t formed like a bubble far down
in the depths of Irish life, rose rapidly, and burst on the surface
with a little splash. The bubbles were large or small, sometimes no
more than pinheads in size, but they were evidences that the boiling
point was very near. The surface of the water, that region where
governing persons and leaders of public opinion air themselves,
was already agitated with odd-looking swirls, sudden swayings,
unaccountable swellings, all very ominous of imminent turmoil.

There were landings of arms here and there, furiously denounced by the
people who had run their own cargoes the week before or intended to
run them the next week. There were hurried gatherings of committees
which sat in private conclaves and then issued manifestos which nobody
read. Minor officials were goaded into orgies of fussiness. Major
officials, statesmen, escaped when they could, to the comparative calm
of suffragette-haunted public meetings in England. A Buckingham Palace
Conference set all sorts of people arguing about constitutional
precedents. It was recognized on all sides that a settlement of the
Irish question must somehow be reached. Gorman, if he had stayed at
home, would have been in the thick of it all. It is perhaps wrong to
say that he would have enjoyed himself thoroughly; but life would have
been an interesting and exciting thing. Salissa remained provokingly
dull and uneventful.

Gorman went to the cave again, on the day after he had first seen the
tanks and run von Moll's petrol to waste. He went by himself. The
Queen and Phillips took no further interest in the mystery for the
moment. They went off together early in the day and did not return
until evening. Even Gorman could not blame them. It was their last day
together. It was gloriously fine. The island, with its white cliffs,
its golden-sanded coves, its vineyards, its pleasant, shaded groves,
was a paradise for lovers. And the _Ida_--Captain Wilson insisted on
that--sailed the next day, carrying Phillips away with her.

Gorman achieved very little by his second visit to the cave. He took
with him several tools, a short axe, a screw-driver and a hammer. He
forced open some of the packing-cases which were piled near the
cistern. They were filled with steel bars of various sizes, steel
wrought into various shapes and odd-looking coils of copper wire.
Gorman knew little of engineering or mechanics. He was merely puzzled
by what he saw. It seemed to him that