M. Dumois, hastening to comply with his mistress' command, failed to find the girl in her apartments. At the moment, indeed, that Emilia was informing the tutor that the girl had left for the stables, Miss Wellington from a corner of the hall was gazing interestedly at the Prince, who sat with his profile toward her. He was bending over a table upon which was spread a parchment drawing. The sunlight fell full upon him. He was not at all unprepossessing. Tall and slim, with waist in and well-padded shoulders, his blonde hair and Van Dyck bead, long white eyelashes, darker brows, and glittering blue eyes, he was the very type of the aristocratic Muscovite. As the girl looked she saw his lips part and his teeth glisten. He half arose, leaned forward, and smote the chart. Miss Wellington hurried down the hall and out of the house. "Prince Koltsoff," she murmured, as she swung down the path to the stable, "I would give worlds to know what you 're up to. I definitely place you as a rascal. But oh, such a romantically picturesque one!" CHAPTER IV THE TAME TORPEDO That night Lieutenant Armitage, in a marine's drab shirt and overalls, stood among a silent group of mechanics on a pier near the Goat Island lighthouse. A few hundred feet out lay a small practice torpedo boat, with the rays of a searchlight from the bridge of the parent ship of the First Flotilla resting full upon her. Suddenly Armitage leaned forward. When he straightened there came a dull report, a lurid flash of light, and with a sharp whirring sound a model torpedo about half the regulation size, leaped through the darkness and with a clear parting of the waters disappeared. A green Very star cleaved the night. Intense silence followed. One second, two seconds, elapsed and then from the practice boat out in the harbor a red star reared. Armitage turned to the master mechanic at his side. "Bully!" he said. "I aimed at least twenty feet wide of the _Dumont_. The magnetos fetched her. But wait--" In the glare of the searchlight he could see they had lowered a boat and were recovering the torpedo. He saw a group of young officers gather about it as it was hauled aboard, and then in a minute or so the red and green Ardois lights began to wink. As Armitage watched with straining eyes he spelled the message as it came, letter by letter. "A fair hit. But the wrong end struck." The _Dumont_ was sufficiently near the pier for the message to have been shouted. But tests of new torpedoes are not to be shouted about. Armitage discharged a white star from his pistol, the signal to come in for the night, and walked toward the shops. "You may turn in," he said to the men. "I have a good night's work, alone, ahead of me."