buttoned at the collar so as to show no shirt. I did not think that
the coming visitor would trouble to explore the crevice beyond the
platform, but I wanted to be prepared for emergencies.

Then followed an hour of waiting. I felt wonderfully cheered
and exhilarated, for Wake had restored my confidence in human
nature. In that eerie place we were wrapped round with mystery
like a fog. Some unknown figure was coming out of the sea, the
emissary of that Power we had been at grips with for three years. It
was as if the war had just made contact with our own shores, and
never, not even when I was alone in the South German forest, had
I felt so much the sport of a whimsical fate. I only wished Peter
could have been with me. And so my thoughts fled to Peter in his
prison camp, and I longed for another sight of my old friend as a
girl longs for her lover.

Then I heard the hoot of an owl, and presently the sound of
careful steps fell on my ear. I could see nothing, but I guessed it
was the Portuguese Jew, for I could hear the grinding of heavily
nailed boots on the gritty rock.

The figure was very quiet. It appeared to be sitting down, and
then it rose and fumbled with the wall of the tower just beyond the
boulder behind which I sheltered. It seemed to move a stone and to
replace it. After that came silence, and then once more the hoot of
an owl. There were steps on the rock staircase, the steps of a man
who did not know the road well and stumbled a little. Also they
were the steps of one without nails in his boots.

They reached the platform and someone spoke. It was the Portuguese