of the crew was
visible, and he was acting as look-out in the extreme bows, the rays
of the masthead lights--for a second had been hoisted in sign of
towage--glistening on his oilskin back. The other man, I concluded,
was steering the lighter, which I could dimly locate by the pale foam
at her bow.

And the passengers? They were all together aft, three of them,
leaning over the taffrail, with their backs turned to me. One was
short and stout--Boehme unquestionably; the panting and the thud on
the planks had prepared me for that, though where he had sprung from
I did not know. Two were tall, and one of these must be von Bruening.
There ought to be four, I reckoned; but three were all I could see.
And what of the third? It must be he who 'insists on coming', the
unknown superior at whose instance and for whose behoof this secret
expedition had been planned. And who could he be? Many times,
needless to say, I had asked myself that question, but never till
now, when I had found the rendezvous and joined the expedition, did
it become one of burning import.

'Any weather' was another of those stored-up phrases that were
_apropos._ It was a dirty, squally night, not very cold, for the wind
still hung in the S.S.W.--an off-shore wind on this coast, causing no
appreciable sea on the shoal spaces we were traversing. In the matter
of our bearings, I set myself doggedly to overcome that paralysing
perplexity, always induced in me by night or fog in these intricate
waters; and, by screwing round and round, succeeded so far as to
discover and identify two flashing lights--one alternately red and
white, far and faint astern; the other right ahead and rather
stronger, giving white flashes only. The first and least familiar
was, I made out, from the lighthouse on Wangeroog; the second, well
known to me as our beacon star in the race from Memmert, was the
light on the centre of Norderney Island, about ten miles away.

I had no accurate idea of the time, for I could not see my watch, but
I thought we must have started about a quarter past eleven. We were
travelling fast, the funnel belching out smoke and the bow-wave
curling high; for the tug appeared to be a powerful little craft, and
her load was comparatively light.

So much for the general situation. As for my own predicament, I was
in no mood to brood on the hazards of this mad adventure, a
hundredfold more hazardous than my fog-smothered eavesdropping at
Memmert. The crisis, I