My luck was clearly in, and my exultation made me careless. A
stone, on which a foot rested, slipped and though I checked myself
at once, the confounded thing rolled down into the hollow, making
a great clatter. I plastered myself in the embrasure of the rock and
waited with a beating heart. The place was pitch dark, but they had
an electric torch, and if they once flashed it on me I was gone. I
heard them leave the platform and climb down into the hollow.
There they stood listening, while I held my breath. Then I heard
'_Nix, _mein _freund,' and the two went back, the naval officer's boots
slipping on the gravel.
They did not leave the platform together. The man from the sea
bade a short farewell to the Portuguese Jew, listening, I thought,
impatiently to his final message as if eager to be gone. It was a
good half-hour before the latter took himself off, and I heard the
sound of his nailed boots die away as he reached the heather of the moor.

I waited a little longer, and then crawled back to the cave. The
owl hooted, and presently Wake descended lightly beside me; he
must have known every foothold and handhold by heart to do the
job in that inky blackness. I remember that he asked no question of
me, but he used language rare on the lips of conscientious objectors
about the men who had lately been in the crevice. We, who four
hours earlier had been at death grips, now curled up on the hard
floor like two tired dogs, and fell sound asleep.


I woke to find Wake in a thundering bad temper. The thing he
remembered most about the night before was our scrap and the
gross way I had insulted him. I didn't blame him, for if any man