had a secret dispatch from Berlin. Everything goes well. Our brave
soldiers are sweeping their way through Belgium. In a week they will
march triumphantly into Paris. We shall have taken possession of
Calais. The way to England will then be easy. Our battleships and
submarines will command the Channel, and all the seas; cutting off
supplies so effectually that Great Britain will be starved into
submission, even before our transports and Zeppelins land their invading
forces. Your opportunities, my dear Max, are even brighter than I had
dared to dream."
He paused, drawing his son closer into the shielding shadows of the
tree.
"But this delay in our getting over to Wilhelmshaven is most
unfortunate," he continued. "As it happens, you had better have gone
right across in the ketch, instead of changing into the _Minna_. As for
myself----"
"Why didn't you go by the mail-boat from Harwich?" Max interrupted.
"My dear boy," exclaimed his father, "I waited for your message. All
our plans--everything--depended upon my knowing the bearings of the
_Minna_ and my getting on board of her, as we planned."
"And now," pursued Max, "what do you propose to do?"
"Listen!" rejoined Herr Hilliger, still speaking in a cautiously low
voice. "Everything that we now do must be in the service of the Emperor
and the Fatherland. You and I are no longer concerned with England, in
any way whatever, excepting in hastening her complete downfall. Great
Britain must be beaten to the dust. And I have come to the
determination that for the present we can best serve the Kaiser's cause
by my going at once to Wilhelmshaven, leaving you here in England."
"Leaving me here?" cried Max in surprise. "But why? Why should I, a
German, remain here among our enemies?"
"To be of the greatest use to his Majesty the Kaiser," returned Herr
Hilliger. "You have been associated with the English people. You know
them; you speak like one of them; you can pass yourself off anywhere as
English. You can look about you without being suspected, seeing things
which it is important that the Admiral and his captains should know."
"What?" Max ground his heel into the gravel. "You want me to stop here
and find out the secrets of our enemies--to continue your underhand work
of sending private information to Germany about the British fleet? You
want me to betray the people who have been my friends? No, my father, I
cannot do that. I am a German; I will fight for Germany. I will give up
my life for the Fatherland. But I will not pretend to be what I am not.
I will not be a spy."
Herr Hilliger laughed, a low, contemptuous laugh.
"My dear Max," he said, "since when did you learn that to be a true
patriot it is necessary to consider the advantages of your country's
enemies? It is nonsense. Your highest duty, as my son and as a German,
is to do all you can against the arrogant English. You shall obey me.
Do you understand? Tell me, once: how many people know that you are here
in Haddisport? How many know that your life was saved when the British
cruiser was blown to pieces by our faithful explosive mine?"
"Nobody knows," Max answered sullenly. "Nobody on board the destroyer
which picked me up knew me, even by sight. I did not intend that any
one should guess I was a German. Nobody who was on board the _Atreus_
knows that I was not blown to bits--except--yes, except Mark Redisham.
He saw me swimming. But he doesn't know that I was saved."
"Ah!" nodded Herr Hilliger. "And he need never know. He must never
know--never. It is better that he should believe that you were
drowned."
Max clutched at his father's arm, pressing him back upon the grass
behind the tree.
"Some one comes!" he whispered agitatedly.
They both saw the lithe figure of a youth approaching silently up the
drive. He paused for a moment, looking at the front door of the dark,
deserted house, strode to the porchway, and quickly ran up the steps.
In the silence the two watchers heard the tinkling of an electric bell;
but neither moved. Strange that they should thus hide themselves in
their own garden!
They waited, knowing that the door would not be opened. Herr Hilliger
ventured to lean out and look towards the porch. As he did so, the
revolving beam of light from the lighthouse, half a mile away, illumined
the trees, travelled slowly over the towers and gables of the dwelling,
glinted for an instant on the upper windows, then spread its glow across
the sea. Against this glow he saw the figure on the doorstep, clearly
defined.
"It is one of your Sea Scouts," he whispered.
The Sea Scout ran lightly down the steps, turned, and came quickly
nearer, walking so quietly on the gravel that Max could only believe
that he wore tennis shoes. Then, as he came yet closer, to within a
couple of yards of the two Germans, again the beam from the lighthouse
swung round and shone in his face.
It was the face of Mark Redisham.
*CHAPTER VI.*
*WHAT MARK FOUND IN THE PIGEON-LOFT.*
The two watchers under the sycamore-tree held themselves so very still
and silent that even if he had been searching for them Mark Redisham
might have passed by without a suspicion that they were so near. His
well-trained senses were alert, but he was not consciously listening for
any betraying sound or looking for any movement.
He went on along the gravel drive with confident stride until he reached
the stables. Here he paused, glancing backward before entering the
gateway of the yard. He had expected to find the gate shut and bolted,
and was surprised to see that the door of the motor-garage also was
open.
The place was in darkness, but he noticed that the motor-car was not
there. This appeared to indicate that, although the family might have
gone home to Germany, yet they had not dismissed all their servants.
Mark reflected that probably the chauffeur, who acted also as gardener,
had been left in charge of the house and grounds until the property
should be sold or otherwise disposed of.
Mark had no intention of asking the caretaker's sanction to do what he
had come to do. Indeed, it gratified him that his precautionary ringing
of the hall hell had not been answered. He went boldly into the
stables.
Knowing that he was about to use his electric torch, he closed the door
behind him, lest the light should be seen. He knew the place well.
Even in this past summer the Lion Patrol had had a scout game at
Sunnydene. Pickets had been stationed at various points, and it had
been his own part to steal into the grounds and make his way in the
darkness into the harness-room without being caught.
He was now engaged in no ordinary scouting game, but in a serious duty
imposed upon him by the officer in command at the naval base, and it was
even more important that he should not be detected.
Feeling along the whitewashed wall, he touched the ladder leading to the
loft. Up this he climbed through the trap-door.
He stood for some moments looking about him in the darkness of the loft.
In the high door by which hay and straw were brought in there was a
small hole, on a level with his eyes. Swallows used it as an entrance
to their nests in the rafters. Going up to it and peering outward, he
could distinguish the dark level of the sea, and presently the ruby
gleam of the Alderwick lightship appeared, grew brighter, and faded
against the dim horizon.
Mark realised that, if from here he could see that ruby gleam, it was
certain that the crew of the lightship could equally well see the flash
of his electric torch. Was it not possible that Heinrich Hilliger had
used this hole in the loft door through which to flash his signals?
Mark covered the hole by hanging his cap on a nail just above it.
Then he turned and closed the trap in the floor. It made more noise in
falling than he had intended. Whether it was the displacement of air or
his own fancy, there seemed to be a corresponding sound down below, as
if another door had been suddenly shut, and as if the key of that other
door had been turned in the lock.
"I suppose I'm a bit nervous," he said to himself. "It couldn't have
been anything." He drew out his torch, pressed the switch, and turned
the shaft of light upon the partition beyond which Hilliger's pigeons
were kept. The key was in the door. Feeling like a guilty burglar, he
turned it and entered, shielding the light from the open space in the
gable by which the pigeons flew in and out.
There were no pigeons here now. The coops and perches were empty. He
supposed that Herr Hilliger had taken the birds away with him, to use
them in carrying secret messages back to England; although, as yet,
there was no proof that Herr Hilliger had ever actually used any of his
pigeons for this purpose.
Mark made a rapid survey of the untidy loft, with its lumber of old
harness, rusty garden tools, bundles of sacking, broken fishing-rods,
and discarded cricket bats. On a low shelf were some model yachts with
torn sails and tangled rigging. He looked at the rough model of a steam
trawler. The boat was curiously constructed with a boxed-in and
bottomless well. Inside this well there was a crude model of a
submarine. Some one--Max Hilliger, perhaps--had evidently attempted to
invent a device by which a real submarine might be hidden within the
casement of a larger vessel, thus enabling it to be brought close to an
enemy without being discovered. The idea was ingenious, but obviously
not practical.
In a corner cupboard he discovered a box of electric light bulbs of
various colours. The sight of these led him to search for electric
wires. He saw none; but what he did find was a portable electric lamp
coiled round with a wire so exceedingly long that, as he estimated, the
switch might be worked here in the loft while the bulb could be
cunningly planted amongst the gorse bushes halfway down the cliff, there
to flash its signals of coloured light.
Mark wondered if he should take the lamp away with him, but decided to
leave it untouched. If as he believed, Herr Hilliger was already on his
way back to Germany, and if Max were drowned, there could be no more
risk of their communicating with the enemy.
He turned his torch upon the long trestle table at the far end of the
loft. It was littered with feathers and grain, and thick with dust.
But in the midst of the litter were several things which he considered
it his duty to examine. The first article he touched was a match-box,
half full of very small elastic bands. Beside it was a spool of thin,
narrow paper.
"Here's proof enough!" he reflected with satisfaction. For he recognised
the paper and the elastic bands as being precisely similar to the
material found on the leg of the pigeon shot by Darby Catchpole from the
deck of the _What's Wanted_.
For a little while longer he continued his search. From a pile of old
newspapers and tattered books, he idly drew forth a long, tin cylinder,
thinking at first it was a telescope case. The lid had been jammed on
crookedly, and he had difficulty in pulling it off with the help of his
knife. When he succeeded at last in opening the canister, he saw that
it contained several tightly-rolled sheets of paper. He spread them out
on the table. They were maps, plans, and charts, very carefully drawn.
The uppermost one was a general map of the coast, including Haddisport
and Buremouth, with the villages between and a wide strip of the sea,
divided into numbered sections. The others--and there were some twenty
of them--were detailed enlargements of the same sections, upon which
were shown the principal buildings of the two towns, the particulars of
the harbours and railways, with every road and lane and bridge, every
field and coppice and house, distinctly indicated.
Mark Redisham had never seen such wonderful maps, or imagined that any
existed so complete and correct. Nothing seemed to have been
overlooked. On the margins of each sheet were notes, written in German,
with numbers referring to certain features in the plans.
Mark saw much that he did not then understand; but there was one sheet
in particular which was perfectly clear to him. It was a large scale
chart of the section of the North Sea immediately facing Haddisport,
giving the exact soundings of the channels and shallows and showing an
outline of the coast, with every altitude measured.
The soundings of Alderwick Knoll were so precise and plentiful that it
was evident to him that some important purpose was connected with this
sand-bank. He could hardly doubt, indeed, that the chart had been
prepared for the guidance of an enemy attempting an invasion!
So greatly was he impressed by this idea, that he became nervously
excited over his discovery. What was he to do? Should he carry these
charts and maps away with him, now--to-night? He had not been
instructed to take anything away with him; but only to "have a look
round" and report upon any discovery he might happen to make.
Thinking over the situation for a few swift moments, he determined to
obey his orders to the letter. Accordingly, he returned the sheets to
the map-case, put the case back where he had found it, and prepared to
leave the loft.
He left no trace of his secret visit. Taking his cap and pocketing his
torch, he climbed down the ladder into the garage. He pushed lightly at
the door; but it did not swing open. He pushed it harder; still it
resisted. Then he put his shoulder to it and gave it a shove. It did
not move. He grappled with it, trying with all his strength to force it
open and, realised, to his alarm, that it had been locked from the
outside!
He grew hot and cold by turns. Had he been watched, stealing into these
stables where he had no business which he could truthfully explain? If
so, who could it be that had watched and trapped him? It could not be
Heinrich Hilliger himself, or Max. Herr Hilliger had gone back to
Germany. Max was drowned. The chauffeur had not returned with the car.
Once more he put his shoulder to the door. No. It was certainly
locked! He was a prisoner!
But Mark Redisham was not a Sea Scout for nothing. There were more ways
than one of getting out. He tried the door of the harness-room. That,
too, was locked. Yet there was still another door, leading into the
stable. It opened with a simple latch and he crossed to the door giving
on to the yard. Again he was foiled.
He looked to the window. It was heavily barred.
But not even now did he despair. Beyond the vacant horse-boxes was a
small opening in the wall--a hatch through which the stable refuse was
forked out. This hatch, he knew, was fastened only on the inside by a
hook and staple. In a moment he had flung it open, to climb out without
further hindrances and make his way among the fruit trees and across the
tennis lawn to the back gate of the Sunnydene property, and into the
Alderwick road.
Five minutes after his escape, he was at home in his father's library,
sending his report by telephone to the naval base.
His father, Major Redisham, had gone off to join his regiment, and the
family supper was in consequence a melancholy meal. Mark said nothing
of his visit to Sunnydene; but he was at liberty to tell his mother and
sisters of the exciting events of the day--the loss of the _What's
Wanted_, the sinking of the German mine-layer, and the terrible disaster
to the _Atreus_.
"So you see," he concluded, "Rod was present at the firing of the first
naval gun of the war!"
"Yes," said his mother; "but unfortunately Rodney's ship cannot be
replaced, or the brave men who went down with her. He may not get
another appointment for a long time. Is he coming home to-night, Mark?"
Mark shook his head.
"No, mother," he answered. "He was kept aboard the destroyer--the
_Levity_. The whole flotilla went off to sea again as soon as the
wounded were put ashore for hospital."
"I suppose they've gone to join the main fleet," his sister Vera
conjectured. "Of course, the German battleships are out, and there'll
be a great battle."
"The destroyers went south, however," Mark explained, "and the enemy
fleet is much more likely to be hanging round off the Dogger Bank than
down there in the narrow seas. It's my idea that the destroyers have
gone into the Channel."
"Why?" questioned Vera. "What's the good of their going into the
Channel when the Germans are in the North Sea? We want to fight them,
don't we?"
"Well, you see," resumed Mark, "the British Army will be crossing to
France. You don't suppose that ever so many of our transports--big
liners crowded with troops--will be allowed to go over by themselves, at
the risk of being sunk by German submarines? They've got to be
protected on both flanks. I expect they'll steam across through quite
an avenue of cruisers and destroyers."
Later, when Mark was saying good-night before going sleepily to bed,
there was a ring at the front-door bell.
"Master Mark is wanted," the parlourmaid announced agitatedly. "There's
a policeman and a lot of soldiers."
No longer sleepy, Mark hurried into the hall, where he found Constable
Challis, Mr. Bilverstone, and two men in khaki.
"What's up?" he cried, seeing that the two soldiers were armed with
rifles and fixed bayonets. "Are the Germans coming?"
"We want you to go with us," Arnold Bilverstone explained. "Get on your
overcoat, and bring your electric torch. We're going to make a raid on
Herr Hilliger's pigeon-loft."
Mark was quickly ready to march off at the head of the company. As they
filed into the Sunnydene ground they saw that the house was in total
darkness.
Leaving one of the sentries posted outside the stable yard, Mr.
Bilverstone led the way round to the rear of the outhouses, where he
posted the second sentry. Mark crossed the tennis-court, dodged under
the fruit trees, and crawled through the hatch door which he had left
unfastened. Mr. Bilverstone and Constable Challis followed him through
the stable and into the garage. They mounted one by one into the loft.
Mark flashed his torchlight along the floor, up into the rafters, and
again along the floor. Then he stooped and picked up the stub of a
cigarette, sniffed at it and shook his head.
"Somebody has been here!" he cried. "The end of this cigarette's still
wet."
He went beyond the partition and began to search. But his search was in
vain. The maps, the electric signalling-lamp and coloured bulbs, the
model of the submarine, the spool of paper, the elastic bands--all had
been cleared away. Nothing remained to show that the place was more
than an abandoned pigeon-loft.
*CHAPTER VII.*
*UNDER THE WHITE ENSIGN.*
Because he was a Sea Scout, clever at semaphore signalling, with a
knowledge of seamanship, resourceful, and generally handy, Mark Redisham
had no difficulty in entering the Royal Naval Reserve, the more
especially as he was strongly recommended by Captain Damant. It
satisfied him greatly to be appointed at once as signal-boy and wireless
operator on board His Majesty's steam trawler _Dainty_.
She was named the _Dainty_ when launched, and as the _Dainty_ she had
toiled and battled for three stormy winters on the wild North Sea. But
now her impudent white and red funnel and her gaudy hull were painted a
sombre war grey, her trawling gear had been altered, her fish-well
turned into a cabin, and the name on her bows had given place to the
number 99. She was no longer a mere fishing craft, but classed as one
of the great new fleet of naval mine-sweepers, flying the white ensign,
and manned by a crew of sturdy East Coast fishermen wearing the blue
jacket and loose trousers and flat-topped caps of the British Navy.
It was a proud moment for Mark when early on the morning following the
"raid" on the pigeon-loft he went on duty, and the _Dainty_ steamed out
of Haddisport harbour and bore northward abreast of the lighthouse and
past his home on the cliff. She was one of a squadron of twelve, and
they went out in the company of the torpedo gunboat _Rapid_.
Word had come that the Germans had sown an extensive mine-field to the
west and south of the Dogger Bank, scattering their deadly explosives
over the seas, to the peril of peaceful trading vessels as well as of
any British battleships and cruisers that might enter the area of
danger. Two Danish cargo steamers and half a dozen English fishing
boats had already been blown up, and our busy scavengers of the sea were
now to go out and rake up the carefully-sown seedlings of death.
The work was dangerous, for at any moment one of the stout little
vessels of the squadron might find a mine with her keel instead of with
her stretched wire hawser, which meant ten more good men sent to the
bottom. And there was always the risk of a premature explosion if a
mine had to be handled in releasing it from its moorings.
Mines are not pleasant things to handle at any time--certainly not such
powerful ones as the Germans employ, with glass "beards," or projecting
spikes, the breaking of one of which results in an explosion great
enough to sink a Dreadnought! They are charged, not with gun-cotton, but
with the even stronger explosive known as T.N.T., which has the quality
that if the mine filled with it strikes a ship it blows in the side of
the vessel and then continues its destructive work in the interior.
The skipper of mine-sweeper 99 was Harry Snowling, R.N.R., an old salt
who had fished for thirty years on the North Sea, and knew its deeps and
shallows as well as he knew the lines on his own honest, weather-beaten
face. But, of course, he had had no experience of mine-sweeping, and
had only vague ideas as to how the mines were to be located.
"What's she doin' of, bor?" he questioned, when they were far out in the
blue water, watching a seaplane sweeping overhead and flying to and fro
athwart the gunboat's course.
"Well," said Mark Redisham, "I'm not certain; but I suppose she's
looking for mines. They're not floating right on the surface, you know.
They're held just about a foot below low water level, so that when a
vessel passes she'll go bang on to them. But the pilot up there can see
them, as a gannet sees a fish, and I expect he'll drop a signal when he
spots one."
For something like an hour the seaplane searched, followed by the
gunboat, with the trawlers moving in pairs in her wake.
When at length a signal was sent down that mines had been sighted,
"dans," or small buoys with flags attached, were put out to mark the
spot from which operations were to begin. Each couple of trawlers got
ready their dredge tackle, dropping over the stern a long wire rope,
heavily weighted. The weight drawn by each boat was connected with that
of its partner by a yet longer wire hawser, weighted to keep it
submerged and stretched below the level of the floating mines. The two
vessels, ranging themselves on either side of the mine-field, steamed
ahead on a parallel course, so that their submerged gear should catch
upon the mooring-lines and sweep up the mines floating between them.
This process was carried on simultaneously by the other trawlers,
clearing a wide lane through the mine-field, while the gunboat and the
seaplane continued their searching for new fields.
When the mines were thus caught and brought to the surface, they were
exploded from a safe distance by gunfire. You may be sure there were
many narrow escapes from serious accident.
During the first afternoon, the _Dainty_ and her working partner, the
_Ripple_, brought up two mines together. They came into violent contact
with each other, exploding so close astern of the _Ripple_ that she was
caught in the edge of the upheaval and badly damaged. Her crew made for
the boat, thinking that all was over with them; but her skipper
controlled them, and himself crawled below into the narrow space near
the screw shaft, discovered the damage, and stopped the leak
sufficiently to enable the pumps to keep the water down and save the
ship.
Within a quarter of an hour of this accident, one of the other trawlers
struck a mine and was shattered to fragments.
At the end of two days, the field having been cleared, the gunboat
returned to port. Shortly after she had gone, Mark Redisham and his
companions watched a squadron of British dreadnoughts and cruisers
steaming safely across the area from which the danger had been so
industriously removed.
Their trails of smoke had hardly faded from the horizon when Mark, still
looking in the direction in which they had disappeared, noticed a
curious disturbance in the calm water, about a couple of miles away.
At first he thought it was a school of gambolling porpoises showing
their fins, but presently the periscopes and conning-tower of a
submarine rose to the surface. The conning-tower was marked "U15," and
he knew by this that she was German.