“Perhaps I am, dear,” he confessed. “I want you just to sit up and lose that unnatural look. I am not really full of cheap bravado, but I am a philosopher. Something has happened to postpone--the end. Good luck to it, I say!” He raised his tumbler to his lips and set it down empty. Philippa rose to her feet and walked restlessly to the window and back. “I'll try and be reasonable too,” she promised, resuming her seat. “I was right, you see. Captain Griffiths has discovered everything. Can you tell me what possible reason any one in London could have had for interference?” “I seem to have got a friend up there without knowing it, don't I?” he observed. “This is aging me terribly,” Philippa declared, throwing herself back into her seat. “All my life I have hated mysteries. Here I am face to face with two absolutely insoluble ones. Captain Griffiths has assured me that there is here in Dreymarsh something of sufficient importance to account for the presence of a foreign spy. You have confirmed it. I have been torturing my brain about that for the last twenty-four hours. Now there happens something more inexplicable still. You are arrested, and you are not arrested. Your identity is known, and Captain Griffiths is forbidden to do his duty.” “It seems puzzling, does it not?” Lessingham agreed. “I shouldn't worry about the first, but this last little episode takes some explaining.” “If anything further happens this evening, I think I shall go mad,” Philippa sighed. “And something is going to happen,” Lessingham declared, rising to his feet. “Did you hear that?” Above even the roar of the wind they heard the brazen report of a gun from almost underneath the window. The room was suddenly lightened by a single vivid flash. “A mortar!” Lessingham exclaimed. “And that was a rocket, unless I'm mistaken.” “The signal for the lifeboat!” Philippa announced. “I wonder if we can see anything.” She hastened towards the window, but paused at the abrupt opening of the door. Nora burst in, followed more sedately by Helen. “Mummy, there's a wreck!” the former cried in excitement. “I heard something an hour ago, and I got up, and I've been sitting by the window, watching. I saw the lifeboat go out, and they're signalling now for the other one.” “It's quite true, Philippa,” Helen declared. “We're going to try and fight our way down to the beach.” “I'll go, too,” Lessingham decided. “Perhaps I may be of use.” “We'll all go,” Philippa agreed. “Wait while I get my things on. What is it, Mills?” she added, as the door opened and the latter presented himself. “There is a trawler on the rocks just off the breakwater, your ladyship,” he announced. “They have just sent up from the beach to know if we can take some of the crew in. They are landing them as well as they can on the line.”