at and tucked the rug round himself.
"Thanks," was the grim reply. "Yes, I'll do the rest!" He lit a pipe,
and smoked in silence, as if following a train of thought. "My boy
would have been sixteen to-morrow. . . ."

"Ah!" said Uncle Bill.

An hour passed. The Naval man refilled and lit another pipe. By the
light of the match he examined his watch. "I suppose you tested the
contacts?" he asked at length in a low voice.

"Yes," was the reply, and they lapsed into silence again. The other
shifted his position slightly and raised his head, staring into the
darkness beyond the road whence came the faint, continuous murmur of
the sea.

Seaward a faint gleam of light threw into relief for an instant the
dark outline of a sand-dune, and sank into obscurity again.

Uncle Bill's eyeglass dropped against the buttons of his coat with a
tinkle. The grim, silent man beside him lifted something on to his
knees, and there was a faint click like the safety-catch of a gun being
released.

A frog in the ditch near by set up a low, meditative croaking. Uncle
Bill raised his head abruptly. Their straining ears caught the sound
of someone running, stumbling along the uneven track that wound in from
the shore. A whistle cut the stillness like a knife.

There was a hoarse rumble seaward that broke into a deafening roar, and
was succeeded by a sound like the bursting of a dam. The car rocked
with the concussion, and the fragments of the shattered wind-screen
tinkled down over the bonnet and footboard.

Then utter, absolute silence.

II

THE DRUM

1

Ole Jarge put down the baler and wiped the perspiration from his
forehead. A few fish scales transferred themselves from the back of
his oakum-coloured hand to his venerable brow.

"'Tain't no use," he murmured. "'Er's nigh twenty year' ole--come nex'
month. Tar ain't no use neither. 'Tis new strakes 'ers wantin'." He
thumbed the seams of the old boat that lay on the shingle, with the
outgoing tide still lapping round her stern. "An' new strakes do cost
tarrible lot." He sat puffing his clay pipe, and transferred his gaze
from the bottom of the boat to the whitewashed cottages huddled under
the lee of the cliffs. A tall figure was moving about the nets that
festooned the low wall in front of the cottages.

Ole Jarge removed his pipe from his mouth, substituted two fingers of
his right hand, and gave a long, shrill whistle. It was a
disconcerting perfor