All this Seton was freely permitted to see. His captors intended that he should do so, otherwise they would have bandaged his eyes. It was part of von Brockdorff-Giespert's scheme. Confident in his belief that the prisoner would never leave Zeebrugge until the conclusion of a victorious German peace, the Count spared no pains to humiliate and intimidate his captive. Presently the guards halted at a distance of less than eighty yards from the head of the Mole. Here was an abandoned big-gun emplacement. The seaward aperture had partly collapsed, leaving a gap of about four feet in width and two in height. This had been prevented from completely caving in by several thick steel bars fixed at four-inch intervals, the whole forming an impassable grille. The gun had been removed from the emplacement, leaving a space of twenty-five feet by twelve, and eight feet between the stone floor and the steel-girdered and concrete reinforced roof. The door was of steel, and furnished with three slits for rifle-fire. Within was a plank-bed with a straw mattress, a wooden stool, a shelf holding tin plates and cups, and a couple of blankets. This was Alec Seton's cell. "Evidently the old brigand is keeping his word," thought the Sub as he was roughly bidden to enter and the door locked upon him. "He said he'd leave me to the attentions of our bombing 'planes and long-range guns. Ah, well! It's no use moaning about it. Make the best of a bad job, Alec, my boy, and keep a stiff upper lip. Many a man's been in a tighter hole than this before to-day and has lived to tell the tale. Never say die till you're dead." And, with a series of similar trite maxims running through his head, Seton prepared to shake down in his new abode as a guest of the Imperial German Government. CHAPTER X Preparations "Jolly rotten luck that _Bolero_ business," remarked Lieutenant Farnborough, commanding M.-L. 4452. The M.-L. lay alongside the oil-fuel jetty in Dover Harbour. A week had elapsed since the stunt off Zeebrugge. Farnborough was still far from fit. His sprained ankle was much better, but the injury to his back caused him considerable inconvenience and pain on movement. Yet, eager not to miss the opportunity of participating in the impending big operations at Zeebrugge and Ostend, he sturdily refused the more prudent course of reporting sick, and carried on as usual. It was a calm, moonlit evening, following a hard blow. There was a fairly heavy sea running in the Channel, while in the Wick, or portion of Dover Harbour enclosed by the new Admiralty breakwater, a long swell was setting in, causing the destroyer and other vessels at the buoys to roll heavily. The "gush" was even communicated to the small basin at the north-eastern end of the harbour, where half a dozen M.-L.'s and two P.-boats lay in somewhat dangerous proximity to thousands of tons of highly-inflammable oil fuel.