hurrying towards the harbour and the shore.

Shaking off the bearer of ill news with a curt word of thanks, the Mayor
of Falaise strode out of the town hall into the street and joined the
eager crowd, mostly consisting of fisher folk, which grew denser as it
swept down the tortuous narrow streets leading to the sea.

The people parted with a sort of rough respect to make way for their
mayor; many of them, nay the majority, were known by name to Jacques de
Wissant, and the older men and women among them could remember him as a
child.

Rising to the tragic occasion, he walked forward with his head held
high, and a look of deep concern on his pale, set face. The men who
manned the Northern Submarine Flotilla were almost all men born and bred
at Falaise--Falaise famed for the gallant sailors she has ever given to
France.

The hurrying crowd--strangely silent in its haste--poured out on to the
great stone-paved quays in which is set the harbour so finely encircled
on two sides by the cliffs which give the town its name.

Beyond the harbour--crowded with shipping, and now alive with eager
little craft and fishing-boats making ready to start for the scene of
the calamity--lay a vast expanse of glistening sea, and on that
sun-flecked blue pall every eye was fixed.

The end of the harbour jetty was already roped off, only those
officially privileged being allowed through to the platform where now
stood Admiral de Saint Vilquier impatiently waiting for the tug which
was to take him out to the spot where the disaster had taken place. The
Admiral was a naval officer of the old school--of the school who called
their men "my children"--and who detested the Republican form of
government as being subversive of discipline.

As Jacques de Wissant hurried up to him, he turned and stiffly saluted
the Mayor of Falaise. Admiral de Saint Vilquier had no liking for M. de
Wissant--a cold prig of a fellow, and yet married to such a beautiful,
such a charming young woman, the daughter, too, of one of the Admiral's
oldest friends, of that Admiral de Kergouet with whom he had first gone
to sea a matter of fifty years ago! The lovely Claire de Kergouet had
been worthy of a better fate than to be wife to this plain, cold-blooded
landsman.

"Do they yet know, Admiral, which of the submarines has gone down?"
asked Jacques de Wissant in a low tone. He was full of a burning
curiosity edged with a longing and a suspense into whose secret sources