erest you. I brought it
here in the hope of meeting you, as I knew that your ship was lying
here."

Erskine opened the envelope, and took out a sheet of notepaper, on which
were written just a few chemical formulae and about forty words.

Castellan, who was watching him keenly, for the first time since they
had sailed together through stress and storm under the White Ensign, saw
him start. The pupils of his eyes suddenly dilated; his eyelids and
eyebrows went up for an instant and came down again, and the rigid calm
of the British Naval Officer came back. He put the letter into his hip
pocket, buttoned it up, and said, very quietly:

"Thank you, Mr Lennard. You have done me a very great personal service,
and your country a greater one still. I shall, of course, make use of
this. I am afraid if you had sent it to the Ordnance Department you
wouldn't have heard anything about it for the next three months or more;
perhaps not till the war was over."

"And that is just why I brought it to you," laughed Lennard. "Well,
here's good luck to you and the _Ithuriel_, and all honour, and God save
the King!"

"God save the King!" repeated Erskine and Castellan, with that note of
seriousness in their tone which you can hear in the voice of no man who
has not fought, or is not going to fight; in short, to put his words
into action.

They emptied their glasses, and as they put them down on the table
again there came a knock at the door, sharp, almost imperative.

"Come in," said Erskine.

The head waiter threw the door open, and a Naval messenger walked in,
saluted, handed Erskine an official envelope, and said:

"Immediately, sir. The steam pinnace is down at the end of the Railway
Quay."

Erskine tore open the envelope and read the brief order that it
contained, and said:

"Very good. We shall be on board in ten minutes."

The messenger, who was a very useful-looking specimen of the handy man,
saluted and left the room. Castellan ran out after him, and they went
downstairs together. At the door of the hotel the messenger put two
fingers into his mouth, and gave three soft whistles, not unlike the
sounds of a boatswain's pipe. In two minutes a dozen bluejackets had
appeared from nowhere, and just as a matter of formality were asked to
have a drink at the bar. Meanwhile Denis Castellan had gone into the
smoking-room, where he found the sandy-haired, blue-eyed man still
sitting at his table in the corner, smoking his ci