Over all an unnatural hush brooded, now and again accentuated by a rumble of distant voices and gusts of vacant laughter, once or twice by a curious popping. For a long time he heard nothing else whatever. The effect was singularly disquieting and did its bit to quicken torpid senses to grasp his plight.
Sluggishly enough Lanyard pieced together fragments of lurid memories, reconstructing the sequence of last night's events scene by scene to the moment of his rescue by the U-boat.
So, it appeared, he was aboard a German submersible, virtually a prisoner, though posing as an agent of the Personal Intelligence Department of the German Secret Service.
To that inspiration of failing consciousness he owed his life, or such of its span as now remained to him, a term whose duration could only be defined by his ability to carry off the imposture pending problematic opportunity to escape. And, assuming that this last were ever offered him, there was no present possibility of guessing how long it might not be deferred.
Its butcher's mission successfully accomplished, the U-boat was not improbably even now en route for Heligoland, beginning a transatlantic cruise of weeks that might never end save in a nameless grave at the bottom of the Four Seas.
Only the matter of impersonation failed to embarrass in prospect. A natural linguist, Lanyard's three years within the German lines had put a rare finish upon his mastery of German. More than this, he was well versed in the workings of the Prussian spy system. As Dr.
