The small office in which Woodhouse was installed was situated at the
very top of the tower--a room glassed on four sides like the lantern
room of a lighthouse, and provided with telescope, a telephone
switchboard, range finders, and all the complicated machinery of
gunfire control. On one side were trestle boards supporting charts of
the ranges--figured areas representing every square yard of water from
the nearer harbor below out to the farthest reaching distance of the
monster disappearing guns. A second graphic sheet showed the harbor
and anchorages and the entrance to the straits; this map was thickly
spotted with little, red, numbered dots--the mines. Sown like a turnip
field with these deadly capsules of destruction were all the waters
thereabouts; their delicate tendrils led under water and through
conduits in the Rock up to this slender spire called the signal tower.
As he climbed the winding stairway to his newly assigned post,
Woodhouse had seen painted on a small wooden door just below the room
he was to occupy the single white letter "D."
Room D--where the switches were, where a single sweep of the hand could
loose all the hidden death out there in the crowded harbor--it lay
directly below his feet.
Captain Woodhouse's duties were not arduous. He had as single
companion a sergeant of the signal service, whose post was at the
window overlooking the harbor. The sergeant read the semaphore message
from the slender signal arm on the flagship's bridge--directions for
the coal barges' movements, businesslike orders to be transmitted to
the quartermaster in charge of the naval stores ashore, and such
humdrum of routine. These Woodhouse recorded and forwarded to their
various destinations over the telephone.
He had much time for thought--and much to think about.
Yesterday's scene in the library of Government House--his grilling by
the two suspicious men, when a false answer on his part would have been
the first step toward a firing squad. Yes, and what had followed
between himself and the little American--the girl who had protected and
aided him--ah, the pain of that trial was hardly less poignant than had
been the terror of the one preceding it. She had asked him to prove to
her that he was not what she thought him. Before another day was past
she would be out of his life and would depart, believing--yes,
convinced--that the task he had set himself to do was a dishonorable
one. She could not know that the soldiers of the Hidden Army have
claim to heroism no less than they who join battle under the sun. But
he was to see Jane Gerson once more; Woodhouse caught at this
circumstance as something precious. To-night at Government House Lady
Crandall's dinner to the refugee Americans on the eve of their
departure would offer a last opportunity. How could he turn it to the
desire of his heart?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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