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CHAPTER IX
H. M. S. WYVERN
"Well," said Guild coolly, "have you any idea what a casual British cruiser might want of me?"
"I have not," said the officer, "so perhaps you had better tell me what is wanted of yourself and your wife by the captain of that warship. It might save some argument between him and our own captain. We are due in Amsterdam at noon tomorrow," he added meaningly.
"Do you mean to say that the officer in command of this British ship desires to speak to my wife?"
"His signals stopped us and his wireless told us to detain you and your wife."
"What ship is it?" demanded the young man, so nervous now that he scarcely knew what he was saying.
The Dutch officer remained icy and precise: "The ship is the light cruiser Wyvern, of the 'Monster' class. Her consorts yonder are the Hippogriff and Basalisk– if this information enlightens you, Mr. Guild."
"It does not. But I know this much: You can't detain an American! Neither can that British captain take a neutral from a neutral ship! And that settles the matter."
"Be good enough to come on deck," said the Hollander in his correct and fluent English. "The captain desires to speak with you."
"Very well. I'll follow you in a moment" – and turning to Karen: "Dearest, are you awake?"
"Yes, dear."
"The captain wishes to see me. I'll be back directly." He stepped out into the corridor, hesitated, excused himself to the officer, and returned to Karen, closing the door and locking it.
She was sitting up on the bed, very still and white, and when he came over to her she instinctively laid both chilled hands in his. He held them in a firm and reassuring clasp; but he was terribly disconcerted.
"Listen, dear. I think a British officer is coming aboard for us. I don't know whether he has any right to take us off this ship, but I'm afraid that the law in the matter won't worry him.
"Now listen to me, dear. If I come back and knock and call to you by name, open. If somebody knocks, and there is no voice – or if it is not my voice, go to that port, open it, untie your satchel, which is hanging outside at a rope's end, take out the papers, and drop them into the sea. And not until you have done this shall you open the door to anybody."
"Yes, Kervyn."
"Then," he said, "if we've got to go back to England on a warship, we'll go clean-handed."
"Yes."
"And you had better take these passports, too." He drew them from his breast pocket. "They're forged. Throw them out with the other papers."
"Yes, I will."
"Then – I'm going… Don't worry – dear. Don't tremble so, Karen – dear Karen – "
"I'll try not to. I'll not be cowardly. It – it has been a long – day… I'm thinking of Anna, too. You know, if she had any papers, she was bringing them to me. That will be against me."
"I forgot that," he said, appalled. Then he squared his shoulders and forced a smile: "Anyway, whatever faces you faces us both!.. Dear – keep every atom of courage you have. I shall stand by you, always. But I must go now. Do you promise me to keep up courage?"
"Yes – dear – "
They were excited, their every nerve now stretched to the breaking, yet both were striving for self-control in the instant menace of this new peril confronting them. Neither knew just what they said or did; he bent over her; she lifted her face to his, closing her eyes as his lips touched her forehead. Then he went away swiftly, and she sprang to the floor and locked the stateroom door. The next moment the awful flare of a searchlight turned the room to a pit of silvery fire, and she cringed against the bed under the fierce white glory, covering her bloodless face with both hands.
On deck, the Dutch captain, who was awaiting Guild at the companionway, came forward hastily and drew him aside.
"They've boarded us already," he said; "there comes their lieutenant over the side. Tell me, Mr. Guild, are your papers in order and your conscience clear? Can I make a fight over this affair?"
"I have no papers, but my conscience is in order. Don't let them take us if you can help it."
"You have no papers?"
"None that can help me or my wife."
"Then it's no use fighting."
"Fight all the same!" whispered Guild, as they both turned to meet the young naval officer who had just stepped aboard. He and the Dutch captain exchanged civilities stiffly, then Guild stepped forward into the lantern light.
"Kervyn Guild!" exclaimed the slim young officer in surprise. "Is it you!"
"Jamison!" ejaculated Guild, astonished. "Well this is lucky! I'm tremendously glad! I am indeed!"
They exchanged a warm impulsive hand-clasp, smiled at each other – then the quick smile on the youthful lieutenant's features altered, and his face fell.
"Guild," he said soberly, "I am afraid I shall have to inconvenience you and – your wife. I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to come aboard the Wyvern with me. I'm sorry; I know it must inconvenience you fearfully – "
"Jamison! We can't go aboard your ship! What on earth are you thinking of?"
"Orders," returned the young fellow gravely. "I've no discretion, you see."
As by common consent they had stepped aside from the group of ships' officers and, standing in the shadow of a lifeboat, they now gazed at each other very seriously.
Guild said: "There must be some mistake about this. I have no wife on board this boat."
"Did you not board this boat in company with your wife?" asked Jamison in a low voice.
"No."
"Our information is otherwise."
"Jamison, you know whether I am likely to lie to you. And I say to you on my word of honour that I did not come aboard this boat with my wife."
"Is she not on board?"
"She is not."
Jamison said regretfully: "No good, old fellow. We know she is not your wife. But we want her. I think you had better prepare her to come with us."
"Jamison, will you listen to me and believe me?"
"Yes, of course."
"Then, on my word of honour, the woman you have come to take from this ship is absolutely innocent of any – intentional – crime."
"I take your word for it, Guild."
"You can guess my sentiments in regard to this war, can't you?" insisted Guild.
"I think I can."
"Then listen, Jamison. I pledge you my word that through this young girl, and through me, nothing shall ever happen that could in any manner be detrimental to your country or its allies. Don't press this matter, for God's sake!"
"Guild," he said quietly, "I believe you absolutely. But – both you and this young lady must come aboard the Wyvern with me. Those are my orders, old fellow. I can't go back on them; I have no discretion in this matter. You know that, don't you?"
"Yes."
After a silence, Guild linked his arm in the gold-laced arm of his old-time friend and walked back to where the captain stood fidgeting.
"I won't go, Jamison," he said, loudly but pleasantly. "I am not obliged to go aboard your ship. Captain Vandervelde, I claim the protection of your flag for myself and for my wife."
"Captain Vandervelde knows that it means only trouble for him," said Jamison, forcing a smile. "He is not likely to defy the Wyvern, I think."
They all turned in the sudden glitter of the Wyvern's searchlight and gazed across the darkness where the unseen cruiser was playing on them from stem to stern.
"Will you come with me, Guild?" asked Jamison quietly.
"No, Jamison, I'm hanged if I do… And that's too close to the truth to be very funny," he added, laughingly.
"The Wyvern will merely send a guard for you. It's no good bluffing, Guild. You know it yourself."
"International law is no bluff!"
"International law is merely in process of evolution just now. It's in the making. And we are making it."
"That remark is very British."
"Yes, I'm afraid it is. I'm sorry."
"Well, I won't go aboard the Wyvern, I tell you. I've got to stay on this ship! I – " he leaned over and said under his breath – "it may mean death to me, Jamison, to go aboard your ship. Not because of anything I have to fear from your people. On the contrary. But they'll shoot me in Germany. Can't you tell your captain I'm trustworthy?"
"What is the use, Guild?" said the young man gently. "I have my orders."
Guild looked at him, looked about him at the grave faces of the captain and the second officer, looked out across the black void of water where the long beam of the searchlight had shifted skyward, as though supplicating Heaven once more.
Only a miracle could save Karen. He knew that as he stood there, silent, with death in his heart.
And the miracle happened. For, as he stood staring at the heavenward beam of the unseen cruiser's searchlight, all at once the ship herself became grotesquely visible, tilted up oddly out of the sea in the centre of a dull reddish glow. The next instant a deadened boom sounded across the night as though from infinite depths; a shaft of fire two hundred feet high streamed skyward.
"That ship has been torpedoed! Oh, my God!" said a voice.
"The Wyvern has hit a mine!" roared the Dutch captain. "I'm going to get out of this now!"
Jamison's youthful face was marble; he swayed slightly where he stood. The next instant he was over the side like a cat, and Guild heard him hailing his boat in an agonized voice which broke with a dry, boyish sob.
From everywhere out of the blackness searchlights stretched out tremulous phantom arms toward the Wyvern, and their slender white beams crossed and recrossed each other, focussing on the stricken warship, which was already down by the stern, her after deck awash, and that infernal red glow surrounding her like the glow of hell around a soul in torment.
Passengers, seamen, stewards crowded and crushed him to the rail, shouting, struggling, crying out in terror or in pity.
Guild caught an officer by his gold sleeve. "We ought to stand by her," he said mechanically. "Her magazine is afire!"
"There are boats a-plenty to look after her," returned the officer; "the British destroyers are all around her like chicks about a dying hen. She's their parent ship; and there go their boats, pulling hell for sweeps! God! If it was a mine, I wish we were at Amsterdam, I do!"
The steamer was already under way; electric signals sparkled from her; signals were sparkling everywhere in the darkness around them. And all the while the cruiser with her mortal wound, enveloped in her red aura, agonized there in the horrible sombre radiance of her own burning vitals.
Far away in the black void a ship began to fire star-shells.
As the awed throng on the moving liner's decks gazed out across the night, the doomed cruiser split slowly amidships, visibly, showing the vivid crack of her scarlet, jagged wound. For a second or two she fairly vomited hell-fire; lay there spouting it out in great crimson gouts; then she crashed skyward into incandescent fragments like a single gigantic bomb, and thunderous blackness blotted out sea and sky once more.
CHAPTER X
FORCE
He knocked sharply at the stateroom door and called, "Karen! It is I! Open!"
She flung open the door, satchel in hand, and he entered, closed the door, relocked it, and dropped down on the lounge, staring at space.
"Kervyn! What is it?" she asked faintly, one hand against her breast.
"It is all right," he said – "as far as we are concerned – for the present, anyway. God! I can't realize it – I can't get over it – "
"What, Kervyn?" she faltered, kneeling on the lounge beside the half dazed man. "What happened? Why are you so ghastly pale? Are we really quite safe? Or are you trying to make it easier for me – "
"No; you and I are safe enough for the moment," he said. "But men are dying out yonder. The sea is full of dead men, Karen. And – I saw it all."
"I heard guns. What has happened?"
"I don't know. It was a mine perhaps, perhaps a torpedo. A ship has been blown up." He lifted his head and turned to her: "But you are not to say such a thing to anybody – after I leave you at Trois Fontaines."
"No, Kervyn."
"Not to anybody. Not even to your father. Do you understand me, Karen?"
"No. But I won't tell anybody."
"Because," he explained wearily, "the Admiralty may have reasons for concealing it. If they mean to conceal it, this ship of ours will be stopped again and held for a while in some French or British port."
"Why?"
"So that the passengers cannot talk about what they saw tonight."
His haunted glance fell on the satchel at their feet. "As for that," he said, "I've had enough of it, and I'll take no further chances. Where are our passports?"
"Locked in with the other papers. I was all ready to throw them out of the port when you knocked."
"Unlock the bag now. I'll get rid of the whole business," he said bluntly.
"Kervyn – I can't do that."
"What?" he exclaimed.
"I can't destroy those papers if there is a chance of getting through with them. I gave my promise, you know."
The dull surprise in his eyes changed gradually to impatience.
"If another ship stops us, they'll have to go overboard, anyway."
"We may not be stopped again. If we are, we have time."
"Karen."
"Yes – dear?"
A slight flush came into his haggard face; he hesitated, looked up at her where she was kneeling on the sofa beside him. "Dear," he said gently, "I have never intended that you should carry those papers to your father, or to anybody else."
"I don't quite understand you."
"Try to understand. I am a friend to England – even a closer friend to – Belgium."
"I know. But you are my friend, too."
"Devotedly, Karen." He took hold of her hand; she slipped down to the sofa and settled there beside him with a little air of confidence which touched and troubled him.
"I am your friend," he said. "But there is another friendship that demands first of all the settlement of prior obligations. And, if these obligations conflict with any others, the others must give way, Karen."
"What do you mean?"
"The obligations of friendship – of – of affection – these must give way before a duty more imperative."
"What duty?"
"Allegiance."
"To – whom?"
"To the country in which my race had its origin."
"Yes… But America is neutral, Kervyn."
"I mean – Belgium," he said in a low voice.
"Belgium! Are you then Belgian?" she asked, amazed.
"When Belgium is in trouble – yes."
"How can you be loyal to two countries?"
"By being loyal to my own manhood – and to the God who made me," he answered in a low voice.
"You feel so deeply about this war?"
"Nothing on earth could stir me as deeply, Karen. Unless – America were in danger."
"I – I can't understand."
"Let me help you. My family was Belgian. For many years we have been good and loyal Americans. America means home. But, nevertheless, we inherit obligations toward the country of our origin which, so far, time has not extinguished… When I became of military age I went to Belgium and served my time in the Belgian army. Then I went – home. My father did it before me. My grandfather before him. My younger brother will do it, God willing. It is our custom to fulfill our obligations," he added with a faint smile, "even when those obligations seem to others a trifle fanciful and old-fashioned."
She bent her fair head in silence, considering for a space, her hand resting rather lifelessly in his. And, after a few moments: "But how does all this interfere with our friendship?" she asked innocently.
"It does not… Only I could not let you take those papers to Germany, Karen."
"But I've promised."
"You promised to do it if it were possible." He lifted her hand to his lips. "But – it has become impossible, Karen."
"Another ship may not interfere."
"No. But I must – interfere."
"You! Kervyn!"
"Dear – I must."
"Betray me?"
"Karen! Karen! What are you saying?"
"If you take my papers away you betray our friendship!"
"I have told you that there is a higher obligation than friendship. Even your friendship, Karen."
"You – you mean to take my papers from me?"
"Yes, dear."
"By – by violence?"
"Karen! Look at me!"
She gave him a white, breathless glance, wrenched her hand from his, stooped suddenly, seized the satchel, and, gathering it against her breast, clasped both arms around it. Then she looked him straight in the eyes.
"Yes," he said, "that is the only way. You must keep your word to the last and do your best. Only – remember that what I do now has no bearing whatever upon our friendship. I – I care for you – at this moment – more than I ever did. So – forgive me – Karen – "
"I never shall! Kervyn! Kervyn – think what you are doing! – "
He encircled her with his left arm, and with his right hand he gathered both of her slender wrists in his grasp and held them. The satchel rolled from her knees to the floor.
"Kervyn!" she cried, "think what you are doing!" She looked up into his set face where he held her crushed against his shoulder. "I am your friend. Think what you are doing! I – I care – so much – for you!"
"And I for you, Karen… Is that the key around your neck on that blue ribbon?"
"You shall not have it. Oh, Kervyn! Kervyn!" she gasped – "what are you doing to our friendship! What are you doing!"
The struggle was already over; with his left arm he held both of her arms pinned tightly to the supple body which lay panting against him, while with his other hand he untied the narrow blue bow-knot at her throat and freed the tiny key. Then he released her. They both were deadly pale. She dropped back among the pillows and lay there staring at him. There was in the white calm of her face an expression almost pleasant.
"So – you have done it," she said in a curiously altered voice, but her lips scarcely moved when she spoke.
He did not answer, but in her level eyes he saw blue lightning glimmer.
"You did your best," he said. "Your conscience is clear. Nobody can reproach you."
"Do you understand," she said in a low, expressionless voice, "that I am your enemy?"
"Do you reason that way, Karen?"
"Reason?"
"Yes. Reason it out, Karen, before you come to such a conclusion."
She said, very quietly: "A woman takes a shorter cut to her conclusions than by reasoning. As I did with you … when I gave you my friendship … unasked – " She turned her head swiftly, and sat for a moment while the starting tears dried in her eyes, unshed. They dried slowly while the battle raged within her – combat of mind and heart with every outraged instinct in arms, every emotion, every impulse. Pride, belief, faith, tenderness – all desperately wounded, fought blindly in the assault upon her heart, seeming to tear it to a thousand bleeding fragments.
Perhaps, like the fair body of Osiris, it was immortal – a deathless, imperishable thing – or that what had come into it had become indestructible. For, after her heart lay in burning fragments within her, she turned and looked at him, and in her eyes was all the tragedy of her sex – and all its never-ending mystery to men.
"I must end what I have begun," he said gently.
"Does it matter, now?"
"I don't know, Karen. I have no choice – even when your hatred threatens me… I suppose it will be that, when I unlock your satchel."
He picked it up and fitted the key to the lock. As he opened it, a faint fresh fragrance came from it, as though he was violating the delicate intimacy of this young girl herself.
But he set his jaws; she saw the cheek muscles tighten; and he drew from the satchel two flat envelopes. One contained the forged passports, and he placed these in his breast pocket, then looked steadily at her.
"Our friendship breaks with those seals," she said unsteadily.
"Karen – I cannot help it."
"Yes, you can help it… Kervyn!.. Wait! I will – will say – that it is more than friendship that breaks – " She caught her breath and her lip quivered – "I – I have the courage to say it – if it means anything to you – if it will help – "
His face reddened, then it grew pallid and expressionless.
"Even that," he said, "must stand aside… Karen, from the moment I saw you I have been – in love with you."
And, looking her steadily in the eyes, he broke the seals.
When the last seal broke she gave a little cry, turned and covered her eyes with both hands.
As for Guild, he stood with a sheet of paper in his hands, staring at the tracery which covered it and which meant absolutely nothing to him. Then he looked at the remaining sheets of paper. None had any significance to him. There were three sheets of thin translucent paper. These sheets were numbered from one to three.
The first seemed to be a hasty study from some artist's sketch book. It appeared to be a roughly executed and hasty sketch of several rather oddly shaped trees – a mere note jotted down to record the impression of the moment – trees, a foreland, a flight of little hedge birds.
On it, in English, the artist had written "Sunset." Indeed, the declining and somewhat archaic sun on the horizon and the obviously evening flight of the birds seemed to render the label unnecessary.
For a long while Guild stood studying it in the light of the stateroom ceiling lamp. And what continually arrested his attention and perplexed him was the unusual shapes of the trees and the un-birdlike flight of the birds. Also artists don't sketch on such paper.
Now and then he looked across at Karen with an inscrutable expression, and each time he looked at her his face seemed to grow more rigid and his set jaws more inflexible.
The girl crouched in the corner of the lounge, her face covered by both hands and pressed against the pillows.
He did not speak to her. Presently he turned to the next paper. It bore the rough sketch of a fish, and was numbered 2.
It was a wretched drawing, intended, evidently, to resemble an old pike and three young ones. What it meant he had no idea. He passed to the third and last sheet of paper, and it instantly held his attention.
On it was depicted a figure, which he supposed was the artist's idea of a Japanese dancing girl. She held a fan in her left hand. Over her extended right hand a butterfly hovered.
But what interested and concentrated Guild's attention was not the very amateurish drawing, but the series of silly decorations on the paper above her head – a number of quartered circles inclosed in squares and oblongs.
As decorations they meant nothing, indicated nothing, except that the intellect responsible for them must be a meagre one.
But as a cipher message these doubly bisected circles promised anything.
This is what Guild saw and what caused him to seat himself on the sofa beside the girl who still lay huddled over her pillows, her face hidden in her hands.
Seated, he drew out the portfolio containing his letters and a notebook. Then, slipping a lead-pencil from the leather socket and tearing out a sheet of paper, he started work – using the leather-backed book for a support – on a cipher which looked to be impossible. Yet, all ciphers are solved by the same method. And he knew it.
The first thing he did was to find his "numbers" in the mass of quartered circles. And, working steadily, swiftly, but intelligently, he had, in the course of an hour, discovered, separated and jotted down, nine of the quartered disks which he believed to represent numbers; and one extra disk which he supposed to be zero. And he numbered each symbol accordingly: merely eliminating all lines except those bisecting the smaller circles. This gave him in order
The next thing to do was to find what letters those numbers, or combinations of numbers, represented.
For a while he tried English, but arrived at no convincing result. So he tried German, first making a list of the letters which were likely to occur most frequently in the written language and then trying them with the symbols which occurred most frequently in the manuscript before him.
He found that the first symbol represented the figures 21.
The twenty-first letter of the alphabet is u. He wrote it.
The next symbol was for which he substituted the figures 14. The fourteenth letter of the alphabet is n. He had, so far, two letters, u and n, to experiment with.
He had sat for several minutes gazing absently at these two letters when, like a shot, it struck him that the French word for the number, one, was spelled un. Could the key of the cipher be French? He separated and jotted down the next combination of disks which gave him the numbers 19. The nineteenth letter of the alphabet is s. He wrote it.
The next symbol was
or the figure 9. The ninth letter of the alphabet is i.
The next symbol was which, translated, gave him 24. The twenty-fourth letter of the alphabet is x.
He now had the letters s-i-x. And no sooner had he written them in order than the word six stared him in the face and he flushed with pure excitement.
He had now two words, un and six. The chances were that he was somewhere on the right track and he fell to work with a concentration and ardour which left him oblivious to everything else – to time and place, and to the silent, motionless little figure huddled over the pillows beside him.
A Fragment from Guild's Notebook
At the end of an hour – checked twice – but finally overcoming apparent defeat, and always following the same method of deduction, he came to an end of his symbols, and he found the leaf from his notebook was covered with the following words in order of symbol:
Un, six douze cinq cinq vingt, douze quinz' vingt-un sept eight, nineteen vingt trois nine douze douze twenty-five, eight cinq trois eight vingt, six quinze douze douze quinze vingt-trois, deux nine eighteen quatre nineteen.
For these numerals spelled out capriciously in either abbreviated French or English he substituted numbers in the sequence given:
"1 – 6 – 12 – 5 – 5 – 20 – 12 – 15 – 21 – 7 – 8 – 19
– 23 – 9 – 12 – 12 – 25 – 8 – 5 – 3 – 8 – 20 – 6 – 15
– 12 – 12 – 15 – 23 – 2 – 9 – 18 – 4 – 19."
Then for the figure 1 he wrote the first letter of the alphabet —A. For the number six he wrote the sixth letter of the alphabet F. For the number 12, the twelfth letter of the alphabet L.
And when he had written letters for every figure in order given he had on his sheet of paper
A FLEETLOUGHSWILLYHECHTFOLLOW BIRDS
After a while he separated the words A, Fleet, Follow, and Birds, leaving the unintelligible sequence of letters LOUGHSWILLYHECHT.
Out of this, for a long while, he could make nothing, until, by chance, taking the last five letters together, it suddenly occurred to him that the German word for pike was HECHT. Then, in a flash, he remembered the badly drawn picture of a pike and its young. Pike or Hecht, that was one of the words in all probability. But what other word the word Hecht represented he could not imagine.
He looked at his notebook again. The letters remaining were LOUGHSWILLY. They meant absolutely nothing in any language he had even heard of. He studied what he already had – A Fleet (Blank) Pike Follow Birds. A pike follow Birds—birds– and swift as lightning a thought struck him which set him tingling to his finger-tips: somewhere in that rough, hasty, and apparently innocent sketch in which oddly shaped trees and a line of little birds figured, lay the key to the whole thing.
He felt it, he knew it. He spread out the drawing on his knees and studied it with terrible concentration, conscious somehow or other that something about it, something in it, was vaguely familiar to him. What? Had he ever before seen another sketch by the same hand? He could not recollect. It was like millions of rough, hasty sketches jotted down by painters as notes for their own guidance only and not for others to see.
What was there about it unusual? The trees? The shapes of the trees. Ah! he was getting nearer the goal – he realized it, felt it, and, balked, fell into a mental rage for a moment.
Then his habitual self-command returned; he squared his jaws, gazed grimly at the trees, and forced himself once more to answer his own questions.
The shapes of the trees, then, were unusual. He had gotten that far. What was unusual in their shapes? The trunks and branches? No. The foliage. No. The outline!
"God!" he whispered. And he had it.
Over the sofa was hanging a map of the British Isles and of the Western coast of Europe. Dotted lines indicated the course taken by the Holland Line steamers. He reached up, unhooked it, looked at it, then at the drawing in his hand.
Then he detached half of the thin sheet of paper on which the sketch was drawn and laid it over the sketch. Being translucent to the verge of transparency, he could see the drawing beneath the thin sheet covering it.
Then, with his pencil, he steadily traced the outlines of the trees.
When he had done this and had removed the sketch from beneath his tracing-paper he had what he expected – an outline of the British Isles, the Hebrides, Orkneys, Shetlands; part of the coast of Norway, the French, Belgian and Dutch coast. Heligoland, and the German coast at Cuxhaven and Wilhelmshaven.
From the map of the steamship company he carefully filled in boundaries and a few principal towns, then placing his outline drawing over the sketch of the trees he drew a dotted line following exactly the flight of the little birds.
Where that flight terminated he made an arrow, then turned his eyes on the steamer map to find out where that arrow's point rested.
And there on the Irish coast he saw the name Lough Swilly!
It was the last link! – the last but one.
"A Fleet Lough Swilly. Hecht (Pike) follow birds."
A pike, with little pike following her, was to follow the flight of the birds – the dotted line on his outline map. The dotted line curved up out of Cuxhaven, around the Orkneys and Hebrides and into Lough Swilly —where there was a fleet!
Out of Cuxhaven —Cuxhaven! where lay the German submarines! – A pike, and young! A parent ship and submarines!
The last link was forged; the chain complete – not quite – not entirely. The Japanese dancing girl? And under the number of the sketch, 3, – were three symbols. They were junks with latten sails.
Perhaps there were three Japanese battleships at Lough Swilly. It didn't matter; the chain was complete enough for him.
