"As far as they concern you I will read you them as taken down by our Wireless operator. ’To Undersea-boat No. 18, on observation-duty off Spurn Head. Stand by to get in touch with, act pilot, and render aid if necessary to German Imperial Secret Service Messenger, crossing to Nordeich in British aëroplane.’ The message comes from the German Embassy in London and the sender is Grand Admiral Prinz Heinrich. I have carried out my instructions to the letter. There is only _one_ man going to be broken over this affair!" Von Herrnung knew who the man was. The Commander chewed some more of his cigar, picked his oozing yellow oilskins off the deck, thrust himself into them, crowned himself with his sou’wester, and said, taking a farewell shot at the cuspidor: "And to brew more thunder-beer for you is not my desire! I am sorry for you, _bei Gott_! But to make game of those who command me is not the purpose for which I am commissioned, Herr Count. Nor have I any experience in doctoring reports. I rate only as Lieutenant in the Imperial German Navy—a man born of plain people—without fortune or even _von_ before my family name!" Von Herrnung sensed that he had bitterly offended the only human being who could help him. He apologised subserviently, and catching at the straw afforded him by the Commander’s admission of poverty, offered him the pickings of the wrecked aëroplane. "For her instruments and signalling outfit—the seats and vacuum flasks even—are well worth the having, and her engine and tractor will sell for——" he named the sum in marks. "There is a patent stabiliser under her belly that I reserve for Majesty—the French have bought it or think they have!" The speaker rubbed his hands. The hoverer might yet prove a sop for the All Highest. Imperial displeasure thus averted, all would go well. He added, feeling that he might actually afford the luxury of grumbling: "As for me, I am what the English call ’fed up’ with special missions. Conceive it. I am at a Hendon Flying School,—chatting with a handsome Englishwoman who has taken me for her lover—as I am waiting to get an inkling of the sort of invention the French War Ministry think worth buying for use in their Service Aëronautique. I am summoned by a groom of our Embassy to speak to some Excellencies—I follow and find myself clicking my heels before Prinz Heinrich, von Moltke, and Krupp von Bohlen in an Embassy auto-car—to be sent off at a moment’s notice in a little cranky devil of an English monoplane—with secret dispatches for the All Highest—on a journey over the North Sea. With the barometer falling and the hour past five meridian. That’s my luck!" The speaker paused for breath. Luttha said, pulling his black beard through his fingers with a crisp sound, a trick of his when in meditation: