point as the daily reports came in, till the final red star announced their destruction. He chewed his lip as he pondered. There was a fleet of submarine destroyers in Westport Harbor at this moment, but they had only just come in from a long spell, and he was loath to turn them out on a wild-goose chase.

"Confound the old idiot," he muttered again. "He can't even talk straight. Wanted to say that he had seen submarines, and starts jabbering about Germans in the light-house. Ring him up again, Dawkins, and find out whether he is drunk or talking in his sleep."

Dawkins went to the telephone. For five minutes, he alternately growled into the mouth-piece and moved the hook up and down.

"Don't get any answer at all, sir."

"That's queer. He can't be asleep yet after that beautiful conversation."

Commander Pickering went to the window again with his night-glasses.

"Damned if there isn't a light in both his rooms, and it's getting on for two o'clock in the morning. There's something rum happening. We'll take a sporting chance on it, and make a regular sweep of the bay. I'll go out to the Hatchets' myself on the Silver King. I think the old boy is dotty, and I suppose the Admiral will have my scalp for it to-morrow; but there's just one chance in a hundred thousand that Mr. Peter Ramsay did spot a squadron of U-boats. If so, we may as well strafe them properly."

He went to the telephone himself this time, and began issuing orders all over the base. His final sentence was an after-thought, an echo and an elaboration of the queer warning he had received from the Hatchets'.

"Don't go straight out. Make a sweep round by the south. There may be a trap; and you may as well let the dirigibles go ahead of you and do some scouting."

"It often happens with these chaps," said Commander Pickering to Dawkins, as they stood in Peter's bedroom an hour before dawn. "It's the lonely life that does it. They ought always to have a couple of men in these places; and, if it hadn't been for the war, of course, there would have been two men at the Hatchets'. Look here, at all this stuff. The poor chap had religious mania or something. See what he has written on these scraps of paper, twenty or thirty times over, every blessed text he could find about lanterns and lights, and it's all mixed up with bits from Herbert Spencer on the Unknowable."

"It was well known all over Westport," said Dawkins, "that old Peter had a screw loose about religion, but he seemed such a reliable old boy. You don't think he could have seen anything to set him off like, sir? It seems funny that the door was left open like that."

"Lord knows what he may have been playing at before he did this. We'd better go upstairs, and have a look at the light."

The two men plodded up the steep winding stair, poking into every corner on their way up, till they emerged on the little railed platform under the great crystal moons of the lantern. The glare blinded them.

"Turn those lights off," said Commander Pickering.

Dawkins ducked into the tower and obeyed.

Half a dozen patrol boats, each with its tiny black gun, at bow and stern, were cruising to and fro over rough seas, that looked from that height very much like the wrinkles on poor old Peter's gray face. Another sailor hauled himself to the platform, breathing hard from the ascent, and saluted.

"A telephone message for you, sir," he said. "There's been a lot of mines discovered off the point. We should have run straight into them, if we had neglected your warning and steered a straight course out."

Commander Pickering looked at Dawkins in silence. Far away to eastward, the dawn was breaking, red as blood, through a low fringe of ragged gray clouds. In a few moments the crystal moons of the Hatchets' Light were afire with it, and breaking it up into the colors of the rainbow round the black figures of the three men.

"We'll have to apologize to Peter," said Dawkins at last.

"It was a very lucky coincidence," said Commander Pickering; and he led the way downstairs at a smart pace to Peter's room again.

"There's no doubt that he shot himself," he said. "Look at all this. The man was stark mad. See what he has written on the title-page, under his own name: 'Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my Church.'"

II

UNCLE HYACINTH

On a bright morning, early in the year 1917, Herr Sigismund Krauss, secret agent for the German Government, stopped at the entrance of Harrods' Stores, looked at himself in one of the big mirrors, thought that he really did look a little like Bismarck, and adjusted his tie. To relieve the tension, let it be added that this scene was not enacted in London, but in the big branch of Harrods' that had recently been opened in Buenos Aires.

Nevertheless, it was because it looked so very much like the London branch that it had rasped the nerves of Herr Krauss. He was in a very nervous condition, owing to the state of his digestive system, and he was easily irritated. He had been annoyed in the first place because the German houses in Buenos Aires were unable to sell him several things which he thought necessary for the voyage he was about to take across the Atlantic. He had been almost angry when the bald-headed Englishman who had waited on him in Harrods' advised him to buy a safety waistcoat. All that he needed for his safety was the fraudulent Swedish passport, made out in the name of Erik Neilsen, which he carried in his breast pocket.

"I am an American citizen," he said, complicating matters still further. "I am sailing to Barcelona on an Argentine ship, vich the Germans are pledged nod to sink."

"This is the exact model of the waistcoat that saved the life of Lord Winchelsea," said the Englishman. "I advise you to procure one. You never know what those damned Germans will do."

Here was a chance of raising a little feeling against the United States, and Herr Krauss never lost an opportunity. He pretended to be even more angry than he really was.

"That is a most ungalled-for suggestion to a citizen of a neutral guntry," he snorted. "I shall report id to the authorities."

These mixed emotions had disarranged his tie. But he had obtained all that he wanted, and when he emerged into the street the magic of the blue sky and the brilliance of the sunlight on the stream of motor cars and gay dresses cheered him greatly. After all, it was not at all like London; and there were still places where a good German might speak his mind, if he did not insist too much on his allegiance.

He was in a great hurry, for his ship, the Hispaniola, sailed that afternoon. When he reached his hotel he had only just time enough to pack his hand luggage and drive down to the docks. His trunk had gone down in advance. It was very important, indeed, that he should not miss the boat. There was trouble pending, which might lead to his arrest if he remained in Argentina for another week; and there was urgent—and profitable—work for him to do in Europe.

In his cab on the way to the docks he examined the three letters which had been waiting for him at the hotel. Two of them were requests for a settlement of certain bills. "They can wait," he murmured to himself euphemistically, "till after the war."

The third letter ran thus:

Dear Erik: Bon voyage! Most amusing news. Operation successful. Uncle Hyacinth's appetite splendid. Six meals daily.

Yours affectionately,

Bolo.

This was the most annoying thing of all. Herr Krauss knew nothing about any operation. He knew even less about Uncle Hyacinth; and in order to interpret the message he would require the code—Number Six, as indicated by the last word but two, and the code was locked up in his big brass-bound steamer trunk. It was not likely to be anything that