arine, and detested these islands even more
bitterly than I hated any other part of Britain.

In the early afternoon I had a pleasant surprise. Tiel came in and
told me that his servant had gone out for the rest of the day, and that
I could safely come down to the parlour. There I had a late luncheon
in comparative comfort, and moreover I could look out of the windows on
to the sea. And what a dreary prospect I saw! Under a heavy sky and
with grey showers rolling over it, that open treeless country looked
desolation itself. As for the waters, whitecaps chased each other over
the wind-whipped expanse of grey, fading into a wet blur of moving rain
a few miles out. Through this loomed the nearer lines of giant ships,
while the farther were blotted clean out. I thought of the long
winters when one day of this weather followed another for week after
week, month after month; when the northern days were brief and the
nights interminable, and this armada lay in these remote isles enduring
and waiting. The German navy has had its gloomy and impatient seasons,
but not such a prolonged purgatory as that. We have a different
arrangement. Probably everybody knows what it is--still, one must not
say.

After lunch, when we had lit our cigars, Tiel said--

"By the way, you will be pleased to hear that my efforts this morning
were so successful that the people want me to give them another dose
next Sunday."

I stared at him.

"Really?" I exclaimed.

He nodded.

"But I thought there would be another preacher next Sunday."

"Oh, by no means. There was no one for next Sunday, and they were only
too glad to have the pulpit filled."

"But will you risk it?"

He smiled confidently.

"If there is any danger, I shall get warning in plenty of time."

"To ensure your escape?"

"To vanish somehow."

"But why should you wait?"

He looked at me seriously and said deliberately--

"I have other schemes in my head--something even bigger. It is too
early to talk yet, but it is worth running a little risk for."

I looked at this astonishing man with unconcealed admiration.
Regulations, authorities, precautions, dangers, he seemed to treat as
almost negligible. And I had seen how he could contrive and what he
could effect.

"I am afraid I shall have to ask you to stay with me for a few days
longer," he added.

I don't think I ever got a more unpleasant shock.

"You mean you wish me _not_ to rejoin my ship to-morrow