Then followed an hour of waiting.  I felt wonderfully cheered and exhilarated, for Wake had restored my confidence in human nature.  In that eerie place we were wrapped round with mystery like a fog.  Some unknown figure was coming out of the sea, the emissary of that Power we had been at grips with for three years.  It was as if the war had just made contact with our own shores, and never, not even when I was alone in the South German forest, had I felt so much the sport of a whimsical fate.  I only wished Peter could have been with me.  And so my thoughts fled to Peter in his prison camp, and I longed for another sight of my old friend as a girl longs for her lover.

Then I heard the hoot of an owl, and presently the sound of careful steps fell on my ear.  I could see nothing, but I guessed it was the Portuguese Jew, for I could hear the grinding of heavily nailed boots on the gritty rock.

The figure was very quiet.  It appeared to be sitting down, and then it rose and fumbled with the wall of the tower just beyond the boulder behind which I sheltered.  It seemed to move a stone and to replace it.  After that came silence, and then once more the hoot of an owl.  There were steps on the rock staircase, the steps of a man who did not know the road well and stumbled a little.  Also they were the steps of one without nails in his boots.

They reached the platform and someone spoke.  It was the Portuguese Jew and he spoke in good German.

‘Die vogelein schweigen im Walde,’ he said.

The answer came from a clear, authoritative voice.

‘Warte nur, balde ruhest du auch.’

Clearly some kind of password, for sane men don’t talk about little birds in that kind of situation.  It sounded to me like indifferent poetry.

Then followed a conversation in low tones, of which I only caught odd phrases.  I heard two names—­Chelius and what sounded like a Dutch word, Bommaerts.  Then to my joy I caught Effenbein, and when uttered it seemed to be followed by a laugh.  I heard too a phrase several times repeated, which seemed to me to be pure gibberish—­Die Stubenvogel verstehn.  It was spoken by the man from the sea.  And then the word Wildvogel.  The pair seemed demented about birds.

For a second an electric torch was flashed in the shelter of the rock, and I could see a tanned, bearded face looking at some papers.  The light disappeared, and again the Portuguese Jew was fumbling with the stones at the base of the tower.  To my joy he was close to my crack, and I could hear every word.  ‘You cannot come here very often,’ he said, ’and it may be hard to arrange a meeting.  See, therefore, the place I have made to put the Viageffutter.  When I get a chance I will come here, and you will come also when you are able.  Often there will be nothing, but sometimes there will be much.’