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precaution. But he told me that at first the “enormous thing seemed right on top of us!” In fact, it was not anything so near as that. It was coming up astern but a little on one side and, he noticed, steering a course which would cross obliquely his wake and bring the monster very close indeed — within 500 yards perhaps.
    For whatever reason, it was flying low, so low that he did not need to throw his head up much to watch its steady progress. And there followed for him such moments of unforgettable anguish,
    something like the anguish of a man whose eternal salvation would depend on the soundless of his judgment.
    The problem was how to deal with this gigantic piece of luck. For if he opened fire too soon the chances were that the German would swerve and get away, or, climbing overhead, would descend on him as low as he pleased and bomb him out of existence. His gun was a very good weapon of its kind, but it was not an antiaircraft gun and had only a limited amount of elevation. And there was also the possibility that, utterly unconscious of the tiny speck lost in the shimmer of the thin fog layer below, the Zeppelin would alter its course at any moment for some purpose of its own.
    What worried and discomposed him was the insistent whispering of his skipper, who had crept to his elbow and was entreating hoarsely not to waste a moment, “to let the beggar have it now, sir. Let him have it.” The German meantime held on. Ordering the skipper away he had the fortitude, though his heart was in his mouth all the time, to hold out till the Zeppelin crossed his wake and exposed the greater part of its side. ... “And then,” he said, “we started to plug it into him as fast as we could load. And every shot was a hit.”
    He looked at me with strangely troubled eyes. “It was impossible to miss ... you know,” he added in a lowered voice.
    Whether conscious or unconscious before of the microscopic strafer below, Fritz must have had the surprise of his life. The record shock of Zeppelin history. His dismay was boundless, something very like panic up there became visible to the eyes below.
    ... “I could see three or four of them running along,” went on the low voice. “I saw them quite plainly. If I had half-a-dozen men with rifles on my deck we could have got every singte one of them.”
    The Zeppelin swung off wide and with its engines working noisily, made off without more ado. Its own speed or the drift of denser fog blowing over turned it into a mere dark blur swiftly. As long as the faintest shadow of it remained visible the fire was kept up. Then it ceased. A profound silence ensued. It was all over. He was gone.
    It was, however, possible that he might return overhead and
    take his revenge. But before the strafers on deck had the time to exchange glances of wonder, apprehension or inquiry, while they were still, in fact, staring into the upper fog, the shadow reappeared nearer than before aslant in the white space, sliding downwards stern first, its nose tilted up at a perilous angle.
    “Of course we opened on him instantly,” he went on. “And do you know what he did then?”
    At this point he looked at me again, and after a little gasp went on, as if unwillingly, “he dumped all his bombs overboard. The whole lot of them at once.”
    The resulting explosion was something terrific. He felt as if his little were blown clean out of the water and at the same time hit by a tidal wave. And in the awful commotion, uproar, and black smoke the Zeppelin shot up and vanished for good.
    “You must have made him very sick,” I said.
    “He looked very sick indeed,” said the young strafer quietly.
    “I wonder what became of him?”
    Hard to say. There was a report in the papers some time afterwards.... Damaged Zeppelin coming to the ground in Norway. ...I sometimes think...”
    He did not finish the sentence. He had been eighteen months of long days and longer nights at his protecting work, out and in, fair or foul, never seeing anything to reward his strained, hopeful vigilance, and sometimes for days seeing nothing at all. For the North Sea is a big place, as our coasters say: so big that there may be half-a-dozen ships out looking for you because you are a little late in returning (as it happened to a man), and you will come in innocently, having seen no one, unseen by anybody — which is vexing for the anxious searchers.
    Eighteen patient, unfaltering months, and then this ten gloriously crowded