of the twenty-sixth day of the month, all of the colour of saffron from the dust-clouds the car had raised, and Hillyard so stiff and bruised with the intolerable jolting over ruts baked to iron, that he could hardly climb down on to the ground.  He slept that night amidst such a music of birds as he had never believed possible one country could produce.  Through the night of the twenty-sixth he and Jose Medina watched; their lanterns ready to their hands.  Lights there were in plenty on the sea, but they were the lights of acetylene lamps used by the fishermen of those parts to attract the fish; and the morning broke with the lighthouse flashing wanly over a smooth sea, pale as fine jade.

“There are three more nights,” said Hillyard.  He was a little dispirited after the fatigue of the day before and the long, empty vigil on the top of the day.

The next watch brought no better fortune.  There was no moon; the night was of a darkness so clear that the stars threw pale and tremulous paths over the surface of the water, and from far away the still air vibrated from time to time with the throbbing of propellers as the ships without lights passed along the coast.

Hillyard rose from the blanket on which he and Jose Medina had been lying during the night.  It had been spread on a patch of turf in a break of the hill some hundreds of feet above the sea.  He was cold.  The blanket was drenched and the dew hung like a frost on bush and grass.

“It looks as if they had found out,” he said.

“This is only the second night,” said Jose Medina.

“It all means so much to me,” replied Hillyard, shivering in the briskness of the morning.

“Courage, the little Marteen!” cried Jose Medina.  “After breakfast and a few hours’ sleep, we shall take a rosier view.”

Hillyard, however, could not compose himself to those few hours.  The dread lest the Germans should have discovered the interception of their letters weighed too heavily upon him.  Even in the daylight he needs must look out over that placid sunlit sea and imagine here and there upon its surface the low tower and grey turtle-back of a submarine.  Success here might be so great a thing, so great a saving of lives, so dire a blow to the enemy.  Somehow that day slowly dragged its burning hours to sunset, the coolness of the evening came, and the swift darkness upon its heels, and once more, high up on the hillside, the vigil was renewed.  And at half-past one in the morning, far away at sea, a green light, bright as an emerald, flashed thrice and was gone.

“Did I not say to you, ’Have courage’?” said Jose Medina.

“Quick! the Lanterns!” replied Hillyard.  “The red first!  Good!  Now the white.  So!  And the red again.  Now we must wait!” and he sank down again upon the blanket.  All the impatience and languor were gone from him.  The moment had come.  He was at once steel to meet it.

“Yes,” said Jose Medina, “we shall see nothing more now for a long while.”