d all the while, I felt that my time was not
wasted if I escaped safely, having seen simply what I now noted. For
my eye could put interpretations on features that would convey nothing
to the ordinary traveller.

Gradually up and up a long gentle incline I rode, with the sound
falling below me and a mass of high dark hills rising beyond it.
Behind me the sun was now low, and my shadow stretched long on the
empty road ahead. For it was singularly empty, and the country-side
was utterly peaceful; only at sea was there life--with death very close
beside it. And now and then there rose at intervals a succession of
dull, heavy sounds that made the earth quiver. I knew what they meant!

Then came a dip, and then a very steep long hill through moorland
country. And then quite suddenly and abruptly I came to the top. It
was a mere knife-edge, with the road instantly beginning to descend
steeply on the other side, but I did not descend with the road. I
jumped off and stared with bated breath.

Ahead of me and far below, a wide island-encircled sheet of water lay
placid and smiling in the late afternoon sunshine. Strung along one
side of it were lines of grey ships, with a little smoke rising from
most of their funnels, but lying quite still and silent--as still and
silent as the farms and fields on shore. Those distant patches of
grey, with the thin drifts of smoke and the masts encrusted with small
grey blobs rising out of their midst, those were the cause of all my
country's troubles. But for them peace would have long since been
dictated and a mightier German Empire would be towering above all other
States in the world. How I hated--and yet (being a sailor myself) how
I respected them!

One solitary monster of this Armada was slowly moving across the
laud-locked basin. Parallel to her and far away moved a tiny vessel
with a small square thing following her at an even distance, and the
sun shining on this showed its colour red. Suddenly out of the monster
shot a series of long bright flashes. Nothing else happened for
several seconds, and then almost simultaneously "Boom! boom! boom!" hit
my ear, and a group of tall white fountains sprang up around the
distant red target. The Grand Fleet of England was preparing for "The
Day"!

I knew the big vessel at a glance; I knew her, at least, as one of a
certain four, and for some moments I watched her gunnery practice, too
fascinated to stir. I noted how the fall