Her ignorance of Service matters was profound, and he had always been content that it should be so. She gave a little sigh, like a child abandoning a puzzle. The car turned into the Mall, and the Commander leaned back in his seat adjusting the belt about his lean middle. The girl glanced over her shoulder. “Why,” she exclaimed, “he’s going away from the Admiralty! Tell him, Bill, he’s going wrong----” “No, he isn’t,” said the man. He glanced again at his watch. “Pam,” he said, and for the second time in her life she thought she detected a note of nervousness in his voice--“Pam, you’ll have to sit in the taxi and wait. I shall only be about twenty minutes----” “Twenty minutes!” she echoed in dismay, and glanced at the taximeter. “But can’t I----?” Then the truth suddenly dawned upon her. The broad façade of Buckingham Palace loomed up before them and the car slowed. “Oh!” she gasped. “You _might_ have told me.... And one of your cuffs is frayed.... That policeman is saluting you, Bill! Oh, my dear, my dear, I think I want to cry....” “You mustn’t cry here,” said her husband fiercely. They had passed into the vast courtyard and had a glimpse of scarlet-coated footmen behind the glass panels of a door. The Commander’s wife gulped. “No,” she said, “of course not. But I wish I could come with you.” He gave her hand a quick squeeze and jumped out: as he turned to close the door their eyes met. “Wait,” he said and passed from her ken. Outside the railings, drawn up in an inconspicuous spot by the curb, oblivious to the inexorable ticking of the tuppences, she waited. Nearly half an hour had elapsed before she saw him coming towards her, walking very quickly, holding his head high, rather pale under his sunburn. He gave the driver directions and jumped in beside her. She took a deep breath. “Oh, my dear--_what?_” Her husband made no reply, but laid a little morocco leather case on her trembling knees. For a moment she fumbled at if blindly, her head bent low. Then she turned to him, smiling tremulously through a mist of tears, the little bronze Symbol lying in the palm of her hand. “My Man!” she whispered. “My _Man_!” [Illustration: “GATE, THERE! GATE!”] CHAPTER XIII THE SPIRIT OF THE FLEET “Through all the monotony of its unending vigil, the Spirit of the Fleet remains unchanged.”--_Daily Paper._ A flotilla of mine-sweeping sloops entered harbour with the last of the light and secured to their buoys; they were weary sea-battered little ships, and for a while they remained as silent as a stable-full of costermongers’ donkeys at the close of a hard day’s work. The ebb tide strengthened and they swung to their moorings in an invisible “rip” that swept round a curve of the adjoining island. One by one the cables tautened and the line straightened. “That’s better,” said one. “Now we can talk comfortably.”