August 1914 between the Fleets and the world scarcely existed for him.
Everything which he desired to know for the better understanding of
the real work of the Navy came to him officially or unofficially.
When, therefore, he states that the Naval Notes with which this story
deals would have been of incalculable value to the enemy, I accept his
word without hesitation. I have myself seen some of them, and they
made me tremble--for Cary's neck. I pressed him to write this story
himself, but he refused. "No," said he, "I have told you the yarn just
as it happened; write it yourself. I am a dull dog, quite efficient at
handling hard facts and making scientific deductions from them, but
with no eye for the picturesque details. I give it to you." He rose to
go--Cary had been lunching with me--but paused for an instant upon my
front doorstep. "If you insist upon it," added he, smiling, "I don't
mind sharing in the plunder."

* * * * *

It was in the latter part of May 1916. Cary was hard at work one
morning in his rooms in the Northern City where he had established his
headquarters. His study table was littered with papers--notes,
diagrams, and newspaper cuttings--and he was laboriously reducing the
apparent chaos into an orderly series of chapters upon the Navy's Work
which he proposed to publish after the war was over. It was not
designed to be an exciting book--Cary has no dramatic instinct--but it
would be full of fine sound stuff, close accurate detail, and clear
analysis. Day by day for more than twenty months he had been
collecting details of every phase of the Navy's operations, here a
little and there a little. He had recently returned from a
confidential tour of the shipyards and naval bases, and had exercised
his trained eye upon checking and amplifying what he had previously