e still a mile or more distant, the lookout reported a
broad patch of oil spreading out from the buoy for several hundred yards
on all sides. This became visible from the bridge presently, and at
almost the same time my glass showed fragments of what appeared to be
wreckage floating both in and beyond the 'sleek' of oil. Now if there
had been any evidence whatever of either oil or wreckage the night
before I should not have failed to hail this morning's exhibit with a
glad whoop and nose right in to investigate. But as, when I gave up the
fight, I had dropped that buoy into an extremely clean patch of
water--even after the stirring my depth-charges had given it--the
plenitude of flotsam did not fail to arouse a certain amount of
suspicion.

"Ordering the sloops and trawlers to stand-off-and-on at a safe
distance, I went with the _Flash_ to have a look at a number of
fragments that were floating a couple of cables' lengths away from the
buoy. A piece of box--evidently a preserved fruit or condensed milk
case--with German letters stencilled across one end was undoubtedly of
enemy origin, as was also a biscuit tin with patches of its gaudy paper
still adhering to it. I did not like the careful way the cover of the
latter had been put on, however, and, besides, tins and cases are quite
the sort of thing any submarine throws over just as fast as it is
through with them. It was some real wreckage I was looking for, and this
it presently appeared that I had found when the bow wave threw aside a
deeply floating fragment of what--even before we picked it up--I
recognised as newly split teak. Closer inspection revealed the fact that
it was newly split all right, but also the fact that an axe or hatchet
had had a good deal to do with the splitting. What had probably been a
part of a bunk or locker had apparently been prised off with a bar and
then chopped up into jagged strips. Attempts to obliterate the marks of
bar and axe by pounding them against some rough metal surface had been
too hasty and crude to effect their purpose.

"'That settles it,' I said to myself. 'Fritz is trying to play a little
joke on us by making us think he is lying blown-up on the bottom, while,
in fact, he is probably lying off somewhere waiting to slip a slug into
one of the most likely looking of the salvage ships. Now that we've
twigged the game, however, we'll have to do what we can to defeat it.'
As senior officer, I ordered the three destroyers pre