e. He went away in
that German yacht that left the bay less than an hour ago."

"A German yacht!" he echoed. "Well now, how stupid of me, I've been
trying to think all the afternoon what that flag was she carried when
she came in."

"The German Imperial Yacht Club," she said, "that was the ensign she was
flying, and John has gone to Germany in her."

"To Germany! John gone to Germany! But what for? Surely now--"

"Yes, to Germany, to help the Emperor to set the world on fire."

"You're not saying that, Miss Norah?"

"I am," she said, more gravely than he had ever heard her speak. "Mr
Lismore, it's a sick and sorry girl I am this afternoon. You were the
first Irishman on the top of Waggon Hill, and you'll understand what I
mean. If you have nothing better to do, perhaps you'll walk down to the
Fall with me, and I'll tell you."

"I could have nothing better to do, Norah, and it's yourself that knows
that as well as I do," he replied. "I only wish the road was longer.
And it's yourself that's sick and sorry, is it? If it wasn't John, I'd
like to get the reason out of any other man. That's Irish, but it's
true."

He turned, and they walked down the steeply sloping street for several
minutes in silence.

CHAPTER III

SEEN UNDER THE MOON

It was a few minutes after four bells on a grey morning in November 1909
that Lieutenant-Commander Francis Erskine, in command of his Majesty's
Fishery Cruiser, the _Cormorant_, got up on to the navigating bridge,
and, as usual, took a general squint about him, and buttoned the top
button of his oil-skin coat.

The _Cormorant_ was just a few yards inside the three-mile limit on
Flamborough Head, and, officially, she was looking for trespassers, who
either did not fly the British flag, or flew it fraudulently. There were
plenty of foreign poachers on the rich fishing grounds to the north and
east away to the Dogger, and there were also plenty of floating grog
shops from Bremen and Hamburg, and Rotterdam and Flushing, and a good
many other places, loaded up to their decks with liquor, whose mission
was not only to sell their poison at about four hundred per cent. profit
to the British fishers on the Dogger, but also to persuade them, at a
price, to smuggle more of the said poison into the British Islands to be
made into Scotch and Irish whisky, brandy, Hollands, gin, rum, and even
green and yellow Chartreuse, or any other alcoholic potion which simply
wanted the help of