gs. You know what it was, of course; everybody knows now. Wasn't it
extraordinary that in five thousand years of fighting no one ever hit on
it before? I rushed to the War Office.

"Well, the thing came off. At first they pooh-poohed me as an unbalanced
boy, but they looked up the documents in the Admiralty and there was no
question. It isn't often a youngster is called into the councils of the
government, and I've wondered since how I held my own. I've come to
believe that I was merely a body for Kitchener's spirit. I was conscious
of no fatigue, no uncertainty. I did things as the Sirdar might have
done them, and it appears to me only decent to realize that he did do
them, and not I. You probably know the details."

I waited, hoping that he would not stop. Then I said: "I know that the
government asked for twenty-five volunteers for a service which would
destroy the German fleet, but which would mean almost certain death to
the volunteers. I know that you headed the list and that thousands
offered." My voice shook and I spoke with difficulty as I realized to
whom I was speaking. "I know that you were the only one who came back
alive, and that you were barely saved."

General Cochrane seemed not to hear me. He was living over enormous
events.

"It was a bright morning in the North Sea," he talked on, but not to me
now. "Nobody but ourselves knew just what was to be done, but everybody
hoped--they didn't know what. It was a desperate England from which we
sailed away. We hadn't long to wait--the second morning. There were
their ships, the triumphant long lines of the invader. There were their
crowded transports, the soldiers coming to crucify England as they had
crucified Belgium--thousands and tens of thousands of them. Then--we
did it. German power was wiped off the face of the earth. German
arrogance was ended for all time. And that was the last I knew," said
General Cochrane. "I was conscious till it was known that the trick had
worked. Of course it couldn't be otherwise, yet it was so beyond
anything which mankind had dreamed that I couldn't believe it till I
knew. Then, naturally, I didn't much care if I lived or died. I'd done
the turn as the Sirdar told me, and one life was a small thing to pay. I
dropped into blackness quite happily, and when I woke up to this good
earth I was glad. England was right. The Sirdar had saved her."

"And the Sirdar?" I asked him. "Was it--himself?"

"Himself? Most certainly."