to protest it!"

"If they had not been Americans," began Madame.

"Americans!" burst in Brisson. "Bah! They are not Americans! Germans,
perhaps, or Austrians; but Americans, no! Those men, Gabrielle, have
something to conceal!" and Brisson, frowning darkly, went back into the
house.

* * * * *

Meanwhile the two pedestrians made their way rapidly along the dark and
silent street without exchanging a word. There was in their faces a
strange excitement, and they stared straight ahead, as though they dared
not meet each other's eyes. At the end of a few moments, they came out
upon the quays. Here the darkness of the narrow street gave place to
the grey of the approaching dawn, and one of them took his watch from
his pocket and looked at it.

"Nine minutes!" he said in guttural English, and in a voice strangely
thick, as with some deep and barely repressed emotion.

The other nodded, and with common accord they turned to the right toward
the great basin, where three or four men-of-war lay at anchor. The light
increased from minute to minute, the horizon turned from grey to pearly
white, and over the hills to the east a golden halo marked the spot
where the sun would rise. They stopped to look at it, and then, stepping
back into the recess of a doorway, directed their gaze toward a great
battleship, anchored perhaps three hundred yards away. As the minutes
passed, they seemed scarcely to breathe, and their lips were twitching
with nervous excitement.

Suddenly over the trees shot a long ray of yellow light, gilding the
house-tops, gilding the mast-heads of the vessels in the harbour; and
then, as though in answer to a signal, came a muffled roar from the
anchored battleship. There was an instant's silence, then the shrill
voices of sentries sounding the alarm, the whirring of a gong....

A second roar drowned all lesser sounds, and then the high, thin notes
of a bugle echoed across the water. The deck of the ship was alive with
men; from her open ports wisps of angry smoke swirled upward into the
morning air....

Above the babble of excited voices, rose a shout of command, the bugle
shrilled "Sauve qui peut! Sauve qui peut! Sauve qui peut!" and the crew
began leaping over the side; and then, straight in front of where stood
the breathless watchers, a mighty column of black smoke leaped high into
the air, mushroomed and drifted slowly away before the breeze. At the
same instant came