The window was open. It was a still and brilliant night. He could hear the fall, and swish, and drone of the sea, rhythmical and recurrent, at the foot of the cliff. From the crest of the hill behind the house came the occasional tinkle of the canister-bell of some old wether of the flock. Then the silence was disturbed by a growing tumult in the darkness. A squadron of destroyers was thrashing furiously round the Head, not a light showing, close inshore, too, only an occasional smudge of white in the darkness revealing their position and the feather of foam they bore along like a plume before them. Out of the darkness they came at a speed incredible, and into the darkness they were gone once more like a flash. The Colonel breathed again. At least the Navy was ready, thanks to Churchill. Was the Army? He recalled a remark reported to him as having been made at a P.S.A. in the East-end some weeks since: that the Army no longer trusted its officers, and the country no longer trusted its Army. Could it be true? His thoughts turned with passionate sympathy to Gough and the simple regimental officers who had been lured by politicians into the dreadful business of the Army Conspiracy. But that other feller!--that yappin chap at the War Office, who ought to have known better! ... Away on the crest of Beau-nez, humping a huge black back against the brilliant darkness, someone was swinging a lantern--once, twice. The Colonel flashed his electric torch in answer. The gaunt figure at the window turned. "Rachel," he said low, to the woman in the bed beneath him. "Jocko," came the answering voice, quiet as his own. "We're going in." "Thank God." In the darkness she reached up arms, white and trembling as a bride's, and drew him to her. He kissed her eyelids and found them wet. "I can't help it, Jocko," she sobbed. "Jock!" Her boy was in India with the second battalion; but she knew very well that now the crash had come every battalion in the Service would be flung into the furnace. The Colonel went back to the window and she came to his side. His arm crept about her, and she trembled in the curve of it. A mild but ghastly beam, as of the moon, fell on them standing at the window. A battleship was playing its searchlight full on them. The cold wan beam roamed along the hill-side callous and impersonal, exposing every bush and scar. It fell on the white bluff of Beau-nez and came creeping, like the fingers of a leper, along the cliff. Just opposite the hostel, at the spot where the path ran down to the beach, it stayed, pointing as it were, at a little pillar of solid blackness erect on the cliff edge. The Colonel caught his breath with a gasp. "Don't look!" he cried sharply and snatched his wife away. As he did so the pillar broke up in two component parts, as though dissolved by the white encircling flood of light. A woman's stifled scream came through the open window. "Joe!"