With a soldier on either side of her, madame stood rigid and frozen. No need for plea or denial; in her lying outburst of apostasy to the fountain, she had made her ultimate appeal. As the spy passed through the doorway, Quality saw her face. And it was even as the face of M. Lemoine. * * * * * The clock struck twelve. Through the shrivelled sheath of the dead night broke the glorious promise of the new day. E. L. WHITE. _IN THE NORTH SEA._ BY LIEUTENANT R.N. The operation that I am about to describe was not one of primary importance, nor is it likely to be chronicled in the History of the War when that comes to be written; but it was nevertheless an incident of some interest and hazard, and serves to demonstrate the completeness of England’s command of the sea. It was one day in March 1915 that we left our base and steamed eastward across the North Sea towards the enemy’s coast. We were not a strong force, but we were all fast ships, light cruisers and destroyers, and could show a clean pair of heels to any German big ships that we might meet. It was not expected, however, that the Germans would show themselves outside their ports, for it was less than two months since the _Blucher_ had met her end at the hands of Beatty’s battle-cruisers, and the German squadrons were not prepared as yet, either morally or materially, for another encounter. Accompanying us, that is escorted by us, were three seaplane carriers, the object of our operations being a repetition of the Christmas Day air raid. All the way across we had fine calm weather, and our hopes ran high that the conditions would be sufficiently favourable for launching aircraft; for aircraft, and especially seaplanes which are encumbered with heavy air-resisting floats, are still sufficiently in their infancy to require very favourable weather conditions if they are to operate successfully at sea. At daylight on the following morning we found ourselves some thirty odd miles off the enemy’s coast in a position favourable for launching our attack, and since, coincidently, some wily astrologer, in a fit of verbose optimism, had prophesied a naval battle for this date we had considerable hopes of ‘something doing.’ As day broke a heavy mist lay across our horizon which, spreading outward from the coast, limited visibility to two or three miles. We assured ourselves, however, that as soon as the sun rose the mist would clear, and so for about half an hour the squadron manœuvred to and fro, the while optimist and pessimist, according to their respective fancies, conceived momentary, and usually imaginary, changes in the density of the mist.