books, magazines and newspapers. He picked up a paper
with a cry which suggested a discovery of importance.

"Look at that!" he exclaimed. "Do you see? A _Scotsman!_ Today's date!
And here--_Aberdeen Free Press_--same date!"

"Well?" asked Audrey. "And what then?"

"What then?" demanded Copplestone. "Where are your powers of deduction?
Why, that shows that the _Pike_ was somewhere this morning where she
could get the morning papers from Aberdeen and Edinburgh--therefore,
she's been, as I suggested, somewhere on the Scotch coast all night. It's
now noon--she's a fast sailer--I guess she's been within sixty miles of
us ever since she left us."

"Isn't it more pertinent to speculate on where she'll be when we want to
find her?" asked Audrey.

"More pertinent still to wonder when somebody will come to find us,"
answered Copplestone as he shouldered one of the cases. "However, there's
a certain joy in uncertainty, so they say--we're tasting it."

The joys of uncertainty, however, were not to endure. They had scarcely
completed the task of carrying up the newly-arrived stores to the shelter
which they had made in an angle of the rocks when Vickers hailed them
from a spur of the cliffs and waved his arms excitedly.

"I say, you two!" he shouted. "There's a craft coming--from the
south-west. Come up! There!" he added, a few minutes later, when they
arrived, breathless, at his side. "Out yonder--a mere black blot--but
unmistakable! Do you know what that is, either of you? You don't? All
right, I do--ought to, because I'm a R.N.V.R. man myself. That's a
T.B.D., my friends!--torpedo-boat destroyer. What's more, far off as she
is, my experienced eye and sure knowledge tell me exactly what she is.
She's a class H. boat built last year--oil fuel--turbines--runs up to
thirty knots--and she's doing 'em, too, just now! Come on,
Copplestone--more stuff on this fire!"

"I don't think we need be uneasy," said Copplestone. "Miss Greyle thinks
that her mother will have raised a hue and cry after the _Pike_. This
torpedo thing is probably looking round for us. She--what's that?"

The sudden sharp crack of a gun came across the calm surface of the sea,
and the watchers turning from their fire towards the black object in the
distance saw a cloud of white smoke drifting away from it.

"Hooray!" shouted Vickers. "She's seen our smoke-pillar! Shove more on,
just to let her know we understand. Saved!--this time, anyway."

Half-an-hour