Presently a fresh buoy appeared as we nosed on shoreward, then a second, and then a third, continuing the line of the first two. Speed was increased to "half," and the intervals of picking up the marks correspondingly cut down. Confident that there was nothing more to worry about, I pulled out "The Riddle" again, for I had just recalled that it was about halfway to Norddeich, in the _Buse Tief_, that "Carruthers" had brought off his crowning exploit, the running aground of the tug and "invasion" lighter--with Von Brunning, Boehme, and the mysterious "cloaked passenger"--as they neared the end of the successful night trial trip in the North Sea. Substituting himself for the man at the wheel by a ruse, he had edged the tug over to starboard and was just thinking "What the Dickens'll happen to her?" when the end came; "a _euthanasia_ so mild and gradual (for the sands are fringed with mud) that the disaster was on us before I was aware of it. There was just the tiniest premonitory shuddering as our keel clove the buttery medium, a cascade of ripples from either beam, and the wheel jammed to rigidity in my hands as the tug nestled up to her final resting-place." And very like that it was with us. It was a guttural oath from somewhere forward rather than any perceptible jar that told me the launch had struck, and it was not till after the screw had been churning sand for half a minute that there was any perceptible heel. It had come about through one of the buoys being missing and the next in line out of place, one of the Germans reckoned; but whatever the cause, there we were--stuck fast. Or, at least, we would have been with any less resourceful and energetic a crew. If their very lives had depended on it, those four or five German seamen could not have worked harder, nor to better purpose, to get that launch free. At the end of a quarter of an hour their indefatigable efforts were rewarded, and a half hour later we were settling ourselves in the warm compartment of our waiting train. The Hun has no proper sense of humour. Reverse the _rôles_, and any British bluejackets I have ever known would have run a German Armistice Commission on to the first sandbank that hove in sight, and damned the consequences. V NORDHOLZ, THE DEN OF THE ZEPPELINS