeling her way through fog of varying intensity by aid of compass, lead line, and patent log. Whenever the thud of the engines of an approaching vessel was heard the U-boat submerged promptly and without ceremony. Although five out of every six vessels that passed within audible distance were of the British Mercantile Marine, U 247 made no effort to ascertain that they were not warships. The risk of closing with any craft in the fog was too great, for, although the U-boat could shell an unarmed merchantman with impunity, she had long learnt to respect both men-of-war and armed merchant ships.

Von Preugfeld had vivid recollections of the s.s. Contraption, a six-knot tramp two hours out of Grimsby. He had had information from an unimpeachable source that the Contraption was unarmed, that she carried munitions for Archangel, and that she expected to join a convoy off Flamborough Head.

With these facts in his possession, the ober-leutnant showed far less discretion than he usually exercised. Unable to resist a chance of playing upon the nerves of the crew of the English ship, he brought U 247 to the surface, and at reduced speed maintained a position a bare cable's length from the tramp's starboard bow.

Therein he made a great mistake. He had completely underrated the stubborn courage of the British Mercantile Marine.

Hard-a-port went the Contraption's helm. Barely had the crew of the U-boat time to scurry below and submerge at record speed when the tramp's forefoot rasped athwart the U-boat's deck. It was a near thing, as the moisture on von Preugfeld's ashen-grey features testified.

Twenty minutes later U 247 rose to the surface, and at a safe distance shelled her antagonist and sent her to the bottom; but the U-boat had to "leg it" back to Wilhelmshaven with her pumps going continuously to keep down the water that oozed through ominous dents in her hull.

"Ten metres, Herr Kapitan."

"Any signs of the lighthouse?" he demanded.

"None, Herr Kapitan."

"Keep her at that," continued the ober-leutnant. "Inform me when you strike eight metres, unless you sight the headland before that."

Running just awash, and with her surface motors well throttled down, U 247 held on until the look-out man gave the much desired information:

"Land right ahead, Herr Kapitan. A white lighthouse two points on our starboard bow."

It was now close on sunset. A partial lifting of the fog revealed at a distance of about a mile a serrated ridge of dark cliffs culminating in a bold promontory crowned by the massive squat tower of a lighthouse. There was no need for von Preugfeld to verify the statement by means of his reflex glasses. He rapped out a curt order, and the U-boat swung round through eight points of the compass and settled down to a course south-south-west, or parallel with the forbidding shore.

"Tell von Preussen to hold himself in readiness," said von Preugfeld, addressing the unter-leutnant. "If he is not set ashore within forty-five minutes, I will accept no further responsibility in the matter."

Von Loringhoven clicked his heels and saluted.

"Very good, Herr Kapitan," he replied. "Von Preussen is even now changing into the accursed English uniform. Ach, here he is."

The ober-leutnant wheeled abruptly to see standing within three paces of him a tall, thickly built man wearing a khaki uniform.

"So you are ready?" remarked von Preugfeld, not with any degree of cordiality. Truth to tell, he was not at all keen about this particular undertaking, namely, to set ashore a German spy disguised as a British officer. "Well, I suppose your get-up will pass muster, von Preussen? If it does not, I fancy you'll be in a tighter hole than ever you've been before."

"I can look after myself, I think, Herr Kapitan," replied the spy. "I can assure you that from my point of view my work ashore will be child's play to the time I spent on board your vessel. Ach! I do not hesitate to confess that I am not of a disposition suitable for unterseebooten work. It appals me."

The ober-leutnant shrugged his shoulders.

"It will help you to appreciate the perils that we undergo for the honour of the Fatherland," he observed. "Perhaps, on your return, you might communicate your views on the subject to the Chief of Staff. Our task grows more difficult every day. The men, even, are showing signs of discontent, thereby magnifying our dangers. But, there—better come below and let von Loringhoven and me have a final kit inspection; and at the same time we may join in a bottle of Rhenish wine and drink to the success of our joint enterprise."

The kapitan having enjoined a petty Officer to maintain a vigilant watch, led the way, followed by von Preussen, the unter-leutnant bringing up the rear, and the three adjourned to a narrow, complicated compartment that served as a ward-room. In spite of scientific apparatus for purifying the air, that confined space reeked abominably. Everything of a textile nature was saturated with moisture, while the metal beams, although coated with cork composition, exuded drops of rust-tinged water.

In the glare of the electric lamps Karl von Preussen stood stiffly erect, clad in the uniform of a captain of the British Royal Air Force. In height he was about five feet eight, broad of build, and with decidedly Anglo-Saxon features. He could speak English fluently and colloquially, and thanks to a British Public School education, followed by a three years' appointment in a London shipping office, he was well acquainted with the peculiarities and customs of a country that was Germany's chief enemy.

Long before August 1914 von Preussen had been a spy. One might say that the seeds of the dishonourable profession were germinating during his school-days: they were certainly decidedly active when he was occupying an ill-paid post in Threadneedle Street, where his modest pound a week was augmented by sundry substantial sums paid in British gold but emanating from Berlin.

The outbreak of hostilities found von Preussen fully prepared. Posing as one of the principals of a steel factory, he practically had an entry to every British Government establishment. Armed with forged documents, he was not for one moment suspected. From Scapa Flow to the Scillies, and from Loch Swilly to Dover, his activities brought valuable information to the Imperial Government. Within a week of the mining of a British Dreadnought—a calamity that the Admiralty vainly attempted to conceal—von Preussen had conveyed details and photographs of the lost vessel to Berlin, and on the following morning the German Press published illustrated reports of a "secret" known throughout the world.

When occasion offered, von Preussen did not hesitate to commit acts of sabotage. More than once, disguised as a munition worker, he was instrumental in the destruction of a shell factory, while it was he who gave instructions and furnished material to the noted spy Otto Oberfurst in order that the latter could and did destroy the cruiser Pompey in Auldhaig Harbour.

The stringent passport restrictions placed upon all travellers to and from Great Britain considerably curtailed von Preussen's activities. The difficulty of making a sea passage to the Continent was almost insurmountable. Once, indeed, the spy essayed to fly, and was within an ace of success, when the stolen machine crashed. Fortunately for the spy, the accident happened in an unfrequented spot, and being but slightly injured he contrived to get away; but the mystery of the abandoned machine puzzled the brains of the Air Ministry for months. Von Preussen returned to the Fatherland via Bergen, disguised as a fireman on board a Norwegian tramp.

The spy had not long been in Berlin before he was peremptorily ordered off on another "tour." The Hun High Command knew how to get the best out of their secret service agents, and since Karl von Preussen had been a success his employers kept him running at high pressure. Accordingly, armed with instructions to report upon various British air stations, and to obtain accurate information respecting the bombing 'planes known to be building for the express purpose of blowing Berlin to bits, the spy was sent on board U 247, the commander of which was furnished with orders to land his passenger on the east coast of Scotland.

"Here's to your venture, von Preussen!" exclaimed Ober-leutnant von Preugfeld, as he raised his glass. "Your health."

With a profusion of "Hoch, hoch, hoch!" their glasses clicked and the toast was drunk. Then, tightening the belt of his trench-coat, the spy ascended the ladder and gained the deck.

CHAPTER V

THE PROWESS OF KAPITAN VON PREUGFELD

"The fog is thicker than ever," grumbled the ober-leutnant as he emerged from below. "It is so far fortunate for your landing, von Preussen, but give me a clear night. Then there is far less risk of being run down by those accursed P-boats."

"You need to be doubly careful on a night like this," rejoined the spy.

"And one way is to lose no time in getting into the dinghy," added von Preugfeld pointedly.

Rubbing alongside the bulging hull of the U-boat was a small collapsible dinghy manned by a couple of hands clad in oilskins. In the stern-sheets, muffled by a piece of tarpaulin, was a lighted compass.

"I am sending my unter-leutnant in charge of the boat," observed von Preugfeld.

"Then I hope Herr von Loringhoven realises the sense of his responsibility," laughed the spy, as he stepped into the boat. "Auf Wiedersehen!"

The dinghy pushed off under muffled oars and well-greased rowlocks. In less than half a minute it was inaudible and invisible, swallowed up in the fog.

The kapitan of U 247 remained on deck, half-buried in his greatcoat. He was both irritable and impatient—impatient for the return of the boat, irritable since he wanted to smoke and durst not. Another U-boat commander had smoked on deck while his boat was recharging batteries at night. The fumes of the cigar, drifting far and wide, assailed the keen nostrils of a submarine hunter. As it was, the U-boat got away, but her kapitan learnt a lesson and did not hesitate to inform his fellow-pirates of his very narrow escape.

Always within easy distance of the open conning-tower hatchway and ready to submerge at an instant's notice, Ober-leutnant von Preugfeld maintained his solitary vigil, for the rest of the crew had been ordered to their diving stations. It was the life of a hunted animal, haunted by an ever-present fear. Von Preugfeld, prematurely aged and careworn, had suffered the torments of the damned since the order had been issued for unrestricted submarine warfare, At first he had entered into the business with grim zest. A firm believer in the policy of ruthlessness as applied to war, the ober-leutnant had no compunction in sinking unarmed merchantmen and hospital ships, but when the British Mercantile Marine took unto itself guns and gun-layers who could shoot uncommonly straight, and when the Royal Navy adopted certain sinister devices to cope with the pirate Hun, von Preugfeld did not feel at all happy.

By this time he was convinced that he was on the losing side. Almost every officer in the German Submarine Service had the same opinion, although individually they were loth to admit it. The men, too, knew that the U-boat campaign was a failure, but, unlike their officers, they discussed the matter amongst themselves and thought that it was quite about time they had a say in the business.

For a full forty minutes von Preugfeld paced the limited expanse of steel platform that comprised the U-boat's deck, until a faint whistle like the call of a curlew was borne to his ears.

Ordering a couple of hands on deck, the ober-leutnant gave the pre-arranged reply. For another five minutes the interchange of signals continued as the dinghy, baffled by the fog, endeavoured to find her way back to her parent ship.

Presently the black outlines of the little boat loomed through the moonlit mist. The bowman threw the painter, and von Loringhoven clambered on board.

"This confounded fog!" he exclaimed. "I have not seen a worse one even off the Friesland shore."

"And von Preussen?" asked the kapitan laconically.

"We landed him safely, Herr Kapitan," replied the unter-leutnant. "There was no one about. The actual business of setting him ashore was simple. We are to look out for him at the same place at midnight on the first of next month, I believe?"

"That is so," assented von Preugfeld. "That is, if we are still alive," he added, speaking to himself.

"If what, Kerr Kapitan?" asked his subordinate anxiously.

"Nothing," rejoined the other gruffly. "Now, to your post, von Loringhoven. We have a tricky piece of navigation in front of us if we are to arrive off Aberspey by midnight."

Thanks to his intimate knowledge of the coasts of Great Britain, von Preugfeld was able to take the intricate inner passage round St. Rollox Head. He did not expect to find any patrols in that waterway on a foggy night, and his anticipations were well founded. Running awash and at full speed, U 247 literally scraped past the outlying rocks, the thresh of her propellers being deadened by the constant roar of the surf upon the far-flung ledges that thrust themselves seaward from the bold headland. Through a winding channel barely a hundred yards in width, beset with dangers on either hand and swept by furious currents and counter-eddies, the U-boat held steadily onwards, until with a grunt of relief von Preugfeld "handed over" to his subordinate.

"We're through," he observed. "Now keep her south by west at nine knots. Call me in twenty minutes."

At the expiration of the given time the kapitan went on deck and ordered the leadsman to sound. Very slowly the U-boat held on, until through a rift in the fog the look-out sighted a green buoy on the starboard hand.

"That is what I was looking for," remarked von Preugfeld to the unter-leutnant. "It's a wreck-buoy placed there as a monument to our achievement last March. You remember?"

"The Camperdown Castle, Herr Kapitan?"

"No, you fool," snapped the kapitan. "We sank the Camperdown Castle eighty kilometres away to the south-eastward."

"The Columbine, then?"

"That's better," exclaimed von Preugfeld. "That red cross on her port bow made an excellent mark, illuminated by electric light as it was for our convenience. Now, shut off the motors. Call away the guns' crews. Elevate to eight thousand metres, and fire anywhere between west by north and west by south, and I'll warrant we'll make a mess of things ashore in Aberspey."

The two six-inch guns mounted on U 247 were quickly manned. The glistening, well-oiled breech-blocks were flung open, and the metal cylinders with their deadly steel shells were thrust home. For a brief instant the gun-layers lingered over their sights, training the weapons upon an invisible target roughly five miles off.

"Open fire!" ordered von Preugfeld in a strained, harsh voice.

Both guns barked almost simultaneously, stabbing the foggy night with long tongues of dark red flame. Even as the U-boat heeled under the recoil the shrill whine of the projectile could be distinctly heard, followed by the distant crashes of the exploding shells.

"Hit something," observed von Loringhoven. "Let us hope that the objective was worth hitting."

"Carry on!" shouted the kapitan. "Twelve rounds each gun, and be sharp about it."

The required number of rounds did not take long. The German gunners were working in feverish haste, fearful lest the tip-and-run bombardment would bring swift retribution in its wake in the shape of a flotilla of destroyers.

Directly the last shell case had been ejected and passed below—for brass was worth almost its weight in silver to the German military and naval authorities—the guns were secured and the crews returned to diving stations.

Pausing only to listen intently for sounds of approaching vessels, von Preugfeld disappeared through the conning-tower hatchway. The metal fastening clanged into its appointed place, the ballast tanks were flooded and U 247 submerged to thirty metres.

For the next hour she proceeded warily, until her kapitan deemed it safe to rise to the surface. The engines were stopped, and as soon as the U-boat floated just awash the officers went on deck to listen.

"Petrol engine!" exclaimed von Loringhoven, as the noisy exhaust beats of an internal combustion engine were plainly audible although at a considerable distance.

"Down with her then!" ordered von Preugfeld.

As he moved towards the hatchway, the chief motor engineer approached.

"We have a bad case of short circuiting, Herr Kapitan," he began. "Both on magneto and accumulator the motors refuse to fire. I have——"

"Donnerwetter!" exclaimed von Preugfeld angrily. "What monkey tricks have you been playing? And there are hostile motor craft around. Von Loringhoven, what depth have we?"

"Too great to rest on the bed of the sea, Herr Kapitan," replied the unter-leutnant.

Without motive power the submarine was helpless for under-water work. She could fill her ballast tanks, but it would be impossible to sink only to a required depth. She would sink rapidly until the tremendous external pressure of water would crush her thick steel hull like an egg-shell.

"How long will it take you to make good defects?" demanded von Preugfeld of the thoroughly scared mechanic. "Half an hour—twenty minutes?"

"I will try, Herr Kapitan. Perhaps in half an hour——"

"Then get on with the task," almost shouted the excitable ober-leutnant. "First couple up the surface-cruising engines. Von Loringhoven, turn out the guns' crews. If that motor vessel comes in sight we must try and settle her before she uses her depth-charges, or it will be all up with us. Ten thousand curses on von Preussen for having got us into this mess!"

Although scared himself, von Loringhoven could not help smiling at his superior's words. He realised that the spy had little or nothing to do with U 247's present predicament. It was just possible that the concussion caused by the bombardment of Aberspey might have set up a short circuit, but von Preugfeld would never admit that.

At frequent intervals the U-boat's engines were stopped. The noise of the unseen motor vessel's exhaust alternately grew louder and fainter. Somewhere in that baffling mist was the danger. Engaged in a mutual game of maritime blind man's bluff the submarine and the submarine-hunter were groping for each other. At any moment a rift in the veil of fog might bring the adversaries almost broadside to broadside.

Von Preugfeld glanced at the luminous dial of his watch.

"Fifteen minutes more," he muttered. "Will it be in time?"

CHAPTER VI

PICKED UP

"Pull starboard; back port!... Give way together!" ordered Lieutenant-Commander Wakefield, as the blunt bows of the U-boat appeared through the dispersing fog-bank.

The men obeyed with a will. Almost in its own length the "tin" dinghy spun round and darted towards the pall of misty vapour. It was a dog's chance, and the men realised it, but they were not going to throw up the sponge without a determined effort to escape.

Alas for the bold resolve! With a rapidity that was little short of miraculous for a vessel of her type, the U-boat turned to starboard. Then, with her engines reversed, she brought up dead with her bows within an oar's length of the M.L.'s dinghy.

Right for'ard were half a dozen men clad in oilskins. One of them brandished a long boat-hook.

"Game's up, Fritz," shouted an unmistakable Devonshire voice. "Be yu comin' quiet-like?"

For a moment the men sat dumfounded. Then Wakefield laughed mirthlessly.

"She's one of our new submarines!" he exclaimed. "And we've been engaging her by mistake. Good heavens, what a proper lash up! Make fast there!"

The bowman threw a coil of rope, and as the boat swung alongside the giant submarine Wakefield leapt on board, followed by Meredith.

The surprise of M.L. 1071's officers was more than equalled by the consternation of the skipper of the submarine, who burst out into a torrent of eager questions.

"Then I've sunk you, by Jove!" exclaimed the latter. "How was I to know? Why the deuce didn't you make your private signal? You fired first, you know."

"Admitted," replied Wakefield. "We spotted what we took to be a U-boat and, having had official information that none of our submarines was within eighty miles of us, we naturally let rip the moment we sighted you."

He gave a quick glance at the deck and superstructure.

"Any damage?" he asked.

The other smiled grimly.

"Not to us... 'Fraid I cannot congratulate you on the excellence of your gunnery. Every shell went overhead handsomely."

The gun-layer of M.L. 1071's six-pounder, overhearing the remark, groaned at the slight upon his marksmanship.

"Sorry I can't return the compliment," observed Wakefield. "You caught us a beauty—only it failed to explode or we wouldn't be here. As it is, I've lost my command and sustained a couple of casualties. Rough luck!"

"Rough luck indeed!" rejoined the other sympathetically. "Come below and have a glass of grog. I'll have your men attended to. We must cut your boat adrift, I'm afraid."

Meredith followed the two lieutenant-commanders to the little ward-room, which, though small, was not chock-a-block with the usual appendages to a submarine's officers' quarters.

The skipper of the boat threw off his oilskin, revealing a burly figure rigged out in the uniform of a lieutenant-commander R.N.R. In height he was over six feet, with massive neck and bull-dog features. His face was tanned a deep red that contrasted vividly with his light-blue eyes and white, even teeth. From the outer corner of his left eye to within an inch of the extremity of his jaw-bone ran a greyish scar that tended to accentuate the grim tenacity of expression.

"Sit you down," he said, in unmistakably Northumbrian accents. "A stiff peg will pull you fellows together, although the sun's not over the fore-yard. But let that slide. What's your name?"

Wakefield gave the required information and introduced Meredith to the burly R.N.R. skipper.

"Morpeth's my tally," announced the latter, in answer to Wakefield's inquiry: "Geordie Morpeth, or 'Tough Geordie,' as they used to call me when I was first mate in the Foul Anchor Line—them that runs cattle boats to Monte Video, you might remember."

"Tough work, eh?" inquired Wakefield.

"You're about right," agreed Morpeth. "Handling a crew of Dagoes and such-like takes a bit of doing. My present job is an easy one in comparison."

"What made you go in for the Submarine Service?" asked Meredith.

The bull-necked R.N.R. officer leant back in his chair and laughed uproariously.

"Got you cold, by Jove!" he ejaculated. "Submarine Service—a precious lot I know about it, 'cept that I know a U-boat when I spot her. Leastways, I thought I did until I mistook your hooker for Fritz: but you fired on me first, my man. Ha! ha! ha! Submarine indeed!"

"Well, isn't this one?" inquired Wakefield.

"She won't submerge unless a Hun tinfish gets her," replied Morpeth oracularly. "And that ain't likely, since Fritz can't distinguish between a real U-boat and this old hooker. We're just a decoy."

"Sort of Q-boat?" asked Meredith.

"You've about hit it, old thing," replied the R.N.R. man. "We're just off to the Heligoland Bight to see if that fish will bite. Excuse my joke. Hope you're not in a hurry, 'cause you'll have to be shipmates along with us for the next fortnight."

"Any old job'll suit me," said Wakefield. "The only thing that troubles me is how we are to get in touch with the S.N.O., Auldhaig. We'll be posted as missing and all that sort of thing."

"Can't help you there," declared Morpeth. "We don't get in touch with patrolling craft during this stunt for a very good reason. They'd fire on us at sight long before we could establish our identity."

"Why not wireless?" suggested Meredith.

"We've got a wireless rigged up, but we don't use it except in cases of actual danger," explained Morpeth. "Once we start sending out messages all our chances go by the board. Fritz might intercept them, and there you are. We'll receive as many as they care to send, and a fine old collection we've got. You should see our wireless decoder with his German signal code-book. That's the way to get a true insight into the U-boat campaign. No, gentlemen, it can't be did; but I'll do my level best to make you comfortable. There's a spare bunk in my cabin, Mr. Wakefield, and Mr. Meredith can have a hammock slung in the ward-room. As for grub, there's enough and to spare for all hands."

"Good enough!" exclaimed Wakefield heartily. "Only I hope you've got a job for us?"

"You trust me for that," rejoined the R.N.R. officer grimly.

He glanced at the clock on the after-bulkhead.

"Seven bells," he remarked. "We've spent a solid hour kagging away when we ought to be turned in. It'll be daybreak in another hour. Tired?"

Wakefield and Meredith replied in the negative. The excitement of the unfortunate engagement was still making itself felt, rendering the desire for sleep impossible.

"Take my tip and turn in," suggested Morpeth. "I'll get the steward to bring some grub first, and then you'll be all right for the next few hours. You'll excuse me, but I must see how things are going on deck. I've got a ripping officer of the watch, but at the same time the responsibility is mine."

Picking up his cap, the gold lace and badge of which was green with exposure to the salt spray, Lieutenant-Commander Morpeth left his involuntary guests and went on deck.

"Tough customer," remarked Wakefield. "His nickname is well bestowed. I shouldn't care to fall foul of him."

"A good man for the job, I should imagine," said Meredith, as he proffered his cigarette-case to his superior officer. "Where the Navy would be without the R.N.R. goodness only knows. Those fellows could carry on straight away, but we had to be trained—after a fashion. I remember the first time I tried to bring an M.L. alongside a jetty. There wasn't much tide and hardly any wind, but it took five attempts before I did the trick."

"You were not the only one," said Wakefield reminiscently. "First time I was running at fifteen knots I had the wind up properly. Knew every article on the Rule of Road and all that sort of thing by heart, but the first lumbering old tramp I met drove the whole blessed lot out of my head. Scraped her quarter by less'n a yard, an' it might have been worse."

Kenneth puffed thoughtfully at his pipe.

"Rummy war this," he observed. "When you take things into consideration——"

"Fog's cleared away, and it's a bright moonlight night," announced Morpeth, thrusting his head, surmounted by the salt-stained cap and tarnished badge, through the doorway. "Care to come up and have a look round?"

"Right-o, old thing," replied Wakefield.

Preceded by their host, the M.L. officers ascended the almost vertical steel ladder and gained the deck.

"Mind our tram-lines," cautioned Morpeth, "That's right. Now, what do you think of the old hooker?"

CHAPTER VII

A U-BOAT OF SORTS

The "old hooker" was plugging along at a steady twelve knots. At frequent intervals copious quantities of spray would be flung inboard as her bows plunged into the long swell. Running dead into the eye of the wind, she gave one an exaggerated idea of speed, for even in a light breeze the wire rigging supporting the two short masts verberated tunefully in the night air.

From the partly closed fo'c'sle hatchway came sounds of mild revelry. Meredith smiled at the noise, for he recognised amongst others the voices of some of his own men. Evidently the ex-crew of M.L. 1071 were taking kindly to their new surroundings, and were not in the least perturbed by their change of fortune.

"Hefty sort of hooker after an M.L." remarked Wakefield. "And what did you tell me was her name?"

"I didn't tell you any name, for the simple reason that she hasn't one. She's simply Q 171, while to Fritz she appears as U 251—but Fritz doesn't get away to tell the tale."

"What are these for?" asked Kenneth, kicking his boot against one of a pair of metal rails that ran fore and aft.

"Our tram-lines," explained the lieutenant-commander of Q 171. "A little device to clear decks for action in a brace of shakes. See our conning-tower and that superstructure arrangement abaft it? They're duds. Stand aside a minute, and I'll give a little demonstration of how things are worked. A bit further—that's it; now you are clear of the rails. Jackson!"

"Sir!"

A bearded petty officer came aft at a double, and awaited orders.

"The gadget!" exclaimed Morpeth laconically.

The man ran for'ard and was lost to sight beyond the break of the conning-tower.

Ten seconds later, impelled by a swift and invisible force, the conning-tower and the raised superstructure glided forward along the rails, leaving exposed in all their stark aggressiveness three large objects resembling exaggerated drain-pipes.

"Torpedo-tubes, by Jove!" exclaimed Wakefield.

"Guess you've never seen the type before," remarked the lieutenant-commander of Q 171. "They are shorter than the standard pattern, and, as you might observe, are not exactly parallel. Discharge all three torpedoes simultaneously, and they run on slightly divergent courses."

"Doesn't give Fritz much of a chance," observed Meredith.

"Not a dog's chance, old thing," rejoined Morpeth. "They're only 14-inch torpedoes, but they're just some. Blow a hole in a battleship's hull large enough to take a stage-coach, so you can imagine what happens when Fritz stops one—perhaps two, and very occasionally three. In a way a fellow can't help feeling sorry for Fritz, but he's asked for it all along the line. If he'd played a straight game with his U-boats we would have given him credit for what he'd done, and taken our chances. That chap who torpedoed our Cressy, Hogue, and Aboukir early in the war did a smart thing, and the Navy admitted it; but now all the decent U-boat skippers have packed up, or else have degenerated into low-down curs."

"Precisely," agreed Wakefield. "Hospital ships, and all that sort of business."

"Unarmed merchantmen—that's why we've had to take on the Q-boat stunt. Hardly seems proper jonnick to lure a Fritz within range, and then blow him to bits, but, as I said before, he's asked for it."

"Bagged many?"

"A few," admitted the R.N.R. man modestly; then, pleased at a sudden recollection, he squared his massive shoulders and burst into a hearty roar of laughter. "That reminds me of the last Fritz we scuppered. We had information that a U-boat was knocking around off Bass Rock, playing Old Harry with small coasting craft out of Arbroath and Granton, so we sent out the old s.s. Niblick—one of the Pink Funnel Line. She had been sold to a firm of ship-breakers, but when the pinch came they fitted her out again. Well, we followed an hour after the Niblick left Montrose, got within range, and started firing at her, or rather putting shells into the sea within a hundred yards or so. Presently we sighted a periscope. Fritz couldn't quite understand things, since he imagined he was the only U-boat sculling around. But after a while he couldn't resist the temptation of joining in the pursuit, and he blew ballast-tanks and came to the surface at a cable's length broad on our starboard beam. Before he could get to work on the Niblick with his bow quick-firer, he went to the bottom for good and all. It required only one of our torpedoes for that job."

"That's the stuff to give 'em!" exclaimed Meredith.

"It strikes me, Sub," observed Wakefield, as he stifled a yawn, "that we of the M.L. patrol will have to pack up. There's nothin' doin' for us now the Q-boats are out."

"Ever sighted a Fritz?" inquired Morpeth.

Wakefield was obliged to confess that he had not.

"I'm not surprised," continued the R.N.R. skipper. "Your little packets make too much noise. I wouldn't mind betting that Fritz has had a squint at you many a time through his periscope, and then he's promptly legged it. You're like a fat policeman on the track of a young burglar. It's the moral effect that tells. Before we cover up these beauties I'd like to show you the torpedoes."

With a dexterous movement Morpeth opened the breech of one of the tubes. Unlike the standard pattern, which is closed by means of six butterfly nuts, the breech mechanism consisted of an intercepted thread action somewhat similar to that of a quick-firer.

"We bagged that idea from the Hun," remarked Morpeth. "Now here is our tinfish: it has a range of only two miles, but quite enough for our purpose. Propulsive force, electric, and no fooling about with compressed air."

The M.L. officers examined the well-oiled glistening steel cylinders. In the bright moonlight the missiles looked harmless enough, but it took very little effort of the imagination to picture the fate of a craft torn by the explosion of fifty pounds of gun-cotton and aminol.

"The hydrophone-room," announced Morpeth, indicating a hatchway almost amidships. "That's nothing new to you, I'm sure. Here is our engine-room—petrol motors, of course."

"And your speed?" asked Wakefield.

"We are running normally—twelve knots."

"Yes—but all out?"

"With luck we might touch thirty-eight," was the unconcerned reply. "It isn't very often we do that—it's not necessary when we're Fritz-hunting—but when the Hun does come out with his light cruisers and torpedo boats, then we just show a clean pair of heels before they as much as sight us. Once they get an inkling that a British Q-boat is out disguised as a U-boat, then we may just as well pay off and save the taxpayers."

"But if their aircraft spotted you?" asked Meredith. "Your speed wouldn't help you much then."

"I agree," said Morpeth. "Aircraft are, in my opinion, unmitigated nuisances—that is, as far as we are concerned on this little stunt. When I see any of our blimps or flying-boats I get the wind up, because they naturally take us for a U-boat; and unless we're pretty smart at making our distinguishing signs, and they are equally smart at reading the same, they proceed with the utmost relish to strafe us. When I meet the Air Force fellows ashore I chip 'em and say it's because they're jealous."

"And when you spot a Hun 'plane?" inquired Wakefield.

"That's quite a different story. Just step aft a minute."

Morpeth led the way abaft the engine-room hatchway. On the centre line of the narrow deck was a metal flap about eighteen inches square.

"Our anti-aircraft gun is below there," observed the R.N.R. officer. "No, we don't lug it on deck. It's fired from below. Now, when a Hun spots us and we can't make ourselves scarce, we stop our engines and display a signal as per Imperial German Navy Code Book, a copy of which was issued to me by the British Admiralty."

"I know the thing," remarked Wakefield.

"Down swoops inquisitive Fritz," continued Morpeth, "and then we have him cold."

Wakefield stifled another yawn.

"'Scuse me," he murmured apologetically, "but it's not because I'm not interested. I am, really; but Nature is reminding me that I've had no sleep for the last twenty-four hours."

"By Jove! Why didn't you tell me before?" demanded Morpeth, in genuine concern. "Turn in, both of you, at once; and if you're out before the sun's over the fore-yard there'll be trouble."

"Right-o, on one condition," rejoined Wakefield.

The R.N.R. lieutenant-commander smiled grimly.

"I don't have fellows making conditions with the skipper of this hooker as a general rule," he remarked. "But what is it?"

"That we are called if there's any little stunt on," continued Wakefield.

"That's a deal," agreed Morpeth. "Good-night."

CHAPTER VIII

VON PREUSSEN'S BLANK DAY

"What a ghastly welcome!" soliloquised Leutnant Karl von Preussen, as he approached the "prohibited area" of Auldhaig. For the present his assumed name was Captain George Fennelburt, R.A.F., and in adopting the name and character he had left very little to chance. His pocket-book bulged with spurious official documents, printed in Germany, and replicas of papers that had either been surreptitiously obtained from British air stations, or had been found on captured men.

It was not a pleasant sort of evening. The sea mist had turned to a steady drizzle, accompanied by gusts of icy-cold wind. On the road, cut up by exceptionally heavy motor traffic, the mud lay four inches deep. Wearing a heavy trench coat, thick boots and leggings, and encumbered by a bulky haversack, von Preussen found himself decidedly hot and clammy before he had covered many miles of his long tramp.

He had studiously avoided the cliff road, preferring to make a detour inland and to approach Auldhaig from the railway station.

At length he gained the summit of the hill overlooking the town. On his left lay the important munition factory of Sauchieblair, shrouded in utter darkness, although there were aural evidences in plenty of the activity that was in progress day and night. A mile to the north gleamed lights. Von Preussen smiled grimly as he saw them. He knew precisely the meaning of the unscreened gleams. They were decoys, shown for the purpose of putting a raider off the scent, and up to a certain point had justified their existence.

Ahead lay Auldhaig, also shrouded in utter darkness. Neither in the wide ramifications of the landlocked harbour, nor from the vast expanse of wharves and docks, was there the faintest sign of a light; but the clatter of pneumatic hammers and the rumbling of locomotives indicated pretty plainly that the shipyards were running at high pressure.

Without difficulty, von Preussen passed the guard at the block-house on the bridge and entered the sombre town. It was now four o'clock in the morning, and the spy wisely decided to make for an hotel and have a much needed rest.

In response to a knock the door of the Antelope Hotel was opened by a sleepy night porter, who evinced no surprise at the belated arrival of a guest.

"You'll be registering in the morn, sir," he remarked.

"Thanks; I may as well register at once," replied the spy, not that he wanted to take the trouble to do so, but because he had ulterior motives.

In a bold hand he made the perfunctory declaration:—"George Fennelburt, Captn. R.A.F.; business—on duty; where stationed —Sheerness; name of Commanding Officer—Lieut.-Colonel H. B. L. Greathooks, O.B.E."

"Silly lot of rot, sir," remarked the porter, "giving a gent no end of trouble. If you was to put down 'Julius Caesar' or 'Christopher Columbus' I don't see as how it 'ud matter."

"It's regulations, you know," said von Preussen, handing the fellow half a crown. "Now get me a glass of something hot and a snack. I'm hungry."

The porter hurried off to execute the commission, pondering in his mind on the inconsistency of the officer, who almost in one breath had upheld the regulations and had broken them in the matter of obtaining liquor during prohibited hours.

Seizing his opportunity during the man's absence, von Preussen scanned the pile of registration forms lying on the reception clerk's desk. It behoved him to ascertain "who's who" with regard to the naval, military and air officers staying at the hotel—particularly the latter, as he had no desire to meet anyone hailing from Sheerness or Isle of Grain air stations.

Satisfied on that point, the spy went to bed, apologising for the muddy state of his boots by stating that he had missed the last train from Nedderburn, and had been compelled to walk to Auldhaig.

He slept soundly till close on eleven in the morning. At noon, spick and span, he made his way to Auldhaig Dockyard, with the plausible intention of inspecting X-lighters, but with the real object of keeping his ears and eyes open.

Noon was a well-chosen time. The dockyard "maties" had knocked off work for dinner, while the officials, with the prospects of lunch in the near distance, would almost certainly request the pseudo-Captain Fennelburt to call again at three. That meant, once inside the dockyard gates, the spy had three hours in which to make useful observations.

The first official he called upon was the Senior Naval Officer, who, forgetting that the X-barges had left early that morning in the charge of Sub-lieutenant Jock McIntosh, R.N.V.R., referred Captain Fennelburt to the Captain of the Dockyard. That individual, who had a dim recollection that the craft in question were in his charge and were about to be handed over to the Royal Air Force, requested the soi-disant representative of that branch of the Service to inquire of the Chief Writer. The Chief Writer, about to go to lunch, summoned the Head Messenger, who in turn told off a messenger to accompany Captain Fennelburt on his search for the elusive X-lighters.

For the next three-quarters of an hour the spy was hurried to and fro over the slippery cobble-stones of Auldhaig Dockyard. He saw very little that would be of service to the Imperial German Government. For one reason, the messenger stuck like a leech and lost no time, since he too was wanting his dinner. For another, everything in the way of new ship construction was being done under cover, while zealous, lynx-eyed policemen—picked men from the Metropolitan Police Force—were everywhere in evidence; and von Preussen had a wholesome respect for men in blue.

"What's that vessel?" inquired von Preussen, indicating a tramp steamer with her sides and deck covered with tarpaulins.

"Merchantman, sir," replied his escort.

"Why is she in a Government dock?" continued the spy. "I thought tramp steamers would be repaired in the commercial dock."

"So would she," answered the man. "Only there wasn't room. Torpedoed, she was, 'bout a month ago."

"Then why all that canvas over her?" asked von Preussen, beginning to find himself on the track of something mysterious.

"'Tis like this, sir," explained his companion with the utmost gravity. "Her captain is living on board, an' 'e's got a bald 'ead. When it rains they rigs up an awning to keep the drops off 'is pate, 'cause 'e gets awfully up the pole an' leads the crew a regular dog's life if he's upset by gettin' 'is 'ead wet."

"I perceive you are a humorist," remarked von Preussen drily.

"Didn't know it, sir," rejoined the man. "My mates usually call me 'Mouldy Bill.' But hangin' around 'ere won't find what you're lookin' for, sir, so let's make a move."

It was an application of "official reticence and reserve" on the part of this minor servant of the Admiralty. He knew perfectly well that the tramp was in reality a Q-boat, and that under those canvas awnings lay hidden a collection of mysterious "gadgets," for a detailed description of which the authorities at Berlin would give a high sum in gold.

To linger would arouse suspicion, so reluctantly the spy followed his guide on what he knew to be a vain quest for craft that were no longer at Auldhaig.

"Why not try the Kite and Balloon Section of the R.A.F.?" suggested an official. "The depot is just across the harbour. I'll let you have a boat."

Von Preussen debated before replying. The offer was a tempting one, for not only would he get a chance of having a closer view of various warships in the stream, but there was no telling what information he might pick up at the depot. On the other hand, he didn't want to be asked awkward questions by men wearing the same uniform as himself. He knew, however, that it was no exception to detail perfectly incompetent officers on inspection duties. He had heard of a case of one who hardly knew one end of a boat from another who was sent on a 700-mile journey to report upon some rowing-boats about to be purchased for a station in the south of England.

"Thanks," he replied. "I may even yet get on the track of those elusive X-barges."

Twenty minutes later von Preussen was seated in the stern-sheets of a harbour service duty boat. To his guarded inquiries of the coxwain as to the names of the vessels lying at the buoys, he received an equally guarded answer:

"Dunno, sir they comes and goes all hours of the day and night, an' not havin' no names painted on 'em, and bein' all disguised-like, I can't tell no more'n a nooborn baby."

The duty-boat rubbed gently alongside the stone steps of the jetty. Von Preussen stepped ashore, returned the sentry's salute, and inquired the way to the adjutant's office.

"X-barges?" queried the adjutant. "None this side. We used to borrow 'em from the dockyard, but we transferred most of our observation balloons more than a month ago, and so we don't require the barges. But now you are here, come and have lunch. It's close on one-thirty."

"Many fellows here?" asked the spy, as he accompanied his host across the wide parade-ground to a long wooden hut used as the mess.

"Twenty," was the reply. "All old R.F.C. and R.N.A.S. men. Most of them have been here for quite a long time. It's a posh station, and once here a fellow doesn't want to be transferred elsewhere."

In the absence of the commanding officer, the head of the table was taken by the major. On his right sat the adjutant. Next to him was placed von Preussen, who on his right had a youngster who looked barely eighteen, yet he wore a captain's uniform, embellished by the ribbons of the D.S.O. and M.C.

The lunch was liberal and appetising. Deft-handed girls in W.R.A.F. uniforms were kept busily employed in attending to the wants of twenty odd ravenous officers, for the keen northern air, combined with plenty of out-door activity, created vast appetites.

As the meal progressed, conversation, at first desultory, grew in volume and interest. Although "shop" figured largely, strictly official matters were rigidly tabooed. Von Preussen had again to confess that from his point of view he was getting precious little change out of the entertainment.

"Did you say you were from Calshot?" inquired the officer on the spy's right.

"No—from Sheerness," replied von Preussen, devoutly hoping that none of the men present had been stationed there recently.

"Who said Calshot?" inquired an indignant voice lower down the table. "Beastly hole!"

"What's that?" demanded the major.

"Had to spend a night there, sir," was, the reply. "Forced landing. They gave me a cubicle that was more like a condemned cell. Concrete walls and floor dripping with moisture; not even a mat on the floor; a bedstead without a mattress and only two blankets. No other furniture. In the morning I had the worst breakfast I ever had on this side of the North Sea. Filthy margarine, rancid bacon and weak tea; and they took jolly good care to make me plank down half a dollar on the nail for my breakfast. Ugh! Makes me shudder to think of it."

"Sheerness," remarked the captain, returning to the attack. "You must know Smithers, then? A big, fat chap, with a mole just under his eye. He's been quartermaster there since '16."

Von Preussen acknowledged that he knew the quartermaster. He could not very well have denied it in the face of his inquisitor's remarks.

"And Tomlinson?" continued the latter. "Suppose he's still there, but I haven't heard from him recently. A short, very dark-featured old bean, with a very dry sense of humour. Plays 'pack and brag' every available five minutes, and uses most atrocious language when he's put out and when he isn't."

"Tomlinson was sent to Dunkirk last month," declared von Preussen mendaciously; then, eager to change what was a most distasteful and embarrassing topic, he inquired:

"Is there a decent theatre at Auldhaig?"

"Not bad," replied Captain Cumberleigh—for that was the name of von Preussen's heckler. "'Maid of the Mountains' is on to-night. Seen it? Then, by Jove, you must, you priceless old thing!" he exclaimed effusively. "No, we won't take a refusal. We've booked a box, and you simply must come. After your fruitless journey to inspect those X-lighters, you owe yourself some relaxation. And I say, Jefferson," he continued, addressing a lieutenant across the table, "we'll take Fennelburt out fishing this afternoon, just to kill time. Fine sport just off the harbour."

"I ought to be on my way back," protested von Preussen, as he weighed up the possible advantages and disadvantages of remaining at Auldhaig Air Station.

"Rot, you conscientious old blighter!" said Cumberleigh boisterously. "In any case, you wouldn't get further than Edinburgh to-night. We'll fix you up with a cabin, and you'll be all O.K., old bean!"

CHAPTER IX

HOW THE LIGHTERS FARED

"Hope the brutes won't konk," thought Sub-lieutenant Jock McIntosh, R.N.V.R., as he dispassionately surveyed the unlovely outlines of X-lighters 5 and 6.

After being second-in-command of a crack M.L., McIntosh felt no violent enthusiasm over his job—to take the two cumbersome craft to a strange port eighty odd miles along the coast. At a maximum speed of five knots, it meant a sixteen hours' run; but McIntosh, knowing the vagaries of the X-lighters' motors, refrained from being sanguine on the matter.

It was one of the jobs that fall to all branches of the Navy. With a strange crew, and not having navigated a lighter before, McIntosh was taking on "some stunt." He had charts and navigating instruments, but he would have felt easier in his mind had he possessed "local knowledge" of this part of the coast. On an M.L., where he was under a competent officer, navigation was fairly simple as far as the Sub was concerned; but now the whole responsibility of getting his charges safely into port rested on his shoulders.

It was the morning of von Preussen's visit to Auldhaig. The fog had dispersed. In its wake had sprung up a fresh southerly breeze, which in turn gave indications of decreasing in velocity before noon.

Stopping to give his final instructions to the coxwain of No. 6, and impressing upon him to follow at a cable's length in her consort's wake, McIntosh boarded the lighter which for the nonce was to be the leading craft. Already the twin heavy oil engines were "warming up," making the decks quiver, and filling the air with oil-laden smoke.

Making his way aft to the rough wooden hut that served as a wheel-house, the Sub gave the signal to the engine-room staff to "stand by."

"Rummiest packets that ever sailed under the White Ensign," he soliloquised, as his eye caught sight of the dingy bunting floating from the yard-arm of the lighters' stumpy masts. "Ah, well; it's all in a day's work."

He gave the telegraph lever another jerk.

"Cast off!" he shouted.

Sluggishly the deeply-laden barge gathered way. She had a freeboard of barely ten inches—a fact that portended wet decks before long.

Having satisfied himself that No. 6 was following, McIntosh devoted his attention to shaping a course out of harbour, undergoing a dozen mental thrills as his unwieldy packet scraped past buoys and showed a decided tendency to commit suicide across the steel stems of a couple of anchored cruisers.

Once clear of the harbour, the Sub called to a seaman.

"Take her," he ordered, handing over the wheel. "Keep her as she is: south a half west."

"South a half west it is, sir," replied the man in the time-honoured formula of the sea.

Free to devote his attention to other things, McIntosh secured the storm-flap of his oilskin coat and, leaving the shelter of the wheel-house, looked towards the following boat.

No. 6 was coming along well. The "bone in her teeth" glistened white as she pushed her snub nose through the waves. Both craft were "taking it green" as the water flowed over the tarpaulined hatches and surged along the broad waterways.

"We'll carry our tide for another hour," he said to himself. "Then it'll be a slow job. One thing, we can't have every blessed thing in life, but I hope to goodness nothing goes wrong."

He glanced ahead. In an incredibly short space of time, the bold outlines of Dunkennet Head had vanished. Dead to windward haze, possibly fog, was bearing down. It was something that McIntosh had not bargained for. The glass had shown indications of fine weather, but unfortunately it was not capable of indicating the approach of mist.

"Hazy ahead," he remarked to the petty officer.

"Yes, sir," was the reply. "Will you be altering course a point or so, sir? There's a nasty set of the tide inshore about these parts."

"Yes," decided the Sub, and gave the necessary instructions to the helmsman.

"Get a nun-buoy ready to veer astern," he continued, "and signal to No. 6 to keep the thing dose under her bows. If she doesn't, we'll be losing each other."

While the men were making these preparations the hideous clamour of No. 6's foghorn attracted their attention. The lighters had increased their distance to nearly a quarter of a mile, and No. 6 was still dropping astern.

"Ask 'em what's wrong," ordered McIntosh.

A signalman, steadying himself with feet planted widely apart on the plunging deck, semaphored the message. From No. 6 two red and yellow hand-flags replied. McIntosh, unable to follow the swift movements of the flags, was obliged to await the signalman's report:

"Says, sir, she's overheated her bearings. She'll have to stop or her engines'll seize up."

It was exactly what the Sub was anticipating, and now trouble had come he met it promptly and resolutely.

"Tell them to stand by and receive a hawser," he ordered, at the same time ringing down for "Slow." "Look alive, there, with that six-inch rope."

While the men were engaged in bringing one end of the hawser to the after "towing-bitts," McIntosh took the helm and began to run to starboard in order to close with the disabled lighter. He was working against time, for already the mist was upon them—the outflung tentacles of a bank of fog. With a range of visibility of three or four hundred yards, matters were somewhat complicated, but the manoeuvre of establishing communication with the helpless craft would be rendered fourfold difficult, should the baffling fog envelop the two boats.

"All ready with the heaving-line?" shouted the Sub.

"All ready, sir."

Slowly, even for the low-speed lighter, McIntosh, made for the disabled vessel, which was now lying broadside on to the fairly confused sea. The Sub was cautious. Strange to the boat, he knew that there was a vast difference between the manoeuvring capabilities of an M.L. and a lighter, and with that fact in mind he displayed an excess of caution.

Almost before he realised the danger, disaster came. Answering too slowly to her helm, No. 5 crashed heavily against the bluff steel bows of No. 6. Amidst the hiss of inrushing water, the two engineers scrambled through the smoke-laden atmosphere of the motor-room and gained the deck with the tidings that the sea was pouring in like a mill-race. And to add to the peril the fog was then enveloping the colliding craft.

There seemed no doubt about it: No. 5 was sinking. Had she been struck anywhere but right aft, her heavy rubbing-strake would have saved her. As it was she had been hit in a vital spot—her engine-room.

As luck would have it, both lighters drifted together, their metal-bound sides grinding and bumping in the agitated waves. Since No. 5 was evidently sinking, the only refuge for her crew was the deck of disabled No. 6.

"Jump for it!" shouted McIntosh. "Every man for himself."

Waiting till the last, the Sub snatched up his confidential papers, thrust them into the pocket of his oilskins, and, as the two lighters rolled heavily together, he made a flying leap for the deck of No. 6.

He was not a moment too soon. At the next roll there was a gap of five or six yards between the two vessels. Separated by a freak eddy of the tidal stream, they increased their distance more and more, until the holed lighter, with her stern level with the water, was lost to sight in the fog.

CHAPTER X

THE SALVAGE SYNDICATE

"What's your little game, Cumberleigh?" demanded the major. "Hanged if I can see what you are driving at."

Lunch was over at Auldhaig Air Station. Most of the officers had drifted in twos and threes into the ante-room to seize the opportunity of enjoying a smoke before falling in on parade. The second-in-command and Captain Cumberleigh found themselves alone.

"I may be mistaken, sir," replied Cumberleigh, "but I'm not at all sure about that fellow Fennelburt."

"What d'ye mean, old thing? asked the major.

"It's a rotten business to explain," replied the captain. "I hope I don't do the fellow an injustice, but I believe he's a spy."

Major Sparrowhawk raised his eyebrows in a manner that indicated incredulous objection.

"Goodness gracious, Cumberleigh!" he exclaimed. "What are you driving at? The idea's preposterous. There are limits to the imagination, and I think you're exceeding them."

"I have reasons, sir,"

"Well, what are they?"

"You remember I asked him about Smithers and Tomlinson? I know for a fact that they were both at Sheerness a week ago."

"Yes, and Captain Fennelburt said he knew them."

"He did—but I deliberately gave him a totally wrong description of them. Smithers is fat, but he's short—about five six, I should think—and he certainly hasn't a mole under his eye. Tomlinson is fair, not dark, and I've never known him to touch a card either in the mess or out of it."

"There are some very queer cusses in the Service, I'll admit," remarked Major Sparrowhawk thoughtfully. "Getting a commission in war time isn't the same as in normal times. The chap may be pulling your leg, Cumberleigh. But why did you pal up to him and promise to take him to the theatre and all that?"

"Just to gain time, sir," answered Captain Cumberleigh. "I thought I'd ask your permission to telegraph to Sheerness Air Station. The inquiry could be worded discreetly, and if the reply's satisfactory there's no harm done. If it isn't, then we can take action."

"But what aroused your suspicions in the first instance?" asked the second-in-command.

Cumberleigh shrugged his shoulders.

"Just a little mannerism of his, sir," he replied. "I've never before tumbled across it on this side of the Rhine. Spent part of my far distant youth at Heidelburg, and one notices certain things. So I've practically put the fellow under arrest, only he doesn't know it. Young Jefferson'll take him fishing this afternoon, and in the meanwhile the wires can be getting busy."

"Bet you a double whisky you're wrong, Cumberleigh," offered Major Sparrowhawk.

"Done, sir," was the prompt reply.

Meanwhile Lieutenant Jefferson, assisted by a couple of air-mechanics, was getting his boat ready for the fishing expedition. One of the advantages of being in the Service in war time is that the uniformed owner of a private boat has a "pull" over his civilian confrère. The one can make use of his craft almost without restraint the other is hedged in by a formidable and galling array of restrictions that are none the less necessary for the well-being of the State.

The Pip-squeak, Jefferson's boat, was about fifteen feet in length and provided with a standing lug-sail and centre-board. Formerly she belonged to an Auldhaig waterman, who on being mobilised for the R.N.R. sold her for £3. Her new owner, who contrived to escape the irregular meshes of the Recruiting Officer's net, had palmed the Pip-squeak off on Jefferson for six times the amount he had paid, or, roughly, the same sum that the boat had cost to build twenty years ago.

The Pip-squeak was no chicken, nor did she lay claim to beauty. Bluff-bowed, and with an almost entire lack of sheer, she had one compensating quality: she was as stiff as a house.

At the edge of the jetty gathered most of the crew—Cumberleigh, Jefferson, a "second loot" named Pyecroft, and von Preussen.

"An' what are we waitin' for?" demanded Pyecroft, clapping his hands and stamping his feet. "When I go sailing I like to get on with it. What are we waitin' for?"

"Bait," replied Jefferson laconically.

"A sine quâ non for a fishing expedition," added the major, who, though not one of the party, had strolled down to the jetty ostensibly to see the start but in reality to observe "Captain Fennelburt" more closely. The seeds of suspicion are apt to shoot rapidly.

"Here's Blenkinson with the bait," announced Cumberleigh, as another khaki-clad individual, a first lieutenant, appeared carrying a rusty tin in one hand and a mud-covered spade in the other.

"Here are your precious rag-worms, Jeff," he remarked bitterly. "Next time you get me on that job I'll borrow your rubber boots. The mud's stiff with broken glass, and I've cut mine through—look."

To prove his words, Blenkinson adroitly balanced himself on one foot and kicked off a rubber boot. As the foot-gear fell upon the wooden staging of the jetty a quart of black sea-water poured out.

Jefferson sniffed judiciously at the tin.

"Fresh enough," he observed, "but, old son, pity you didn't devote your energies to the worms instead of wasting your time pulling bits of glass out of your boots. These won't last any time."

"No more will my boots, you slave-driving blighter," rejoined the worm-digger. "I'll swear I shifted a ton of mud without finding a single worm."

"Don't stop there arguing all the blessed afternoon!" exclaimed Cumberleigh. "If we can't fish we can sail. 'Once aboard the lugger,' my hearties."

The party embarked awkwardly after the fashion of men wearing breeches, puttees or leggings, and heavy boots. With the exception of Jefferson and von Preussen, they were raw amateurs in the art of sailing save on board a coastal airship. On those occasions they shone. In the present instance they did not.

The spy was on his best behaviour. Although he kept his eyes and ears open, he purposely avoided asking any questions relating to naval or military affairs at Auldhaig. Once, when Cumberleigh tried to "draw" him by pointing out the scene of the disaster to the Pompey, von Preussen adroitly changed the subject by a reference to the forthcoming performance of "The Maid of the Mountains."

For an hour or more the Pip-squeak made steady progress under a stiffish breeze. She was by no means a flyer, but on the other hand she sailed well with the wind broad on the beam. Beyond a few slaps of spray she proved herself a dry boat, so that the crew, with the exception of Jefferson, who was at the helm, were able to sit on the bottom boards and smoke to their heart's content.

"Get a move on, you lazy hogs!" exclaimed Jefferson. "We're close on the right spot. Down with the canvas! Blenkinson, stand by to let go the anchor."

With a splash the anchor was lowered to obtain a grip in ten fathoms of water. Riding head to wind and tide, the boat brought up, pitching sharply in the short crested waves.

As long as the supply of bait lasted, sport was good. So engrossed were the sportsmen that they failed to notice that the wind was rising, and with the turn of the tide the waves were growing decidedly vicious.

"Hadn't we better be getting a move on?" suddenly inquired Cumberleigh, as he realised that the motion was causing an uncomfortable sensation in the pit of his stomach. "Remember, some of us are going to the theatre to-night."

"What's the hurry, old bean?" inquired the enthusiastic boat-sailer, Jefferson. "If it comes to that, you can see the 'Mountains' from here, although there's no 'Maid'—not even a mermaid. But, I say, what's that?"

He pointed seawards. At about a mile distant was a long, low-lying black hull, apparently drifting broadside on to the waves.

"Boche submarine, perhaps," ventured the facetious Pyecroft. "She's coming to give us a tow back to Auldhaig. Did anyone remember to bring a Lewis gun in his trouser pocket?"

With the others, von Preussen looked in the direction of the mysterious craft. He had no pressing desire to renew acquaintance with one of His Imperial Majesty's unterseebooten, although the consequences would be far less awkward for him than it would be for his present companions. But a brief glance assured him on that point. The craft, whatever it might be, was certainly not a U-boat. No amount of camouflage could alter that.

"She's a derelict," exclaimed Jefferson. "Get up the anchor, you fellows. We'll run alongside and have a look at her."

Quickly the anchor was broken out and the sail hoisted. Cumberleigh, who had been silently keeping the derelict under observation, suddenly turned and thumped von Preussen on the shoulder.

"Fennelburt," he vociferated, "Providence has played into your hands! You came here to inspect X-barges. Lo and behold, one of them obligingly drifts down to greet you!"

"You're right, Cumberleigh," said Pyecroft. "It's one of those that left Auldhaig this morning. I saw them go out. That red-haired Scot chap—McIntosh, you know him—was in charge."

"Hanged if he is now, at any rate," added Jefferson. "An' the old thing is well down by the stern. I believe she's sinking."

It took ten minutes for the Pip-squeak to close with X-lighter No. 5. Running up into the wind on the lee side, Jefferson got way off the boat.

"How about it, you fellows?" he inquired. "Think it's safe to run alongside?"

"Might have a shot at it, old thing," replied Cumberleigh. "She hasn't altered her trim during the last five or ten minutes. I say, do we get salvage on a job like this, or is there some rotten regulation debarring underpaid officers from making a bit? What do you make of her, Fennelburt? You are a marine expert."

Von Preussen, who had been maintaining a discreet silence, ventured an opinion that it might be safe to board her provided the sailing-boat were kept alongside.

"Good enough," replied Cumberleigh. "You, Blenkinson and I will comprise the boarding-party; the others stand by in the boat. En avant, mes braves! Over the top you go, and the best of luck."

Fending off the Pip-squeak lest her planks should be stove in against the massive rubbing-strake of the lighter, the three men contrived to effect a safe transhipment. A brief examination revealed the fact that the derelict had been in collision and that she had been badly holed right aft. The engine-room was flooded, and only the iron bulkhead between it and the hold had kept the craft from foundering.

"Now what's to be done?" inquired Blenkinson. "We can't tow her in. That's a moral cert."

"No, but we can send for a tug," said Cumberleigh. "Jefferson can sail back to Auldhaig in about an hour even if he doesn't fall in with a tug or even an M.L. on the way."

"What about 'The Maid of the Mountains'?" asked Blenkinson.

"We'll cut the appointment," replied the captain, with a laugh. "Excuse—the exigencies of the Service."

"But," protested von Preussen, "the lighter might founder. We should be in an awkward predicament if she did, the boat having left us. I would suggest that we all go back in the Pip-squeak and report the matter."

"I agree," added Blenkinson. "After all's said and done, we don't stand a chance of getting anything out of the deal. And what matters if the old tub does sink? Her value is but a mere fleabite out of six millions a day."

But Captain Cumberleigh was made of sterner stuff. Once having set his hand to this maritime plough, he was loth to turn back.

"We'll stick it," he decided resolutely. "Jefferson will cruise around in case of an accident. If we find we are drifting on shore we can let go that anchor. I don't see there's much to get the wind up about."

"Cheers for the R.A.F. Salvage Syndicate," exclaimed Blenkinson, fired by his companion's enthusiasm, but von Preussen merely shrugged his shoulders. He hadn't risked the perils of the North Sea in order to protect the property of His Majesty the King of England.

CHAPTER XI

VON PREUGFELD'S RESOLVE

"Donnerwetter! I am utterly sick of this business, Kaspar," whispered Seaman Furst. "It is the life of a dog, or worse. If this war is not over by the beginning of the winter there will be trouble amongst the unterseebooten crews."

"S'sh, not so loud," cautioned his companion, as the grumbler raised his voice towards the end of his tirade. "I agree with you, Hans. This game does not pay. We were told that we should save the Fatherland and bring England to her knees by our submarines. But have we? Just look! Here we are hungry, wet and unhappy, yet in England there is, they say, plenty. Just before we left Cuxhaven my wife had a letter from her brother who is a prisoner in England. He wrote and said that even our men who are held in captivity receive three good meals a day."

"That is what I do not understand," remarked Hans Furst. "If we are winning, as our officers tell us we are, how comes it that we cannot get eatable food? Of course, at the beginning of the war we were lucky. All we had to do was to run alongside an English merchantman, take what we wanted in the way of food and tobacco, and then sink her; but now——"

"But now," continued Kaspar Krauss, taking up the parable, "every strafed English ship has a gun, and one never knows but that a coasting vessel is not a death-trap for us. You remember that fishing-smack off Flamborough?"

Furst shuddered.

"Will I ever forget it?" he answered. "'Tis marvellous that we live to tell the tale. What would I not give for a life ashore with a tankard of Munich beer, a loaf of good bread and cheese? And tobacco—what is tobacco? I have almost forgotten."

"There was some in that Dutch vessel we burnt a week ago," said Krauss.

Furst clenched his fists.

"And where did it go?" he demanded. "That schweinhund our kapitan put it under lock and key. He and the pig-faced von Loringhoven smoke every night when we rise to recharge batteries, but never a cigar or a pipeful comes our way."

"We'll be back again on Friday if all goes well," said the other. "Then we can enjoy ourselves."

"Enjoy ourselves!" echoed Furst contemptuously. "How? I've got a bundle of notes in my belt, but precious little use are they. In the good old days a mark was a mark, but now——"

"Yes, I know," snarled Krauss. "Just before the war I came back from America on the George Washington with eight hundred and fifty marks to my name. I was going to buy a small business in Bremen and settle down to a life ashore. I should have done well. Then came the war. The rascally swindlers told us that if we lent our money to the State it would be repaid with twenty-five per cent. when peace was proclaimed. Just imagine! I handed over my eight hundred marks in silver, fool that I was! Even supposing the government does pay me back a thousand marks, it will be in rotten paper money, and I know that five thousand now will not buy the place I had offered to me for eight hundred and fifty four years ago."

"There will be trouble," agreed Furst. "Do you know that there is a movement amongst the men of the U-boats' crews to hoist the Red Flag?"

"Have I not heard of it!" exclaimed Kaspar grimly. "And when the time comes here is one who will jump at the opportunity. Now, at——"

The clang of a gong interrupted the discourse. The men jumped up smartly. The cast-iron discipline of the German Navy was as yet too powerful a force to be flouted by embryo revolutionists.

"Empty two and four tanks," came a guttural order through a voice tube. "And be quick about it, you numskulls!"

U 247 was preparing to rise to the surface in order to verify her position. For several hours she had rested on the bottom, scared by the presence of a swarm of destroyers and M.L.'s which had hurried to avenge the bombardment of Aberspey.

The material damage to the little town had been slight—almost negligible—for the majority of the shells had fallen in open spaces. Two people had been slightly injured by flying fragments. Actual destruction of military property was nil. Financially the bombardment was a failure. The cost of the ammunition far exceeded that of the damage; but morally an insult had been offered to the island shores of Britain, and the destroyer flotillas were quick to avenge the affront.

Ober-leutnant Hans von Preugfeld, kapitan of U 247, had acted with great discretion after his brave bombardment of Aberspey. "Legging it," submerged for several miles, he allowed the submarine to lie on the bottom for a considerable period. Then, hearing no suspicious sounds, he had the motors restarted and, the while submerged, shifted his position a good five miles. At length, assuming that it was safe to blow ballast-tanks and come to the surface, he gave the necessary orders.

Directly a patch of white light showed upon the object-bowl of the periscope, signifying that the tip of the latter had "broken surface," von Preugfeld made a cautious survey. Through nearly three hundred degrees the periscope revolved. Then, abruptly, the kapitan checked the rotary movement of the training-wheel.

"Come here, Eitel!" he exclaimed peremptorily.

Von Preugfeld stood aside to allow the unter-leutnant to view the object that had attracted his superior's attention.

"Come now," said the ober-leutnant irritably. "What do you make of it?"

"It is a vessel of some kind, Herr Kapitan," replied Eitel von Loringhoven.

"Of course it is," snapped von Preugfeld. "Any fool could see that. What I want to know is: what sort of craft is it? Stand aside if you cannot do better than that."

"It is a long, low-lying craft painted black," resumed Loringhoven, retaining his place at the periscope in order to ingratiate himself in the eyes of his commanding officer. "There are men standing aft. Amidships I can see a small sail—it may be that there is a sailing boat alongside."

"That's better," remarked von Preugfeld, literally pushing the unter-leutnant aside. "Port helm fifteen degrees," he ordered. "A touch ahead with both motors."

The U-boat shuddered under the beats of the twin screws, then forging slowly ahead approached the puzzling object.

"Stop!"

A bell clanged somewhere in the confined recesses of the modern pirate craft. At a curt nod from the kapitan the quartermaster pulled over a lever which had the effect of actuating the twin horizontal rudders. Once more the periscope reared its sinister head above the waves.

"Ach! I see men in uniform," exclaimed von Preugfeld. "We must be cautious. Men in khaki," he continued, scratching his closely cropped head in perplexity. "I cannot understand it. Look again, Eitel: can you see if she carries any guns or torpedo-tubes?"

"None, as far as I can see, Herr Kapitan," replied von Loringhoven after a careful scrutiny. "To me it looks as if she is sinking. Her stern is well down. Yes, there is a sailing-boat alongside or close to her. The boat is moving ahead."

"We will submerge and come up again on the other side," declared von Preugfeld. "We may then solve the mystery. Down to ten metres," he ordered.

Bubbling with latent insubordination, Furst and Krauss at their posts at the auxiliary ballast-tank valves obeyed promptly. In spite of all their revolutionary tendencies and expressions of general "fed-uppedness," they realised that their lives depended upon the prompt execution of their hated superior's orders. Knowing nothing of what was going on without, they submitted to discipline as the only remedy for their present predicament. After a period of ten minutes' total submergence the periscope shoved its squat snout above the surface—like a reluctant puppy about to receive a hiding. When a periscope is in danger of getting a blinding blow in the shape of a six-pounder shell, or the hull to which it belongs is liable to be pulverised by a trio of torpedoes, the need for extreme caution becomes apparent.

"They have not observed us," muttered von Preugfeld with fervent gratitude to the providence that looks after Hun submarines. "There's 'X 5' painted on her bows. Know what that means, Eitel?"

Von Loringhoven confessed that he did not. In spite of a careful perusal of all works dealing with numbers and nomenclature of British shipping—and Berlin was kept fairly up-to-date in such matters—the mystic symbol "X 5" was to him an unknown quantity. Incidentally it recalled days when he was studying mathematics at the Kiel Naval College.

The ober-leutnant steadied the periscope and touched a switch. Immediately, by the introduction of a special lens, the "field" covered by the eye-piece of the periscope was reduced, but the object actually seen was considerably magnified. It was like looking through a telescope.

"They are men of the English Air Force," he observed. "I believe—here, Eitel, look—the man walking for'ard. What do you make of him?"

"Donnerwetter!" ejaculated von Loringhoven. "Surely it is our friend von Preussen?"

"Yes," replied the ober-leutnant. "Von Preussen playing the part of a Jonah to an English whale. I wonder what he does there?"

"It would be well to clear out and leave him alone, Herr Kapitan," suggested von Loringhoven. "It could only be that von Preussen is engaged in highly important confidential work that brings him afloat again. Himmel! He is a clever fellow."

The ober-leutnant tugged at his moustache thoughtfully. Eager to have a finger in any pie without the risk of burning himself, he was loth to take his subordinate's advice. Here, apparently, was an unarmed craft, crewless, with the exception of a few officers. To him it suggested that highly confidential experiments were being carried on—so important that no one beneath the rank of officer was permitted to be present. Perhaps they were staff officers of high rank?

Eagerly von Preugfeld kept each man under observation. The trench-coats gave no indication of their wearers' rank, but —disappointing fact—none of the officers wore gilt leaves round the peaks of their caps. The sailing-boat alongside was also a puzzle. Why should the experimenters make use of an insignificant sailing-boat when there were steam pinnaces and motor launches available?

"Stand by!" he ordered. "Guns' crews prepare to take your stations. Blow main and auxiliary tanks."

Bells clanged, valves hissed and pumps grated, men hurried to and fro in execution of loud-voiced orders.

Von Preugfeld turned to his unter-leutnant.

"Bring her up," he ordered. "I am going to take those fellows prisoners."

CHAPTER XII

PRISONERS OF WAR

"What in the name of goodness is that?" exclaimed Captain Cumberleigh.

He knew perfectly well. The sight of a slender pole inclined slightly from the perpendicular and throwing out a double feather of spray as it cleft the water told him that it was the periscope of a submarine.

His exclamation attracted the attention of his companions. Even as they looked appeared the tip of the second periscope, followed almost immediately by the bows and conning-tower of the submarine. Then like a gigantic whale the long, bulging hull slithered above the surface, the water pouring from its deck in cascades of swirling foam.

"One of our submarines, by Jove!" exclaimed Pyecroft. "Wonder what she's doing here?"

"A Hun!" corrected Cumberleigh. "We're properly in the soup, you fellows."

He gave a hurried glance in the only direction from which they could expect aid—skywards. Not an aircraft of any description was in sight. The gorgeous prospect of seeing a seaplane swoop down upon an incautious Fritz was out of the question.

"Jefferson!" he shouted. "Run for it, man. Don't wait for us."

The owner of the Pip-squeak took in the situation at a glance. True, the U-boat was between him and the shore, but there was a stiff leading wind. While the Hun was concentrating his attention upon the X-lighter the sailing-boat had a fair chance of getting away, but Jefferson was a "white man."

"No fear, old bird!" he shouted. "We're all in this stunt. I am coming on board."

With that he ran the sailing-boat alongside the barge, and, without waiting to lower the sail, leapt on deck and secured the painter.

Meanwhile the hatches of the U-boat had been thrown open and her two guns manned and trained point-blank upon the helpless lighter.

"'Fraid this isn't the time for a death-or-glory stunt," remarked Cumberleigh. "Fritz is evidently 'one up.'"

Of the five, "Captain Fennelburt" was the least perturbed. The spy was distinctly annoyed at the unexpected turn of events. It looked as if his carefully prepared campaign was to be nipped in the bud. Consequently he was liable to heavy financial loss in addition to a waste of valuable time, for his employers in Berlin paid only for definite results. "No work, no pay," was the motto of the German Secret Service, and before von Preussen could be landed in Great Britain again weeks might elapse. As a secondary consideration, there was the doubt of how he would be received by his compatriots. For very good reasons he wished to conceal his identity from his companions on the lighter. In spite of strenuous precautions, British prisoners of war sometimes contrived to effect their escape, and it would be a very serious matter for von Preussen if it became known through the medium of a former captive in Germany that the soi-disant Captain Fennelburt was a Secret Service agent of the German Intelligence Department.

"Gentlemen!" observed Pyecroft facetiously. "The R.A.F. Salvage Syndicate is dissolved."

With her guns still trained upon the lighter, U 247 approached slowly and with evident hesitation. At the back of von Preugfeld's mind lurked the haunting suspicion that X 5 was a snare. The very temptingness of the bait increased his suspicions. Perhaps a British submarine was lying in wait to blow him and his U-boat to atoms; or somewhere in the clouds a coastal airship was floating motionless, awaiting an opportunity to swoop down and let loose an aerial torpedo before the Germans had time to close hatches and submerge.

On the other hand, there was von Preussen, clad in a British R.A.F. uniform and standing seemingly unconcerned upon the lighter's deck. Surely, if there were a trap, the Hun would contrive to make a mute signal to his compatriots.

Von Preussen gave none. He was content to let events take their course.

Presently U 247 reversed engines and brought up within half a cable's length of the barge. Clambering upon the raised platform abaft the conning-tower, the kapitan raised a megaphone to his lips.

His delivery of English was execrable, but he was unaware of the fact. He rather prided himself on the knowledge that he could speak the language, having learnt it from a third-rate German professor in a minor university in the Fatherland.

"You vos surrender make!" he shouted. "It all of an instant up is mit you. Get into der leedle boat and put you yourselves on board dis scheep. If you drouble giff, den we shoot."

"Right-o, old bean!" hailed Cumberleigh in reply.

Von Preugfeld was puzzled by the reply. Mentally he resolved at the first opportunity to consult Volume II (Ba-Cu) of a British Encyclopaedia that he had on board.

"Look you pointed about it!" he exclaimed angrily. "I you give half a minute to quit der boat."

"Come on, boys!" said Cumberleigh. "The old josser's getting jumpy."

"Is that an order or a request, Cumberleigh?" asked Pyecroft. "If it's an order, well and good; if not, I'm not having any."

"Please yourself, old man," replied the captain. "And the very best of luck."

The four stepped into the Pip-squeak. Her sail was hurriedly stowed, and under oars the boat approached the submarine.

"Der vos five!" exclaimed Ober-leutnant von Preugfeld, as the prisoners came over the side. "Vere is der odder?"

A look of blank ignorance appeared on each man's face. Even the spy failed to betray any sign that would reveal the secret. The kapitan turned to a petty officer.

"Place these men below," he ordered.

"These three in No. 3 store-room; this one will go aft. You, there," he added, addressing another seaman. "Take an axe and knock out the garboards of that boat."

Cumberleigh, Blenkinson and Jefferson found themselves escorted below in double quick time. When fear hangs on the heels of a U-boat's crew the promptness to execute an order borders on panic. Literally hustled along a narrow alley-way bristling with dozens, nay, scores, of valve-wheels, they were bundled into a dark, moisture-laden recess that at one time contained a quantity of consumable stores. The door was slammed and locked, and the three R.A.F. officers found themselves prisoners of war under highly objectionable circumstances—trapped in a U-boat.

Giving another glance skywards and all around the horizon, von Preugfeld walked aft to the hatchway through which von Preussen had disappeared. "I'll see you in the ward-room in less than five minutes, von Preussen," he said. "Apparently this affair requires an explanation. But what has become of the fourth Englishman?"

"Still on board," replied the spy. "He's trying to evade capture."

"There is an alternative," remarked the ober-leutnant grimly. "He's welcome to it."

Making his way back to the outside of the conning-tower, von Preugfeld noted that his order concerning the sailing-boat had been carried out. Levelling his binocular, he scanned the shelving deck of the X-lighter. There was no sign of life on board X 5.

Ringing for half speed, von Preugfeld increased the distance between the U-boat and her prize to three hundred yards.

"Give her a round amidships!" he ordered.

The U-boat rolled sluggishly to starboard under the recoil of the gun. Almost simultaneously with the report of the weapon came the crash of exploding shell. Amidst a welter of foam and yellow smoke X 5 disappeared beneath the waves, leaving the water dotted with floating debris in the shape of buoyant articles released from her hold by the shattering of her hatches.

For a full half-minute the ober-leutnant kept the flotsam under observation; then, satisfied that his work of destruction had been accomplished in its entirety, and that to remain on the surface much longer after the roar of the explosion was hazardous, he turned to von Loringhoven.

"Down to twenty-five metres," he ordered. "Course due west at eight knots for ten minutes. Then let her sound."

Leaving the unter-leutnant to carry out his instructions, von Preugfeld made his way to the cabin where the returned spy awaited him.

"I hardly expected to see you so soon, Karl," he began. "I hope I haven't disturbed your elaborate plans."

"You have," replied the spy, with marked emphasis.

"Himmel! How is that? Were you taken into the confidence of these English officers, and were your investigations a secret project that was being experimented upon to the disadvantage of the Fatherland?"

"You have put me to considerable inconvenience," replied von Preussen. "My kit is at an hotel at Auldhaig."

"No compromising documents, I hope?" asked the kapitan anxiously.

"No; but a man cannot get about in comfort without his travelling belongings," remarked the spy. "You will have to land me again, but my venture in the Auldhaig district is a failure. It means that I must make my way south and try my luck in Dover and Portsmouth. And I was getting on so nicely with those fellows at the air station," he added, little knowing to what purpose the hospitality had been extended.

"And what was the experiment?" asked von Preugfeld.

"Experiment? There was no experiment," declared the spy. "Those fools of Englishmen took a liking to me and insisted on my going with them on a fishing expedition. We fell in with an almost water-logged barge, and while we were exploring you appeared. Now comes the question, where and when do you intend to set me ashore?"

Von Preugfeld's feelings were far from those of composure. On the one hand, he had sunk an English vessel of sorts. It was true that she looked like sinking before, but that was a side issue. He had made a capture of three English officers and had killed a fourth. Unfortunately, they were of no great rank as he had hoped—merely junior officers. On the other hand, he would have to delay his return journey in order to set von Preussen ashore. Stores, fuel and provisions were already running short, and the delay would mean considerable inconvenience, possibly danger. His afternoon's work, like that of the bombardment of Aberspey, was not worth the candle.

"I have already carried out instructions with reference to yourself," he remarked stiffly.

"And almost immediately you have undone all the work required of you in the matter," added the spy.

The ober-leutnant shrugged his shoulders. He was obstinate, pig-headed and arrogant, but in argument he was no match for the trained finesse of the Secret Service agent.

"As a favour——" he began.

"No—as a right," corrected von Preussen firmly.

"Donnerwetter! You insist too much," grumbled von Preugfeld. "I suppose there is nothing to be done but to fall in with your whim."

"With official instructions," interpolated the spy.

"Have your own way then," snapped the ober-leutnant. "To land you must necessarily entail night-work. I propose, then, to set you ashore at the same place as before. We are, in fact, within a couple of miles of it, and you will observe that we have shut off the motors, and U 247 is even now resting on the bed of the German Ocean. I would suggest that you should walk to Nedderburn and catch the mail train south that stops at the junction shortly after three in the morning."

"And more than likely stumble across some of the officers and men from Auldhaig Air Station," objected the spy. "No, my friend, I prefer to lay my own plans; then, if anything does go wrong, I have only myself to blame. And since Captain George Fennelburt is either a prisoner of war or 'missing—presumed drowned,' I must needs beg, borrow or steal another name. Henceforth, until further notice, I am Captain Broadstone, also of the Royal Air Force. Will you oblige me by lending me a pen? There are certain forms which I must now fill in to bear out my new character."

CHAPTER XIII

A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE

With Captain Cumberleigh's valedictory words ringing in his ears, Pyecroft began his preparations to avoid capture. While his comrades were hurriedly lowering the Pipsqueak's sail, the "second loot," hidden from the pirate craft by the flapping canvas, slipped over the side as noiselessly and silently as an eel.

The shock of the icy-cold water almost took his breath away.

"By gosh!" he muttered. "It is a bit of a stinger. But cheer up, old son, you may get it pretty hot in a very short time."

With that he dived under the lighter's hull. Literally groping his way down the weed and barnacle-covered bottom, he scraped under the keel and up again on the other side until darkness gave place to a glint of pale green water that in turn gave place to the salt-laden air. He had now placed the hull of No. 5 between him and the U-boat. So far so good, but the late member of the R.A.F. Salvage Syndicate had to consider another pressing problem.

Even supposing, as he fondly hoped, that the Huns had not noticed him, it was logical to assume that they would not sheer off before sending the lighter to Davy Jones's locker. How? By ramming? Hardly. A U-boat would not hesitate to crash into a ship's boat deeply laden with the survivors of a torpedoed merchantman, but she would think twice before trying conclusions with the lighter's massive rubbing-strake. By placing bombs on board? That meant making use of a boat and consequently delay. Gunfire? Yes; that looked like the answer to the question.

Now for the subsidiary problem. Assuming that the Huns would turn a quick-firer upon the lighter, where would they aim? At the engine-room? Hardly, as the stern was already awash. Amidships, into the heavily-laden hold, the work of destruction would be most easily accomplished.

"So here's for her bows," decided Pyecroft, having reviewed the situation. "If my theories are all wrong, then it's a case of 'going west.'" He swam with slow, easy strokes towards the bows. There was no immediate hurry, since the boat with his companions had not yet reached the pirate submarine. He knew that he had to conserve his strength and his energies for the ordeal that promised to be forthcoming.

To his great delight, he found a rope trailing overboard. A tug reassured him that it was made fast to the towing bollards. By hanging on to it Pyecroft could support himself with ease, while the bluff, overhanging bows would effectually screen him should any of the Huns board the abandoned craft.

For a long-drawn ten minutes—it seemed like ten hours—Pyecroft waited. Already the numbing cold was taking effect. His upstretched arm seemed to have lost all sensation of feeling. It was merely the grip of the tightly closed fingers, contracted by the cold, that supported him.

Then with appalling suddenness came the crash of the exploding shell. Jerked almost clear of the water, Pyecroft had a vision of the forepart of the massive hull rearing high in the air. Flying debris hurtled over him, pungent smoke filled the air. Then, with a rush of eddying water, the X-lighter slithered beneath the waves.

Under cover of the smoke Pyecroft struck out. Fragments hurled high in the air were now falling all around him, while buoyant objects, taken down by the vortex, were rising to the surface with terrific force. A plank, the jagged edge of which would have almost cut the swimmer in two, shot upwards from beneath the waves. Missing him by inches, it described a parabola, rising to a height of twenty feet or more before it fell back with a resounding smack.

With his senses deadened by the stupendous roar, the pungent smoke and the coldness of the water, Pyecroft kept himself afloat automatically until he came in contact with a huge wicker basket that was floating upside down with about a third of its bulk exposed.

As he grasped it, the basket turned completely over, the rim striking the swimmer a smart rap on the face. The sting of the blow had the effect of partly restoring his mental faculties. Gaining a firmer grip of the basket, he took stock of his surroundings.

The surface of the water was coated with a deposit of oil, for part of the cargo of X 5 had consisted of turps, linseed, and lubricating oil in casks. One effect of the explosion of the shell had been to liberate the contents of the casks; another, the oil acted as an antidote to the coldness of the water.

Before the haze of smoke had completely disappeared Pyecroft drew the basket over his head. Within there was enough space to keep his head clear of the water, and at the same time there remained considerable buoyancy on the part of the stout wicker-work.

Presently the outlines of the U-boat that had been responsible for Pyecroft's predicament became visible. She was slowly forging ahead. Her deck was deserted. She was preparing to submerge.

"She's gone," he soliloquised. "That's a blessing. I wouldn't swop places with Cumberleigh for a tenner."

He dodged outside his place of concealment and glanced around. A hundred yards away was the water-logged Pip-squeak. Even with her garboard smashed the staunchly built boat kept afloat.

"Wonder if I can do it?" thought the swimmer.

Fumbling with benumbed fingers to draw a knife from his pocket, he proceeded to cut the laces of his leggings.

"There's thirty-one and six gone," he muttered ruefully. "An' they aren't paid for yet."

His boots were likewise ruthlessly sacrificed. Then, quitting his hold of the basket, he struck out towards the derelict boat. A few strokes convinced him that the overhand method of swimming has its disadvantages when hampered with sodden clothing. The breast stroke, he found, required comparatively little effort, yet by the time he covered that hundred yards he felt that he had reached the limit of his prowess in the swimming line.

Grasping the gunwale, Pyecroft attempted to clamber into the boat, with the result that the water-logged boat dipped completely under his weight.

At the second attempt he slithered over the transom and, still submerged, lightly grasped one of the thwarts. Here was a precarious shelter. Provided he made no attempt to draw himself clear of the water, there was just sufficient buoyancy to keep him afloat.

His next task—there was little time before he would be overcome by the cold—was to unship the mast and lash it to the thwarts. Thrice the boat dipped before the effort met with success. The stout spar, secured to the thwarts by the main-sheets and halliards, added considerably to the liveliness of the boat.

An oar, amongst other flotsam, drifted alongside. This Pyecroft secured, and by its aid added another oar, although of different length, to his life-saving appliances. A circular life-buoy and a couple of empty petrol tins were also taken possession of; these he lashed under thwarts, with the result that the boat's gunwales showed four inches above the surface amidships.

Groping on the bottom boards, the young officer discovered a pair of gun-metal rowlocks that had apparently escaped the eye of the destructive Hun. Thus equipped, he began to row for the distant shore.

It was hard work. At the best the water-logged craft made a bare mile an hour, but the effect of the heavy toil was to bring warmth to the man's chilled body and limbs. Setting his jaw tightly, he held on, glancing from time to time over his shoulder in the direction of the cliffs, now growing dim in the dusk of approaching night.

"How much further?" he asked himself at the end of two hours. "Hanged if they seem any nearer. Wind and tide are with me, too."

Compared with flying through the air at a hundred and fifty miles an hour, his present rate of progression was indeed painfully slow, yet with the dogged determination of an Englishman, "never to say die till you're dead," he tugged at the heavy oars until his blistered hands grew raw and his muscles ached as if his back would break.

With night the wind dropped and the sea assumed a placid, oily aspect. The land was now invisible, for not a light could be seen from seaward. Fortunate it was that the young airman had been compelled to undergo a course of astronomy. He hated it at the time; now he was glad, for by keeping the North Star broad on his starboard beam, he knew that he was heading towards the shores of Scotland.

His task was stupendous. The drag of the boat, which contained more than a ton of the North Sea, was terrific. He was wearing badly. Cold, hunger and fatigue were telling. Almost mechanically he swotted at the heavy oars.

He had lost all count of time, when he heard a faint rumble. It was the surf lashing the beach. Encouraged, yet realising that other dangers lurked on that surf-beaten shore, he rallied his remaining energies, counting each stroke as he bent to the oars.

At the one thousand and eightieth stroke he desisted. Around him the water was phosphorescent and white with the backlash of the waves. His task was accomplished. Human endurance had attained its limit. He was powerless to control his water-logged craft in the breakers. All he could do was to sit tight and trust in Providence.

For another five minutes the sorely-tried Pip-squeak was tossed and buffeted in the broken water, until a tremendous jar announced that in the trough of the waves she had touched hard shingle.

Then, like an avalanche, a cascade of foam swept completely over the boat. Frantically Pyecroft strove to grip the gunwale. Torn away by the rush of water, he was conscious of being pounded on the shingle. Then came the dreaded undertow.

Vainly he attempted to grasp the rolling shingle. He felt himself being swept backwards to be again overwhelmed by the next roller, when his retrograde motion was arrested by a heavy object. It was the Pip-squeak. Even in the last stages of her existence Jefferson's boat seemed destined to be of service.

With a final effort as the frothy water slithered past Pyecroft gained his feet. The hiss of the approaching breaker gave strength to his limbs. Stumbling, terror-stricken, and well-nigh exhausted, he contrived to win the race by inches until, realising that the dreaded enemy had fallen short, he fell on his face on the wet shingle.

For some moments he lay thus until, haunted by the horrible suspicion that the rising tide would overwhelm him, he staggered a few paces until he was above high-water mark, and then collapsed inertly upon the seaweed-strewn shore.

How long he lay unconscious he had no idea; but when he came to himself the moon was shining dimly through a watery haze. The tide had fallen, and with it the horrible ground-swell had disappeared.

He was bitterly cold: his limbs were like lead. An effort to rise was a dismal failure. He tried to shout, but no sound came from his parched lips. While he had lain unconscious there must have been a short spell of wind, for he found that he was covered with dried wrack and seaweed.

"It must be close on daybreak," he thought. "I'll have to stick it a little longer."

He made an attempt to look at his wristlet watch. The dial was no longer luminous, while an ominous silence had taken the place of an erstwhile healthy tick. A prolonged submergence had ruined the delicate mechanism for all time.

As he lay, too benumbed to move, he became aware that a boat had grounded on the beach within a few yards of his involuntary resting-place. The little craft must have come in very silently, for until the men's boots grated on the shingle he was unaware of their presence.

Again he tried to shout, but without result. Then, even as he tried to raise himself, he noticed that with one exception the men wore unfamiliar uniforms. They were talking softly, with an unmistakable guttural Teutonic accent.

"Huns," thought Pyecroft. "What's their little game? I've done them so far, and I'm hanged if I want them to put a half-nelson on me now. I'll lie doggo."

Which, considering his weak physical state, was an easy matter to do.

The Huns were evidently in a hurry, for after a few words with a greatcoated individual, they pushed off and rowed seaward, while the man they had left ashore lifted a portmanteau from the shingle and made his way towards the cliff with the air of one who is confident of his surroundings.

He passed so close to the prone figure lying partly covered by seaweed that for a brief instant Pyecroft expected the stranger to stumble against him.

"Good heavens!" ejaculated the astonished Pyecroft. "Where have I seen that fellow? By Jove—it's Fennelburt. Up to some dirty work: I wonder what?"

CHAPTER XIV

A DOUBLE DECOY

"Gun-fire!" exclaimed Lieutenant-Commander Morpeth, sniffing the salt air like an alert terrier scenting a rat.

"Away to the south-east'ard," corroborated Wakefield. "Is this going to be one of your lucky days, George?"

"It won't be for the want of trying," rejoined the R.N. R. man grimly; then bending till his lips nearly touched the mouth of the voice tube, he shouted, "Stand by, below there, to whack her up."

A few crisp orders followed. Men moved swiftly and silently to their appointed stations, while the course was altered a couple of points to take Q 171 to the scene of the supposed action.

It was the second day of Wakefield's and Meredith's enforced but none the less interesting detention on board the mystery ship. Q 171 was well out into the North Sea, bound for a certain position a few miles to the west'ard of the now famous Horn Reefs Lightship. The sea was calm, a light breeze blew from the west'ard, while the sky was filled with small fleecy clouds drifting slowly athwart the lower air-currents—an indication of a forthcoming change of wind.

The three officers, clad in black oilskins to keep up the rôle of Hun pirates, had been sitting on the cambered edge of the base of the dummy conning-tower, yarning of times not long gone and holding forth wondrous theories of what might happen in the seemingly far distant epoch after the war.

"Small quick-firers," declared Morpeth, as the rumble of the sharp reports grew louder and louder. "None of our M.L.'s in action by any chance, I hope?"

Slinging his binoculars round his neck, Morpeth, with an agility that his ponderous frame belied, clambered to the domed top of the conning-tower, reckless of the fact that his weight was causing the frail metal-work to "give" ominously.

Bringing his glasses to bear upon a faint dot just on the horizon, Morpeth made a long and steady scrutiny.

"Merchant vessel—tramp, by the look of her—chased by a Fritz," he reported, "Unhealthy work—for Fritz. I'll keep her on my lee bow a bit. It's no use butting in too soon. Too much dashed hurry spoils everything."

At sixteen knots Q 171 held on, with the apparent object of joining in the chase and cutting off the fleeing merchantman. Quickly the chase came in sight—a bluff-bowed, wall-sided tramp, with an elaborately camouflaged hull.

"Confounded scheme that razzle-dazzle," commented Morpeth. "Meet three or four in a crowded waterway, and you begin to wonder whether you'll see mother again. Can't tell whether they are bows on, or what. Fancy we've got her cold, though. For'ard gun, let her have it."

The bow-chaser spat viciously, sending a shrieking missile within a hundred yards of the tramp, which, badly on fire aft, was still proudly flying the Red Ensign. Her funnel, hit about six feet above the deck, was showing signs of collapse, being supported only by the wire rope guys. Making a bare eight knots, she was evidently at the mercy of the pursuing U-boat, which, capable of doing eighteen on the surface, was slowing down after the manner of a cat playing with a mouse.

Q 171, firing rapidly, but deliberately planting her shells wide of the merchant vessel, now turned twelve points to port. This had the effect of bringing her into a decidedly convergent course with that of the U-boat. The latter, probably "smelling a rat," or taking exception to what appeared to be another of her kind "spoiling the game," edged away to starboard, at the same time hoisting a signal.

By the aid of the appropriated German Naval Code Book, Q 171's skipper deciphered the signal. It was a peremptory request for the pseudo U-boat to make her number and thus proclaim her identity.

This was easily done. A four letter hoist of bunting fluttered from Q 171's mast, giving the information that she was U 251 of the Imperial German Navy.

"This is my prize," signalled the dog-in-the-manger Fritz.

"I have good reasons for joining in the chase," was Morpeth's reply.

During the lengthy exchange of flag messages, both boats had maintained a hot fire upon the tramp. From the genuine U-boat the result of Q 171's shells could not be observed. Had the Huns been able to do so, they would have expressed considerable surprise at their supposed consort's decidedly erratic gunnery; but in the heat of rivalry they became reckless.

Almost imperceptibly, Q 171 lessened the distance between her and her prey. The tramp was two miles ahead, while barely half a mile separated the U-boat and the decoy.

"Stand by the tubes!" ordered Morpeth, at the same time motioning to Wakefield and Meredith to step clear of the rails.

Meredith felt a distinctly unpleasant sensation in his throat. Perspiration oozed from his forehead. Fascinated, he watched the alert faces of the men standing by the mechanism that was to lay bare the deadly torpedo-tubes.

"Let her have it!" shouted Morpeth.

With hardly a rumble, the dummy conning-tower rolled over the well-oiled rails, revealing the triple tubes trained abeam upon their prey. The next instant the glistening cigar-shaped missiles leapt over the side and disappeared in a welter of foam.

Travelling at the rate of an express train under the impulse of small but powerful electric motors, the torpedoes took very little time to cover the intervening distance. So intent were the Huns at shelling the tramp that they failed to notice the tracks of the sinister weapons until, with an appalling roar, two of them exploded simultaneously and thirty yards apart against the U-boat's hull.

Morpeth gave a grunt of satisfaction as he watched the tall column of water break and fall in a shower of smoke-mingled spray.

"Simple—quite simple," he remarked; then, observing Meredith's white face, he clapped the young officer on the shoulder.

"Cheer up!" he ejaculated. "Nothing to look white about the gills.... When you've been on the game as long as I have, and seen what an utter bounder Fritz is, you'll understand."

With the discharge of the torpedoes Q 171 altered helm and resumed her former course. Morpeth meant to take no chances by revealing his identity to the tramp. He preferred to let the crew of the merchant vessel think that the disaster of her supposed consort had effectually put the wind up the second U-boat. Q 171 was a mystery ship, and once her true character was known the story would be all over the first port at which the tramp touched. And, after all, it was not a very far cry from an East Coast port to Berlin in war time, and benevolent neutrals had an unfortunate liking for spreading reports, true or otherwise, of what they saw and heard in British harbours.

A sudden ejaculation from Morpeth attracted Meredith's attention. The R.N.R. man was pointing with outstretched arm in the direction of the tramp.

He had good reason for astonishment. The apparently badly battered tramp had swung round and was forging through the water at high speed—possibly a good twenty-five knots. The Red Ensign had been struck, and the White Ensign streamed proudly in the breeze.

"Look alive there!" shouted Morpeth. "Up with our rag, or they'll be planking a four-point-seven into us. Hanged if she isn't a Q-boat too!"

The R.N.R. man was right concerning the rôle of the oncoming ship; but he was wrong in his surmise as to her intentions. Her skipper had noticed that the shells fired from the second U-boat had purposely gone wide, he had spotted the uncovered torpedo-tubes on her deck, and had seen the sudden disintegration of U-boat No. 1. Metaphorically speaking, he was foaming at the mouth.

A hoist of bunting rose to the masthead of the approaching vessel. "Heave-to; I wish to communicate," read the signal.

Morpeth rang for "half speed" and then "stop." He turned to Wakefield.

"Now's your chance to get a lift back," he remarked.

"Fancy I'll hang on," replied the late skipper of M.L. 1071. "A day or two won't make much difference. Had I been ashore I suppose the S.N.O. would have packed me off on leaf."

"And you, my festive?" inquired Morpeth, addressing Meredith.

"I'm following my senior officer's lead," replied the Sub promptly.

"As regards your men, I'll put them on board if she'll have 'em," continued Morpeth. "It'll relieve the pressure on the grub locker. Hope they won't kag too much about us, though."

"I don't think so," replied Wakefield, who had great faith in the sound sense of his crew.

"But after all it won't matter so very much," added the R.N.R. officer. "By the time they get ashore my little stunt will, I hope, be a back number. Now, let's see what this camouflaged blighter has to say."

The Q-boat had now ranged up within fifty or sixty feet of her small co-worker. Men, rigged out in the nondescript garments affected by the Mercantile Marine, were clustered for'ard, while a couple of stalwart individuals, rigged out in pilot-coats, serge trousers and sea-boots, were leaning over the side abreast the mainmast.

"Dash you, you meddling bounder!" roared one of the latter. "What d'ye mean by butting in and spoiling our sport? D'ye think we stood a gruelling for four mortal hours just for the fun of seeing you give Fritz socks? An' we had her nicely within range when you let rip."

"Sorry," replied Morpeth apologetically, "But how the blazes was I to know?"

"You'd have known quick enough if we had shown our teeth," replied the other grimly. "Three of my men killed and six wounded, and nothing to show for it."

"So I suppose when I fall in with a genuine tramp being chased by a Fritz, I'll just carry on?" inquired Morpeth caustically.

"I won't say that," replied the other. His wrath was fast evaporating. He was beginning to realise that, after all, cooperation was the thing, and that rivalry, except of the healthy order, was detrimental to the great work in hand. "When all's said and done, it's something to think that we took you in. At first I thought you were a Fritz: your get-up was so good. But I say, isn't your name Morpeth—Geordie Morpeth?"

"I have a notion that you've hit the right nail on the head," replied the skipper Of Q 171. "But I'm dashed if I can call your face to mind!"

"Met you in Rio in January '12," announced the other, with a typical sailorman's memory for dates. "You were in the Humming-Bird. I was on the Glaucis, second mate at the time."

"By Jove!" exclaimed Morpeth, "you're Bellairs. I didn't recognise you; you've altered some."

"Hardly recognise myself at times," remarked Bellairs. "If you want to age rapidly, try a trick in a Q-boat. I see you're trying it already. Well, I must be pushing along. I'm making for Newcastle, after three weeks off the Lofoden Islands. Fritz was pretty busy in Norwegian waters, but I guess he's put up his shutters for a time at least. We've driven a few nails into his coffin."

"Left one or two for me, I hope?" remarked Morpeth. "But look here, can you give a passage to a few hands?"

"A few," agreed Bellairs guardedly. "How many?"

Morpeth told him.

"I've also two officers on board," he added. "They wish to stay and have a rest cure. I'm doing my best to educate 'em at the same time."

The other R.N.R. man laughed. "Right-o!" he exclaimed. "If you educate 'em like you did the youngsters on the Humming-Bird I can see them writing home to mother about you."

"Hear that?" inquired Morpeth, turning to Wakefield and Meredith. "Old man Bellairs evidently thinks I'm a tough nut. Hope Fritz'll think so too; that's the thing that counts."

CHAPTER XV

CONFIRMED SUSPICIONS

"From Sub-lieut. J. McIntosh to S.N.O., Auldhaig. Regret to report X-lighter No. 5 sunk in collision. Crew saved."

"From Officer Commanding No. Umpteen Group to Air Ministry. I have to report that the following officers are reported missing, believed drowned:—Captain R. G. Cumberleigh, Lieut. H. L. Jefferson, 2/Lieut. W. Pyecroft, Lieut. J. Blenkinson, all of Auldhaig Air Station; and Captain G. Fennelburt, from Sheerness Air Station, on detached duty. It is understood that these officers left Auldhaig in a private boat on a fishing expedition. It is requested that Sheerness may be informed concerning the officer mentioned above."

"From O.C. Lintieness Coast Guard Station to Inspecting Officer of C.G., Auldhaig. I have to report that at 4 P.M. a lighter which had been signalled passing south at 11 A.M. was observed to be derelict 3 miles E. by S. off Lintieness Head. It was afterwards lost in the haze, drifting to the northward. At 5 P.M. a violent explosion was heard, apparently from a direction bearing E. by N."

"From O.C. Auldhaig M.L. Flotilla to S.N.O., Auldhaig. Acting upon instructions, I proceeded in search of X-lighter No. 5. At a position bearing N.E. by E., five miles from Lintieness Head, quantity of wreckage discovered floating, including a buoy marked 'X-lighter No. 5.' The debris gave indication of an explosion. Saw no trace of boat reported missing by Air Station, Auldhaig."

"From Superintendent of Police, Abercuish, to O.C. Auldhaig Air Station. Report that at 5 A.M. on the — inst. 2/Lieutenant W. Pyecroft, R.A.F., was discovered in an exhausted condition on the shore at Abercuish. He was removed to a house in the village, and thence to the Abercuish Cottage Hospital. According to his statement, his companions were taken prisoners by a German submarine from X-lighter No. 5."

"From Air Ministry to O.C. No. Umpteen Group, Auldhaig. Nothing known of Captain Fennelburt at Sheerness Air Station. Please ascertain if a mistake has been made in this officer's name, and report the nature of the detached duty referred to in your telegram No. 4452 of the — inst."

These messages, written on official forms, lay on the table in the private room of the Commander-in-Chief's office at Auldhaig.

There were three persons in the room. One, the Commander-in-Chief, a breezy, dark-featured, clean-shaven naval officer of about fifty-five; the second, the dapper, boyish-faced lieutenant-colonel who held the post of Officer Commanding the R.A.F. Air Station. The third was the Commander-in-Chief's secretary—a silent, almost taciturn individual whose face was almost the same colour as that of his gilt aiguillettes. In his head the secretary held knowledge upon which depended the success of the Grand Fleet and for which Germany would willingly have paid millions; but that firmly set mouth was sealed upon all matters appertaining to the war save when lawful occasion demanded. And in a few months' time John Elphinhaye would be placed upon the Retired List with a pension that, with Income Tax deducted, would be little more than the wages of an artisan.

"The whole business seems a general muck-up, Greyhouse," observed the Commander-in-Chief, addressing the lieutenant-colonel. "There's something wrong somewhere. How can this confounded lighter be sunk in collision and shortly afterwards be blown up?"

"There were two lighters, sir," replied Colonel Greyhouse. "It is quite possible that one was mistaken for the other."

"As a matter of fact there were half a dozen," explained the Commander-in-Chief. "And all, except No. 5, are accounted for. That is so, Elphinhaye?"

"Yes, sir," corroborated the secretary.

"But the main reason why I came to see you, sir," said Lieutenant-Colonel Greyhouse, "was the affair of my missing officers. In the first instance they went off in a boat belonging to one of my lieutenants. I cannot conceive how they came to be on board the lighter. True, she was to be transferred to the R.A.F., but she left here under an R.N.V.R officer and crew."

"Sub-lieutenant John McIntosh, sir, who reported from Donnikirk," announced the secretary, in response to his superior's inquiry —mutely expressed by the raising of his bushy eyebrows.

"Exactly," agreed the Commander-in-Chief. "The situation required further information, and I have wired instructions to Mr. McIntosh to report immediately upon his return to-day."

"Then there is the question raised by the presence of Captain Fennelburt——"

"That," interrupted the naval officer, "is a matter that concerns the Air Force. I have no jurisdiction in the case."

"But," persisted Colonel Greyhouse, "that officer visited Auldhaig Dockyard."

"He called upon the Staff Captain, sir," reported the secretary, who appeared to have a knowledge of the movements of every stranger within the gates of Auldhaig Dockyard at his fingers' ends.

"And yet the Air Ministry and Sheerness Air Station deny all knowledge of him," continued Colonel Greyhouse. "I was away on duty at the time he reported at my station, but curiously enough Captain Cumberleigh, one of the missing officers, entertained a suspicion of him. He communicated his doubts to my second-in-command, Major Sparrowhawk, who this morning reported to me on the matter. It is now his belief, although he scouted the idea at the time, that this Captain Fennelburt is a spy, or at least an impostor, masquerading as an R.A.F. officer, with certain shady motives behind him. That is why I came, in order to find out his alleged motives for visiting Auldhaig Dockyard."

"That's the worst of these new-fangled shows," declared the Commander-in-Chief vehemently. He was a sailor of the Old School who did not take kindly to innovations. "When the R.N.A.S. was in existence we had good men who could fly. Now with this amalgamation it seems to me that for every effective pilot the Air Ministry grants a dozen commissions to men who never will 'go up' and who apparently have nothing better to do than to knock about in uniform doing work badly that a civilian clerk could do well, and trying to bluff people that they are the salt of the earth. Apparently Captain Fennelburt is one of this crowd, only the Air Ministry has forgotten his existence. I rather feel inclined to pooh-pooh the spy theory."

The colonel suffered the Commander-in-Chief's strictures in silence. Although his career in the Service had been limited to a period of four years, his promotion had been rapid. He had a real pride in the R.A.F., but at the same time he knew that there was considerable truth in the naval man's assertions. Also he realised that it was both inadvisable and contrary to discipline to argue with an officer of superior rank.

"Your best course," continued the Commander-in-Chief, "would be to send some one over to Abercuish Cottage Hospital to interview Mr. Pyecrust—I mean, Pyecroft. That is, naturally, if he is in a fit state to give information."

Colonel Greyhouse inclined his head in assent. It was, moreover, exactly what he had already given instructions to be done. The colonel took his leave, and just as he stepped ashore at the Air Station a motor car dashed into the parade-ground. From it alighted Major Sparrowhawk.

"I've seen young Pyecroft, sir," he reported with a salute. "He's going on well in the circumstances. The doctor informed me that he will be fit to be removed to-morrow."

"That's good," commented the colonel. Together they walked a few paces out of hearing of the transport driver and the coxwain of the motor boat.

"Well?" inquired Colonel Greyhouse laconically.

"Dashed queer business, sir," replied the major. "Pyecroft is perfectly fit mentally, which, considering what he has gone through, is rather to be wondered at. It appears our fellows boarded a derelict lighter and while on board were surprised by a Hun submarine. Pyecroft got away, had a sticky time on a water-logged boat, and finally drifted ashore more than half dead with cold and exposure. The others, it seems, were taken prisoners by the Huns. And now comes the extraordinary part of the story. We had an officer here on inspection duties. Fennelburt—Captain George Fennelburt—he announced himself on reporting."

Colonel Greyhouse nodded.

"Yes," he observed. "I know that much."

"Well, sir," explained Sparrowhawk, "he came ashore from the German submarine at night, while Pyecroft was lying helpless on the beach. Four men brought him ashore in a collapsible boat, and he vanished inland, still rigged out in R.A.F. uniform. Pyecroft can swear definitely on that point."

"And Sheerness Air Station has disclaimed all knowledge of him," remarked the C.O. "Why the deuce the Air Ministry cannot be more particular in posting the movements of officers passes my understanding! Can you give a fairly accurate description of Captain—er—Fennelburt?"

"I think so, sir; he was at the mess to lunch, and I saw a good deal of him."

"Good," ejaculated Colonel Greyhouse. "Send a report to 'Area,' and at the same time to Scotland Yard. The police will then take the matter up. You might also inform the Naval and Military Authorities. If we don't lay the fellow by the heels within the next twelve hours I'll eat my hat."

A vow that, taking into consideration the copious gold leaves that adorned the peak, was an exceedingly rash one, unless Greyhouse had the digestion of an ostrich.

CHAPTER XVI

COVERING HIS TRACKS

For the second time within forty-eight hours Karl von Preussen tramped the deserted road leading to Nedderburn Junction railway station. On the previous occasion he called himself Captain George Fennelburt; on the second he had assumed the name of Ronald Broadstone.

He travelled light, but in place of his khaki, leather-reinforced haversack he carried a small portmanteau, which, owing to unforeseen circumstances, was practically empty. He decided that at the first favourable opportunity he would replenish a portion of his kit and replace that lying at the Auldhaig Hotel. But in the portmanteau was an automatic pistol of British manufacture. Its possession showed economy and discrimination in small details. Since it had been acquired from a battlefield, it had cost von Preussen nothing; and being of British make it was in keeping with the spy's rôle as an officer of the Royal Air Force.

He walked quickly and unhesitatingly along the bleak, unfrequented road. Delay meant the great possibility of missing the night train and a consequent detention at Nedderburn, which was too close to Auldhaig to be pleasant. He had good reasons for steering clear of Auldhaig "for the rest of the duration." The place had been a "wash-out," and since von Preussen was of a superstitious nature he always avoided scenes of previous failures.

Beyond meeting a belated shepherd, who greeted the spy in an unknown Highland dialect, von Preussen arrived at Nedderburn without encountering anyone. The station had just been lit up, two feeble paraffin lamps providing the necessary illumination for the safety of passengers. Peeping through the high wooden palisade, von Preussen took stock of the people on the up-platform.

There were half a dozen "Jocks" with full equipment, including "tin hats" and rifles with the breech-mechanism bound in strips of oiled cloth.

"Highlanders returning from leave to the Front, curse them!" muttered von Preussen.

He had reason for his maledictory utterance. In the earlier days of the war, when he was a lieutenant of Uhlans, he soon learnt to have a wholesome respect for the stalwart, bare-kneed, kilted men from "Caledonia stern and wild." He recalled an incident at a certain village about twenty kilometres from Mons. His squadron had overtaken twenty tired Highlanders tramping along the pavé. Observation by means of binoculars showed that they were bordering on utter fatigue. Most of them wore blood-stained bandages. They had no officer with them. They looked to be an easy prey to the lances of his Uhlans. Von Preussen never had a worse shock. Instead of the kilted men taking to their heels at the sight of the charging cavalry and thus falling easy victims to the steel-tipped lances, they coolly threw themselves into a circle fringed by a ring of glittering bayonets. Three volleys in quick succession were too much for the Uhlans to stomach. They galloped off, amongst them von Preussen groaning and cursing with a bullet wound through his left shoulder.

In the present instance he decided that he had nothing to fear from these men. A little further on were three greatcoated officers. With a grunt of satisfaction von Preussen noted that their cap-bands were not black with the badge of the crown, eagle and wings. He had good cause to avoid Air Force officers and men just at present.

Beyond stood a sturdily-built man with a long black coat and soft hat—evidently a clergyman. He was trying to decipher a poster in the feeble glimmer of the station lamps.

The changing of the signal from red to green warned the spy that it was time to enter the station. Outside the entrance stood an old and somewhat decrepit porter who, after inquiry as to whether the new arrival had any luggage and receiving a negative reply, hobbled off to ring the bell. At the doorway stood a girl ticket-collector.

"Warrant, miss!" exclaimed von Preussen, holding out a buff paper.

The girl examined it perfunctorily.

"Carlisle—change at Edinburgh!" she announced.

The spy thanked the girl for the gratuitous and unnecessary information. To change at Edinburgh was his intention. By so doing he could withhold and destroy the faked railway warrant, which, had it been retained by the ticket collector, would eventually be presented to the Air Ministry for payment. Already von Preussen had travelled thousands of miles over British railways without payment, and never once had he surrendered the buff slip that would otherwise have been a clue to his movements.

With much hissing of steam the night mail train drew up at the platform. The handful of travellers hurried along, peering into the dimly-lit compartments in the hope of finding vacant seats. Von Preussen happened to secure one in the company of five naval officers who were already "bored stiff" with their tedious journey from a far northern base. The spy soon discovered that there was precious little information to be picked up from them.

At Perth the spy changed compartments. He now found himself in the company of four rather lively subalterns and the clergyman he had noticed on Nedderburn Junction platform. The latter, deep in the pages of the Church Times, took no notice of the new arrival.

"Tickets, please!"

A gigantic inspector examined the tickets and vouchers of the occupants of the compartment.

"Change at Edinburgh," he remarked, as he clipped von Preussen's warrant. "Through train to Carlisle at 7.5."

With the resumption of the journey, the clerical passenger offered von Preussen a copy of an evening paper as a prelude to opening conversation. He was, he informed the spy, travelling from Nedderburn to Hawick, where he was about to take up an Army chaplaincy at Stobs Camp. In return von Preussen told a fairy tale to the effect that he was joining an R.A.F. balloon station near Carlisle and gave some vivid and totally imaginary stories of his adventures in the air. Yet in spite of several attempts to draw the subalterns into the conversation, the hilarious representatives of the "One Star Crush" limited their discourse to anecdotes calculated to bring blushes to the cheeks of the padre.

It was nearly six in the morning when the train reached Edinburgh. Without difficulty von Preussen passed the barrier and emerged into Princes Street. For the rest of the day he remained in seclusion at a small private hotel just behind Edinburgh's main thoroughfare.

He had a nasty shock that evening. The evening papers came out with an announcement that there was a reward of one hundred pounds for information leading to the detection of a certain individual giving the name of George Fennelburt, aged about thirty; height, five feet seven or eight; broadly built, fair featured with blue eyes. Believed to be wearing the uniform of a captain in the Royal Air Force, and last seen in the neighbourhood of Auldhaig.

Von Preussen broke into a gentle perspiration. Furtively he glanced at his companions in the commercial room. They were, fortunately for him, deep in a game of chess.

The spy had registered in the name of Captain Broadstone. That was now, of itself, a decidedly risky proceeding, since, the hue and cry being raised, there would most certainly be a stringent examination of registration forms at all the hotels.

Even in his panic von Preussen was curious. He could form no satisfactory theory on the matter. How was his presence known, since it was reasonable to conjecture that the authorities knew he had gone on the fishing expedition that had been so unpropitious to his temporary companions? Obviously the notice offering a reward for his apprehension had not been issued before his visit to Auldhaig; and since he, with others, was missing and presumed to be drowned, why go to the length of advertising for his arrest? Perchance U 247 had been captured and the British prisoners released. Even in that case none of those knew the true facts. When they were sent below they were under the impression that he, von Preussen, was also a prisoner of war. In the absence of detail the newspaper notice was terrible in its gaunt wording.

"I will have to find a different disguise," he decided. "But how? To purchase civilian clothing would be courting instant suspicion. I cannot get it myself, nor can I trust anyone to obtain it for me. Yet to persist in appearing in this Air Force uniform would be simple madness. It is equally futile to dye my hair and eyebrows. The people here would notice the difference instantly. And if I changed my hotel I would run fresh and possibly greater risks. Himmel! What can I do?"

He glanced suspiciously round the room. The players, deep in their game, paid no attention to anyone or anything else.

"There's one blessing," he soliloquised. "I registered as Broadstone, not Fennelburt. I think I'll go to bed. It's safer."

He went, placed his automatic pistol under his pillow, and found himself looking at the empty portmanteau. Then, switching off the light, he attempted to court slumber.

It was in vain. For hours he lay wide awake, racking his ready brain for a solution to the apparently insurmountable difficulty. He heard the occupant of the next room retiring, the click of the electric light switch, and very soon after, the first of a series of loud snores.

"At all events," thought the spy, "the fellow is luckier than I: he can sleep soundly."

The sleeper and the empty portmanteau: subconsciously von Preussen connected the two. Why, he knew not, but gradually and with increasing lucidity a plan matured. Why not steal the sleeper's clothes, pack them into his portmanteau, and change in a remote country spot?

"It may throw suspicion on me," he thought, "but it's worth trying. Given four or five hours' start, I'll throw them off the scent."

Cautiously von Preussen got out of bed and opened the door. A light burned in the corridor. By its aid he could see pairs of boots standing outside the various rooms: either the servant responsible for the cleaning of them was late, or else the task of collection was left till early in the morning.

Silently the spy picked up a boot belonging to the person he intended to rob and examined it carefully. It was an "eight":—a similar size to his. So far so good; he could only hope that the fellow resembled him in build and height. He must at all events avoid the incongruity of donning the clothes of a man five feet two or six feet one.

Very deftly von Preussen tried the door-handle. The sleeper had omitted to bolt the door. The snores continued.

Creeping into the room the intruder closed the door. The lawful occupant had evidently not intended to wake up and switch on the light, otherwise he would not have thrown back the heavy curtains and admitted the moonlight. Neatly folded on a chair were the man's clothes. For once the methodical habits of their owner were to his disadvantage.

Quickly von Preussen collected the articles, and, pausing only for a few minutes to make sure that the corridor was deserted, regained his own room.

Ten minutes later, having crammed his portmanteau with his newly-gotten booty, he again turned in.

He had arranged to be called at eight-thirty. He saw no object in anticipating the hour. Let the occupier of the adjoining room discover his loss. The management would not dare to question the officer guest or examine his portmanteau.

At seven he was awakened by a furious ringing and a bellowing voice. He smiled grimly. The fun was about to commence. He could hear various members of the hotel staff talking excitedly, while the indignant tones of the robbed guest dominated all.

Pleading a headache caused by the noise and that he was suffering from shell-shock, von Preussen had his breakfast brought to his bedroom. Then, having shaved and paid his bill, he grasped his now heavy portmanteau and left the hotel.

He made his way to Princes Street, feeling horribly self-conscious. At every salute he received and returned, he felt that the man who gave it had his suspicions. He made haste to board the first tramcar, which, he noticed, was marked "Portobello and Joppa."

Before the car had passed Scott's Monument a couple of R.A.F. officers boarded it and, to the spy's consternation, took seats immediately behind him.

Presently one of them, a captain, tapped von Preussen on the shoulder:

"Can you oblige me with a match, old bean?"

The old bean complied without a word.

The next question came with startling suddenness:

"'Spose you haven't come across Captain Fennelburt?"

The spy, controlling himself with an effort, turned his head and laughed.

"Hope you don't think I'm the fellow?" he inquired. "If, so, you won't get that hundred pounds, old son. I heard this morning that he had been collared at Perth."

"Is that so?" asked the other, a subaltern. "What was all the racket about?"

"Misappropriation of mess funds, I believe," replied von Preussen. He now felt more at ease and master of the situation. He forced the conversation on trivial topics until his undesirable acquaintances reached their destination.

The spy remained until the car stopped at the terminus; then he started to walk briskly inland, reproving himself for his bad manoeuvre in taking a car bound for a coast town.

A four hours' stiff walk brought him to a desolate moor, standing well on eight hundred feet above the sea. Sheltering from possible observation behind an overhanging rock, he made the necessary change from Captain Broadstone, R.A.F., to plain Thomas Smith, commercial traveller, representing Collar & Grab, wholesale provision merchants (and incidentally profiteers), of Liverpool.

For the next four days he remained at Galashiels, lying low and explaining his presence by the plausible statement that the samples his firm had dispatched had gone astray. On the fifth he decided to go to York, where he knew of a Polish Jew, Polinski by name, who was in reality a German Secret Service agent.

At Newcastle he caught a fast train bound for London. He now travelled third class, finding himself in the company of four bluejackets proceeding "on leaf."

Within a few minutes of the train leaving the station the commercial traveller was apparently fast asleep. He was keenly on the alert to gather information, and his wishes were realised.

"S'elp me," exclaimed one of the men. "We'd got a blanked U-boat blazing away at us like mad. 'Course we didn't reply, an' they didn't 'arf give us a dustin'. Then up comes another of the swine an' starts firin', only 'er shells goes wide. Still our owner sticks it without so much as winkin'. Hopin', you see, to bag 'em both."

"And did 'e?" inquired another.

"Not 'e, worse luck," replied the other. "Just as we was about ter drop our false bulwarks an' give 'em perishin' socks, one of the U-boats slipped in a couple o' tawpedas into t'other an' blew 'er to blazes."

"Wot for?" asked a bearded petty officer.

"Wot for?" snorted the other. "To do us out of our bloomin' prize money, of course. There was we, with our decks littered with sheep and cattle, stickin' it for four mortal hours in the hope we'd put it abaft the swine, an' all for nothin'. The U-boat was one of our own mystery ships, rigged up to bamboozle Fritz. She was orf right into Heligoland Bight to do 'er dirty work, if I remember right."

Von Preussen chuckled inwardly. Here indeed was a "scoop." Before eight that evening the information, transmitted in the form of an apparently genuine business telegram to a firm in Amsterdam, was in the hands of the German Admiralty.

CHAPTER XVII

MUTINY

"Hans!" whispered Seaman Kaspar Krauss of U 247. "Do you know what our swine-headed kapitan has made up his mind to do?"

"How should I?" responded Hans Furst with a grunt. "Something that has upset your apple-cart."

"He's taking the vessel back to Ostend," announced Krauss. "It's madness. To say nothing of the danger of mines, it's putting our heads into a noose. With Wilhelmshaven and Heligoland dead under our lee, why does he persist in making for Ostend? The boat is hardly seaworthy; we are short of food, and yet——"

A petty officer, stooping to avoid the overhead gear, thrust his head and shoulders through the oval aperture in the transverse bulkhead.

"Herr Kapitan wants you, Kaspar Krauss," he exclaimed curtly. The seaman wiped his hands on a piece of cotton waste, looked into the burnished reflector of a lamp to assure himself that his cap was on straight, and hurried along the congested alleyway.

"Wonder what he wants me for?" he thought. He had done nothing as far as he knew to merit either praise or censure. It was somewhat unusual for a kapitan to summon a seaman. Orders would be generally communicated through the medium of a petty officer.

Ober-leutnant von Preugfeld was sitting on a camp-stool on the after-part of the deck. Behind him stood Unter-leutnant Eitel von Loringhoven, while at his side were three men rigidly at attention.

The U-boat was running awash, the conning-tower being occupied for the time being by the chief petty officer.

Kaspar Krauss felt far from comfortable. The sight of the three motionless wooden-faced seamen—comrades of his—heightened his discomfiture.

"See here, you swine!" began the amiable von Preugfeld, curtly acknowledging the man's salute. "You were slow—abominably slow—in executing orders. What have you to say?"

Krauss moistened his dry lips, trying vainly to recall the incident to which the ober-leutnant referred.

Von Preugfeld eyed him like a cat about to pounce on a mouse. He was furiously angry, and wanted to vent his wrath upon some one who could not retaliate. The cause of his fury had nothing to do with Kaspar Krauss's delinquency. He had just been referring to the English Encyclopaedia to discover the meaning of the epithet "old bean," and to his almost speechless indignation he found that one of his Royal Air Force prisoners had likened him to "the seed of certain leguminous plants, universally cultivated for food"—and old at that.

"You were fifteen seconds slow in carrying out my order to blow the auxiliary ballasttank, you wooden-faced pig!" exclaimed von Preugfeld. "For the remainder of the voyage you will work double tricks and keep for'ard look-out on deck whenever we are running on the surface. Now go!"

Kaspar Krauss, outwardly pale but inwardly fuming, saluted with a faint suspicion of reluctance, and began to make his way aft until the guttural voice of his kapitan called him back.

"Is that the way you salute me, schweinhund?" demanded von Preugfeld. "If I find any more signs of slackness on your part, look out. That's all. Now, again: dismiss!"

Von Preugfeld watched the fellow out of sight and then turned to his subordinate.

"There's nothing like being firm with these brutes, von Loringhoven," he said in a loud voice, as if to impress the fact upon the three seamen. "Take my advice: come down on them like Thor's hammer the moment you see them giving signs of discontent. How many men have been placed in the report this trip?"

"Eleven, Herr Kapitan," replied the unter-leutnant, smacking his lips with relish. "A third of the ship's company."

"That shows good discipline, Eitel," rejoined von Preugfeld. "Cast-iron discipline—that's the secret of efficiency."

He made his way to the conning-tower and spent some moments poring over a chart of the centre portion of the North Sea. There were mine-fields in profusion. Those laid by the British were shown in blue, those of German origin were indicated in red. On paper they looked formidable, but unfortunately for von Preugfeld there were hundreds of others either drifting or else uncharted. He, too, cursed the wireless order that was responsible for U 274 making for Ostend.

Having checked the course and given further instructions to the quartermaster, von Preugfeld strolled aft, took a leisurely survey of the horizon and, finding nothing in the shape of a vessel, settled himself once more in his deck-chair.

Meanwhile 'tween decks discontent was seething. The men, disheartened and hungry, were aghast at the idea of making for the Belgian coast. Many of them were undergoing punishment for various slight offences. Krauss, one of the more advanced agitators, was holding forth upon the purposeless brutality of the kapitan.

Just then von Loringhoven made his way for'ard. Possibly by accident, one of the group of malcontents lurched against him, for the submarine was rolling in the sullen swell.

"Pardon, Herr Offizier!" exclaimed the man. It was Furst, slow of action yet quick to take offence.

The next instant von Loringhoven raised his clenched fist and struck the man heavily in the face. It was the unter-leutnant's idea of imparting discipline with an iron hand according to the advice given by Kapitan von Preugfeld.

Von Loringhoven had struck his men before. He had seen them stand rigidly at attention, meekly bearing blows as becomes a military or naval subject of the Kaiser. He expected Furst to do likewise, but to his unbounded astonishment the German bluejacket planted a staggering blow right in the centre of the unter-leutnant's chest.

Von Loringhoven reeled and fell heavily against a large air-flask. There he lay breathless and unable to utter a sound.

For a few moments the men were dumfounded. Oft-times they had formed mental pictures of striking their officers to the deck. Now the idea had become a reality.

"You'll be shot for this, Hans Furst," exclaimed one of the men.

"Perhaps," replied Furst. "And all of you with me. I struck the pig, I admit, but you were standing by and did not stop me. So that's mutiny."

"Yes; that is so," agreed Krauss. "We've started, so why not carry it through? I owe the kapitan a debt which I mean to pay. Furst will help. Who joins?"

There was no lack of offers of assistance. The men knew that whether guilty or innocent they would have to suffer. They had no definite plan. It was merely a sudden conflagration on the part of men stifled by adverse conditions. Carried away by the unexpected turn of events, their seething discontent flared up into the red flame of mutiny.

"Down with von Preugfeld!" hissed Krauss. "Come with me, brothers!"

Maintaining a certain amount of caution, a dozen of the mutineers swarmed up the fore-hatch and made their way aft. Von Preugfeld, seated in the deck-chair and deep in a book, took no heed of their approach until, with a cat-like spring, Krauss leapt upon him. The chair collapsed. The kapitan and his assailant fell on the deck in a confused heap.

Although a bully and a coward by nature, von Preugfeld put up a stiff fight when cornered. Recovering from his sudden surprise, he fought and struggled desperately, shouting in vain to von Loringhoven for assistance. The unter-leutnant was at that moment being held by two stalwart Frisian seamen.

Over and over rolled von Preugfeld and his attacker. Punching, kicking, snarling and even biting, the two tackled each other tenaciously—the blue-blooded Prussian and the plebeian Frisian—while the rest of the mutineers looked on with evident relish, until it occurred to them that they might have a hand in the discomfiture of their hated taskmaster.

It was not until half a dozen had thrown themselves upon the wellnigh breathless von Preugfeld that the unequal struggle ended. The ober-leutnant was bound hand and foot and secured to a ring-bolt—an object for derision and coarse jests from his captors.

Shouting to the quartermaster to telegraph to the engine-room to stop the motors, Furst, who by common consent was acclaimed the ringleader, ordered all hands on deck. The mutineers' first council of war was about to begin.

The outbreak had been spontaneous. A general mutiny of submarine crews had been thought about, and the idea was taking firm root; but this ebullition was almost unpremeditated. The men had no definite plan. They were literally and metaphorically at sea.

"Let's hoist the Red Flag," suggested one. "Our comrades on the other unterseebooten will join us."

"Unless we meet an English ship of war in the meanwhile," added another. "I propose we hoist the White Flag and take the boat into an English port. We'll be well treated."

"Yes," admitted Furst; "but what will happen after the war? Supposing the English treat us as mutineers and hand us over to Germany when peace is signed? What then?"

"And I, for another, wish to get back to my wife and children," exclaimed a mutineer of timorous fibre. "I vote we alter our course for Hamburg or Wilhelmshaven."

"And what then?" demanded Krauss scornfully. "There'll be questions asked. We will be put under arrest straight away and no doubt shot. That's not good enough."

"It will be all right if we throw these pigs overboard," said Furst, indicating the two officers, who were now both lying bound on deck. "We can say that they were swept overboard in heavy weather. We must all stick to the same tale. It will be of no use for anyone to betray us. We're all hand in glove in this business."

"Supposing an English ship of war does appear?" queried the timorous one. "We'll be sunk at sight. You know the way they have."

"We could submerge," declared Krauss loftily.

"And who will take command if we do," persisted the man. "I know of no one of us able to manage this boat under water. I'd rather take my chance and hoist the White Flag. Besides, haven't we English prisoners—officers—on board? They might help us if we treated them well."

"That is so," admitted Furst. "Meanwhile we'll steer east for Germany."

"Who is navigator?" asked a mechanic. "Do you know anything of navigation, Hans Furst?"

Furst was obliged to admit that he knew but little. Taking observations—a very necessary accomplishment when one has to thread a way through mine-fields—was beyond him.

"I'll try," he added. "We can but hope for the best. But now we must first get rid of these."

He pointed to the late kapitan and unter-leutnant of U 247.

"Shoot them," suggested the revengeful Krauss.

"Too easy a death," objected Furst. "We'll toss them overboard."

Some of the men moved aft to carry out the suggestion, but Furst called on them to stand by.

"Cast off those lashings," he ordered, with a grim laugh. "We'll give them a chance to swim for it. The nearest land is only about two hundred miles away. It will give them time to think over things. Start up those motors again and get way on her."

The men obeyed promptly. The idea of seeing their former officers struggling for life "in the ditch" appealed to their innate cruelty. After all, they argued, they were only revenging themselves upon two tyrants who had shown no mercy to the crews of British merchant vessels they had sunk.

Von Loringhoven squealed like a stuck pig when he saw one of the seamen advancing with a drawn knife. With a couple of deft cuts the unter-leutnant's bonds were severed. Two brawny men seized him by arms and legs and with a swinging heave tossed him over the side into the water.

Von Preugfeld, cursing, imploring and struggling, shared the same fate, his exit watched by all the hands on deck save one, who, evidently lacking the nerve to witness the tragedy, had stepped unobserved to the other side of the conning-tower.

Then, increasing her speed to twelve knots, U 247 turned eight degrees to port and headed for the distant shore of Germany, leaving von Preugfeld and his subordinate struggling for life in the cold waters of the North Sea.

CHAPTER XVIII

A BIG PROPOSITION

"Know anything about motor bikes?" inquired Morpeth, helping himself to a liberal chunk of margarine and pushing the earthenware jar across to his companion. "After you with the jam. Thank heaven it's not the everlasting plum and apple!"

Meredith and the "owner" of Q 171 were at tea in the ward-room. Wakefield was taking deck duties in conjunction with the Q-boat's official sub-lieutenant—a youth of twenty, Ainslie by name.

Tea was served in war time fashion afloat—an iron-moulded table-cloth, two enamelled cups, plates of the same material, and wooden-handled steel knives that had evidently not made the acquaintance of a knife-board since they came aboard. A loaf of large and decidedly ancient appearance, a pot of jam and a generous pat of margarine (referred to in conversation as nut-butter) formed the edible part of the feast. Black, strongly brewed tea, condensed milk and moist sugar in more senses than one combined to provide liquid refreshment. The whole contents of the swing table were executing a rhythmic dance with the vibrations of the twin engines, the propeller shafts of which ran under and on either side of the table.

"I have one," replied Meredith. "At least I believe I have—unless my young brother has pinched it," he added feelingly and with the knowledge of past experiences. "Why?"

"Rather curious to know what you paid for it?" replied Morpeth.

"As a matter of fact I got it a great bargain from a pal of mine who was given a commission in '15," replied Meredith. "Twenty-two pounds."

"I guess I can beat that," remarked the R.N.R. officer, deliberately and deftly harpooning a slice of bread in the act of skimming over the fidleys on to the floor. "I bought one for a sovereign."

"Scrap iron, then," declared Kenneth.

"No; in good running order," continued Morpeth, "twin cylinders, magneto, countershaft, kick starter and all that sort of fake-a-lorum. True, the old 'bus had been in the ditch for a fortnight. Do you remember when the old Tantalus was torpedoed some while back? They got her into shallow water down Cornwall. Well, this motor bike was on board. Bought it from a chap called Farrar, who told me he had bought it from a marine officer for four bob and had refused a fiver for it as the vessel was sinking. Spent best part of seven days' leave cleaning the thing up, and now, by Jove!——"

"You're wanted on deck, sir," exclaimed a sailor excitedly. "We've just sighted two men in the ditch——"

Taking a hasty and copious gulp of tea on the principle that "you never know when you may get another chance," Lieutenant-Commander Morpeth ran up the ladder, Meredith only hanging back sufficiently to clear the heels of the R.N.R. officer's seaboots.

The mystery ship had already slowed down and altered course. Men, grasping coiled bowlines, were grouped on her long narrow bows. Ainslie, standing well for'ard, was conning the ship by movements of his arms. Wakefield, binoculars to his eyes, was keeping the men in distress under observation.

"A pair of Huns!" he exclaimed, as Morpeth and Meredith joined him. "They're clinging to a U-boat's buoy. I can see the number 'U 247' painted on it."

"One of our submarines has been busy, then," remarked Morpeth. "Hope to goodness she doesn't jolly well take it into her head to slap a tinfish into us."

Wakefield shrugged his shoulders. This was another phase of U-boat tactics. When a fellow rigs himself up like a Fritz to bag a Fritz, presumably he must run the risk of being taken for a genuine Fritz by other Fritz-hunters. He glanced at Morpeth inquiringly. The R.N.R. man's face was set and determined.

Above the risks of war another issue dominated. Human life was at stake, not in the heat of battle but in the ceaseless struggle of man with the sea—a fight that has been waged ever since men adventured themselves upon the waters. Friends or foemen made no difference: Morpeth was determined to pluck the two distressed men from the grip of the voracious sea.

The swimmers were Ober-leutnant Hans von Preugfeld and Unter-leutnant Eitel von Loringhoven. More than an hour had elapsed since they had been ruthlessly jettisoned by the mutineers. Their chances of being picked up were small indeed. Had it not been for the fact that one of the U-boat's crew, more humane than the rest, had surreptitiously released a life-buoy from the starboard side of the submarine—he had done this just before the two officers were hurled overboard—von Preugfeld and von Loringhoven would have perished. As it was, the support afforded by the cylindrical hollow metal buoy had kept both afloat, although they were almost exhausted by the numbing cold.

Slowing down until she carried bare steerage way, Q 171's bows passed within three yards of the life-buoy and the two men. A bowline, thrown with admirable judgment and precision, fell over the unter-leutnant's head, but von Loringhoven was too exhausted to slip his arms and shoulders through the looped line. Without hesitation, the bluejacket who had hurled the coil of rope thrust the tail end into the hands of a man standing next to him.

"Hold hard, mate!" he exclaimed, as he took a flying leap over the low stanchion rail.

Deftly the rescuer adjusted the bowline under von Loringhoven's shoulders, and with a stentorian "Heave away roundly!" he swung himself back to the Q-boat's fo'c'sle.

In another fifteen seconds two dripping and water-logged individuals joined the rescuer.

Kapitan von Preugfeld, gasping like a stranded carp, was speechless with exhaustion and astonishment. Up to that moment he had been deceived into believing that the vessel that had effected his rescue was a U-boat. He was still hazy on that point, but there was no shadow of doubt that the crew were British.

"Give the blighters a stiff glass of grog and shove them into hot blankets," ordered Morpeth. "I'll see them later and find out how they came to be in the ditch."

But von Preugfeld, recovering his speech, was anxious to explain matters at once. The thought paramount in his mind was that of revenge. It mattered not by what motive or through whose agency retribution was accomplished as long as the mutineers were accounted for.

"I kapitan am of unterseebooten 247," he announced in his broken English. "My crew haf mutiny make an' throw me into der zee. Der submarine is dere"—he pointed eastwards—"not von hour an' half gone."

"Peculiar bird," thought Morpeth, then—"Good enough, cap'n," he replied. "We'll be on her track. With luck she'll be scrap iron before night."

"No, no," protested von Preugfeld. "Do not to der bottom send. Make capture. I tink not dat she can sink."

"Won't she," interrupted the R.N.R. officer grimly. "You leave that to us."

"He means 'submerge,' I fancy," remarked Wakefield.

"Ach! Dat is so. She submerge cannot make. Take prisoners dose mutineer sailors."

"What's he driving at, Wakefield?" inquired Morpeth. "Hanged if I can cotton on to the yarn."

"He apparently wants to get his own back," suggested Wakefield. "A true type of the egotistical, arrogant Prussian. D'ye notice he never referred to his fellow victim of the mutiny. Perhaps they got what they jolly well deserved."

"No business of mine," quoth the R.N.R. man. "Sinking Fritzes is my job. Take that fellow below, Walters."

He jerked his thumb in the direction of the fore hatchway, whither von Loringhoven had already been escorted; but von Preugfeld had another card to play.

"Englisch officers der are on board der submarine," he declared. "Four officers prisoners—nein, it is three," and he held up three fingers to emphasise the fact.

Except to serve his own ends, von Preugfeld would not have mentioned the fact. It mattered nothing to him whether the prisoners were sent to the bottom inside the hull of the U-boat if she were destroyed by the British craft; but as a lever to influence Morpeth's decision, in order to enable von Preugfeld to take vengeance on the mutineers at some distant date, the Prussian blurted out the disconcerting news.

Almost at the same time he realised that the situation was a complicated one. There was the question of the spy, von Preussen. The R.A.F. officers would, on their release, certainly demand an explanation of their supposed comrade's whereabouts, and then the spy would be revealed in his true character. It would be awkward—decidedly awkward—for von Preussen, but in his vindictiveness against the mutineering crew von Preugfeld swept aside the question. He had little qualms in sacrificing von Preussen to attain his immediate aim.

"What officers are they?" demanded Morpeth. He pictured the plight of master mariners of Mercantile Marine held captive on board the submarine that had sent their vessel to the bottom—hostages who, contrary to all the recognised canons of war, had been compelled to run a grave risk of being slaughtered by their fellow countrymen while in the hold of a modern pirate submarine.

"Von der Air Regiment at Auldhaig," replied von Preugfeld. "It fair capture vos," he hastened to explain.

"We know most of them," exclaimed Meredith. "I wonder who they are?"

Morpeth as inquisitor-in-chief put the question, but von Preugfeld shook his head and professed ignorance on the matter.

With a gesture Morpeth dismissed him. Shivering with cold and trembling with rage, the kapitan of U 247 disappeared below, to enjoy a far greater hospitality than he had ever bestowed upon his prisoners of war.

Meanwhile Q 171, running at thirty knots, was fast overhauling the mutineers. In forty minutes after von Preugfeld's rescue the conning-tower of the fugitive was sighted at a distance of five miles.

Morpeth immediately rang down for fifteen knots. The enormous speed of the Q-boat would be sufficient to cause surprise and suspicion in the minds of the U-boat's crew, and supposing it were another submarine which could dive and succeed in getting away, then the story of a decoy capable of attaining a terrific pace would be known to the German Admiralty. In that case Morpeth's "little stunt" would bid fair to become a "wash-out."

Ten minutes later the White Ensign was hoisted at Q 171's masthead, and a shell, purposely fired wide, threw up a column of water fifty yards from the U-boat's port bow.

"That's done the trick," exclaimed Wakefield, as a white flag was promptly hoisted on the mutineer. "It's 'Kamerad' all the time when they're cornered. By Jove! the old blighter did speak the truth for once. There are fellows in khaki standing aft."

Morpeth merely grunted. He was pondering in his mind—not on the question of how to deal with his prize, but one on which weightier matters depended. It meant an addition of thirty odd people to feed and quarter—a big proposition indeed.

CHAPTER XIX

THE TABLES TURNED

"What's for dinner at the mess to-night?" inquired Blenkinson. "Wonder if the management has got rid of our box for 'The Maid of the Mountains'? If not, will he try and make us pay up?"

"The theatre people can try," replied Cumberleigh grimly. "Hope they'll accept the excuse: unavoidable absence."

"Wonder how Pyecroft got on?" remarked Jefferson.

The three R.A.F. officers were cooped up in the otherwise empty storeroom of U 247. They were in utter darkness. The place was damp, ill ventilated, and reeked abominably. Moisture was constantly forming on the curved angle-iron deck beams and dripping promiscuously upon the captives.

"It is presumed that the genial captain of this vessel," continued Jefferson, "has not yet invested in a cinematograph. If he had it would be reasonable to suppose that he would have us on deck at regular intervals, supply us with cigarettes and cock-tails, and at the same time take a film to let neutrals know how benevolent and humane the Hun is when he is on the warpath. I am afraid my surmise is correct. Therefore we languish in captivity."

"Anyone any idea of the time?" inquired Cumberleigh. "My watch says half-past three, but I can't depend upon it."

"Mine shows ten o'clock," reported Blenkinson, consulting the luminous dial of his wristlet watch. "Unfortunately it omits to inform me whether it is AK Emma or PIP Emma, and I'm hanged if I know which it is."

"My watch went west the day before yesterday," said Jefferson. "The best Waterbury in existence is not proof against the back-fire of a six-cylinder car. Now if that fellow Fennelburt were here, he had a ripping little watch, I noticed."

"By the way, what happened to Fennelburt?" inquired Cumberleigh.

"Happened?" echoed Jefferson. "Why he's in the cart, same as us. Hard lines on the chap—taking him out on a joy trip and then landing him in this mess."

Cumberleigh grunted. He was not at all sure that he agreed with Jefferson's sentiments. Not that he had any suspicion that Fennelburt had conjured up the U-boat to take the Salvage Syndicate prisoners. The suggestion that the party should go fishing emanated from himself. Yet it was somewhat curious that Fennelburt should be separated from the others.

The three Auldhaig Air Station officers had had a sticky time during the last twenty-four hours. During that period they had been twice supplied with scanty and unappetising meals; they had dozed fitfully in the foetid atmosphere of their cell, but up to the present they had not been allowed on deck to get a breath of fresh air.

"Hope old Pyecroft pulled it off all right," remarked Blenkinson. He had harped on the matter at least a dozen times. Pyecroft had been his special pal. They had flown over the German lines together; they had crashed in the same 'bus; they had spent six weeks in the same hospital—in all, quite sufficient to cement a casual acquaintance into a lifelong friendship.

"There's the chance, anyway," said Jefferson. "He may not have been missed, and—hello what's the game now? They've stopped the motors."

The three men listened intently. The faintest alteration in the rhythmic purr of the U-boat's engines set their nerves on edge. They knew something of the fearfully ingenious devices used to strafe Hun submarines, and now they were metaphorically at the business end of a big gun, whereas formerly they had been behind it. It was a disconcerting affair, exposed to unseen perils that might without warning send them to their death in company with a crowd of Huns. And, unless Pyecroft had succeeded in getting safely ashore, the manner of their going would remain a secret for all time.

For several long-drawn seconds the trio listened in silence. They knew by the difference in the pulsations of the motors that the U-boat had been running on the surface. The diving-tanks had not been filled, otherwise they would have heard the gurgling inrush of water. For some reason the submarine had brought up and was drifting with wind and tide.

A quarter of an hour elapsed, then the petrol-motors were restarted. Very soon after the door of their cell was unlocked and a couple of Hun seamen appeared.