"

The whitewashed cabin of the Coast Guard was perched on the edge of the
cliff. Behind it the downs ran back to meet the road. The door of the
cabin was open and from it a shaft of light cut across a tiny garden and
showed the white fence and the walk of shells.

"We must pass in single file in front of that light," whispered Ford,
"And then, after we are sure he has seen us, we must run like the
devil!"

"I'm on in that last scene," growled Herbert.

"Only," repeated Ford with emphasis, "We must be sure he has seen us."

Not twenty feet from them came a bursting roar, a flash, many roars,
many flashes, many bullets.

"He's seen us!" yelled Birrell.

After the light from his open door had shown him one German soldier
fully armed, the Coast Guard had seen nothing further. But judging from
the shrieks of terror and the sounds of falling bodies that followed
his first shot, he was convinced he was hemmed in by an army, and he
proceeded to sell his life dearly. Clip after clip of cartridges he
emptied into the night, now to the front, now to the rear, now out to
sea, now at his own shadow in the lamp-light. To the people a quarter of
a mile away at Morston it sounded like a battle.

After running half a mile, Ford, bruised and breathless, fell at full
length on the grass beside the car. Near it, tearing from his person the
last vestiges of a German uniform, he found Birrell. He also was puffing
painfully.

"What happened to Herbert?" panted Ford.

"I don't know," gasped Birrell, "When I saw him last he was diving over
the cliff into the sea. How many times did you die?"

"About twenty!" groaned the American, "And, besides being dead, I am
severely wounded. Every time he fired, I fell on my face, and each time
I hit a rock!"

A scarecrow of a figure appeared suddenly in the rays of the
head-lights. It was Herbert, scratched, bleeding, dripping with water,
and clad simply in a shirt and trousers. He dragged out his kit bag and
fell into his golf clothes.

"Anybody who wants a perfectly good German uniform," he cried, "can have
mine. I left it in the first row of breakers. It didn't fit me, anyway."

The other two uniforms were hidden in the seat of the car. The rifles
and helmets, to lend color to the invasion, were dropped in the open
road, and five minutes later three gentlemen in inconspicuous Harris
tweeds, and with golf clubs protruding from every part of their car,
turned into the shore road to Crome