Catching hold of one of the floats, Lawless endeavoured to draw himself up, but fell back in the water as a numbing pain shot through his left arm. He rose to the surface again in a semi-dazed condition, and made another feeble attempt to get on the floats; but his strength was exhausted, and he was suffering agonies from the injured arm. At this moment there came the sound of men's voices and the click of oars as they swung in the rowlocks; strong arms lifted him out of the water, and then he lost consciousness. When Lawless came to himself, he was lying in his bunk on board the _Knat_, and the absence of any movement told him that she must be at anchor in harbour. In a dreamy fashion he fell to wondering why he was lying there, with the sunlight streaming through the port-holes; he even made an effort to rise, but fell back as a pain shot from his left elbow to his shoulder. That set him thinking, and gradually the events of the previous night--he supposed it was the previous night--came back to him. Recollections of the mysterious steamer, the fight in mid-air, his fall into the sea--all passed through his brain in a fragmentary, disjointed manner, like the confused memories of a dream. Then, as he was trying to sort them out, the cabin door opened, and Sub-Lieutenant Trent entered. "Hallo! So you've come to at last!" he exclaimed. "How do you feel?" "As if I'd had a beastly nightmare," answered Lawless. "Where are we?" "In Portsmouth Harbour," replied Trent, as he seated himself on a locker beside the bunk and started to fill his pipe. "I'm beginning to remember things a bit more clearly now," said the Lieutenant. "Tell me what happened after I left the _Knat_." "There's not much to tell, so far as I'm concerned," answered Trent as he lit his pipe. "We kept our course, and just as we came abreast of your bogey ship she hauled down her signal lights and steamed away. Then----" "Ah, that must have been immediately after the waterplane rose," interrupted Lawless. "I thought there wasn't much wrong with her machinery." "Well, as I was saying, as soon as she steamed off I turned the searchlight on her, but could discover nothing of a suspicious nature," continued Trent. "Neither, for that matter, could I see anything of you, though we caught sight of the empty boat drifting. Nothing fresh happened till I heard a terrific explosion astern, and turned round just in time to see a ball of flame sink into the water near the _Mars_. I couldn't imagine what it was for a moment; but the _Mars_ people got their searchlight going in less than a jiffy, and then we spotted an aeroplane directly overhead.