Having regard to the thirty years' preparation of Germany and the utter unpreparedness of England, a miracle seemed in the process of evolution. Would the nations involved cease their strife owing to absolute exhaustion and attrition? Would the Entente eventually achieve full consummation of its hopes, so devoutly to be wished? Or was the sequel foreshadowed by the late Lord Tennyson:
"Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! who can tell how all will end? Read the wide world's annals, you, and take their wisdom for your friend; Hope the best, but hold the Present fatal daughter of the Past, Shape your heart to front the hour, but dream not that the hour will last."
RETREAT AND WOULD-BE REST--WINTRY WEATHER IN THE NORTH SEA--THE SECRET MESSAGE--RIVAL'S REMOVAL COMMANDED FORTHWITH--SEEMINGLY IMPOSSIBLE PROPOSITION--SEEKING ONE'S COLLEAGUES--SOLVING THE RIDDLE--PREPARING THE TRAP--THE LONELY SENTRY AND THE MYSTERIOUS BOATMAN CAPTURE, ARREST, SEARCH AND FIND--THE INCRIMINATING DOCUMENT--INSTANT DEPORTATION--EXULTATION--NEXT, PLEASE.
After a coup of importance has been successfully accomplished, it is sometimes advisable for a Secret Service agent to betake himself to a quiet, secluded place where his identity and his activities are least likely to be known, or even suspected.
Towards Christmas, in the first year of the war, I found myself in such a position; my work for some weeks past had been not only exceedingly strenuous, but, it was gratifying to remember, it had also been successful. Perhaps luck had unduly favoured me. Anyway, I knew quite enough of the enemy to be only too well assured that he would stop at nothing to get, or to attempt to get, even with me if he possibly could. I also thoroughly understood it was advisable for more reasons than one that I should take a well-earned rest, a few days breathing-space until further demands were made upon my individual efforts.
Thus it was I turned my face towards a lonely, secluded little haven snugly concealed in an inner fjord of the Norwegian coast where I intended to sleep and dream and sink all traces of my existence on earth for a few brief days at least.
December, 1914, in northern seas was a month of record storms and multitudinous wrecks. The daily life of those unfortunates whose duties took them there, or compelled them to navigate, was unenviable in the extreme. Ice, which accumulated and increased in its envelopment hourly, not only made decks doubly dangerous, but, unless removed from rails, ropes, deckhouses, and other parts of a ship at periodical intervals might possibly threaten worse disaster than the wrecks and sunken rocks around.