"No," laughed the engineer. "Der people here never see a shore-end floated to land wiz bojes (buoys) before. Dey have already buried der line in der trench, as you see. Ach! Your English workmen are far smarter than ours, I confess," he added, with a pleasant accent. "Is it being laid all right?" the airman asked. "Ja, ja. Very good work. Der weather, he could not be better. We have laid just over one hundert mile in twenty-four hours. Gut--eh?" [Illustration: "A carter found him lying in a ditch at the roadside, stabbed in the throat, while his motor-cycle was missing!" [_Page 9_] As he spoke the Morse-sounder at the end of the green baize-covered table started clicking calling him. In a moment his expert hand was upon the key, tapping a response. The ship tapped rapidly, and then the engineer made an enquiry, and received a prompt reply. Then tapped out the short-long-short-long and short, which meant "finish," when, turning to the pair, he said: "Dey hope to get it am Ufer (ashore) at daybreak to-morrow. By noon there will be another through line between Berlin and London." Lieutenant Barclay was silent. A sudden thought crossed his mind. At Bacton, a couple of miles farther down the coast, the two existing cables went out to the German shore. But this additional line would prove of immense value if ever the army of the great War Lord attempted an invasion of our island. As a well-known naval aviator, and as chief of the whole chain of air-stations along the East Coast, the lieutenant's mind was naturally ever set upon the possibility of projected invasion, and of an adequate defence. That a danger really existed had at last been tardily admitted by the Government, and now with our Navy redistributed and centred in the North Sea, our destroyer-flotillas exercising nightly, and the establishment of the wireless at Felixstowe, Caister, Cleethorpes, Scarborough, and Hunstanton, as well as the construction of naval air-stations, with their aeroplanes and hydroplanes from the Nore up to Cromarty we were at last on the alert for any emergency. When would "_Der Tag_" ("The Day")--as it was toasted every evening in the military messes of the German Empire--dawn? Aye, when? Who could say? CHAPTER II. CONCERNS A PRETTY STRANGER. A short, puffy, red-faced man in grey flannels went past. It was Sir Hubert Atherton, of Overstrand--that little place declared to be the richest village in all England--and Francis Goring, recognising him, bade a hurried farewell to his naval friend, and with a hasty word of thanks to the German, went out. The naval airman and the German were left alone. Again the round-faced cable engineer pulled over the double-throw switch, examined the tiny point of light upon the gauge, and registered its exact position. "You remember, Herr Strantz, the gentleman who accompanied me here yesterday," exclaimed Barclay, when the engineer had finished writing up his technical log.