overhead where a bevy of stars
twinkled, and it was a dim though not a dark night. The sea was as
flat and calm as you can ever get on an Atlantic coast--a glassy
surface, but always a gentle regular bursting of foam upon the beach.
In a semicircle the shore rose black, towering at either horn (and
especially on the south) into high dark cliffs.

I suppose a bird or two may have been crying then as they were a little
later, but there was not a light nor a sign of anything human being
within a hundred miles. If one of the Vikings who used to live in
those islands had revisited that particular glimpse of the moon, he
could never have guessed that his old haunts had altered a tittle. But
if he had waited a while he would have rubbed his eyes and wondered.
Right between the headlands he would have seen it dimly:--a great thing
that was not a fish rising out of the calm water, and then very
stealthily creeping in and in towards the southern shore.

When we were fairly on the surface I came on deck and gazed over the
dark waters to the darker shore, with--I don't mind confessing it
now--a rather curious sensation. To tell the truth, I was a little
nervous, but I think I showed no sign of it to Wiedermann.

"You have thought of everything you can possibly need?" he asked in a
low voice.

"Everything, sir, I think," I answered confidently.

"No need to give you tips!" he said with a laugh.

I felt flattered--but still my heart was beating just a little faster
than usual!

In we crept closer and closer, with the gentlest pulsation of our
engines that could not have been heard above the lapping of the waves
on the pebbles. An invisible gull or two wheeled and cried above us,
but otherwise there was an almost too perfect stillness. I could not
help an uncomfortable suspicion that _someone_ was watching. _Someone_
would soon be giving the alarm, _someone_ would presently be playing
the devil with my schemes. It was sheer nonsense, but then I had never
played the spy before--at least, not in war-time.

Along the middle of the bay ran a beach of sand and pebbles, with dunes
and grass links above, but at the southern end the water was deep close
inshore, and there were several convenient ledges of rock between the
end of this beach and the beginning of the cliffs. The submarine came
in as close as she dared, and then, without an instant's delay, the
boat was launched. Wiedermann, myself, two sailors, and the
motor