its peculiar position, naturally remote
and yet close to a great maritime port, to be the quarters of the
Northern Submarine Flotilla.

Jacques de Wissant--and it was perhaps the only time in their joint life
that his wife had entirely understood and sympathized with any action of
her husband's--had refused the compensation his Government had offered
him; more, in his cold, silent way, he had shown himself a patriot in a
sense comparatively few modern men have the courage to be, namely, in
that which affected both his personal comfort and his purse.

* * * * *

After standing for a moment on the perilously small and narrow platform
which made the floor of the tower, Claire grasped firmly a strand of the
knotted rope and began descending the long steps cut in the cliff side.
She no longer gazed out to sea, instead she looked straight down into
the pale green, sun-flecked waters of the little bay, where seven out of
the nine submarines which composed the flotilla were lying
half-submerged, as is their wont in harbour.

A landsman, coming suddenly upon the cliff-locked pool, might have
thought that the centuries had rolled back, and that the strange sight
before him was a school of saurians lazily sunning themselves in the
placid waters of a sea inlet where time had stood still.

But no such vision came to Claire de Wissant. As she went down the
cliff-side her lovely eyes rested on these sinister, man-created
monsters with a feeling of sisterly, possessive affection. She had
become so familiarly acquainted with each and all of them in the last
few months; she knew with such a curious, intimate knowledge where they
differed, both from each other and also from other submarine craft, not
only here, in these familiar waters, but in the waters of France's great
rival on the sea....

It ever gave her a thrill of pride to remember that it was France which
first led the way in this, the most dangerous as also the most
adventurous new arm of naval warfare: and she rejoiced as fiercely, as
exultantly as any of her sea-fighting forbears would have done in the
terrible potentialities of destruction which each of these strange,
grotesque-looking craft bore in their narrow flanks.

It was now the hour of the crews' midday meal; there were fewer men
standing about than usual; and so, after she had stepped down on the
sandy strip of shore, and climbed the ladder leading to the old
Napoleonic hulk wh