Chapter III: Cotton

The trouble about this tale is that the best bits may not be written. If they were written, and put in print, I personally should be clapped in gaol. Of course, in the good cause of enlightening the public (at so much per reader) I might be expected with reason, at any rate in theory, to welcome gaol or worse. But this would not be the end. The book in which the dangerous article appeared would be suppressed promptly. It would merely be a case of martyrdom without result. So the very much expurgated tale may be given (without prejudice) as follows:--

The man who brought the whole thing about was an actor.

About his acting powers I can say nothing, never having seen him on the boards, and being unwilling to take his own word for his histrionic powers. But about his personal appearance there was no doubt. Young Arthur Hunter saw him first coming up the road to the farm.

"Grandfather," said he, "there's a man coming up from the road."

"Ah," said Captain Kettle from behind the _Craven Herald_.

"And Grandfather, he's--he's an actor."

"Mind you never come as low as that," said Sir Owen, stretching out a hand to hitch his wooden leg into an easier position.

"And Grandfather--Grandfather! _He's coming to the front door!_"

"I'll go myself," said Captain Kettle, getting briskly to his feet. "You stay here, boy."

The caller stood on the door-step, swept off his hat, stood bare-headed, and bowed. "Captain Sir Owen Kettle, K.C.B., I believe? I have not brought a letter of introduction, as I felt you would say it was not needed. I am Holly Holroyd."

"I don't know you, and I never heard of you."

"Then I am afraid you have been out of touch with the Profession these last two years."

"On the contrary, though retired, I take in _The Syren and Shipping_ and read it from cover to cover, including advertisements, every week."

"Ah, you do not take me, Sir Owen. I meant, of course, the theatrical profession. All England that goes to a theatre knows that my 'Jasper Kay' in 'The Reptile' was the finest thing in juvenile leads that has ever been seen on the stage."

The sailor's red torpedo beard stuck out unpleasantly. "I've never been inside a theatre in my life. What do you want?"

"Your help and advice."

"If you go round to the kitchen door the girl will give cheese, bread, and a glass of beer."

"Thank you, Sir Owen, but this is a little premature. I hope to feel my knees under your good old mahogany whilst we compare reminiscences over your good old port a little later. Sweetly quaint old spot you've settled down in here, Sir Owen, and you can believe me when I say I'm a judge. I was land-agent to Sir Berkeley Craig before I joined The Profession. But am I not keeping you standing here too long?"

"You are. Good afternoon."

"You don't take me. I was going to suggest that you should smoke one of my prime cigars in your study--I have them specially blended and made for me in Havana, with my name printed in three colours on the band."

"I import my own cigars direct from a tobacconist in Skipton, and I'm not out to buy any 'Just-as-goodados' at the door."

"Sir Owen, you are a tough guardian of your own privacy. I see I must give you the password. I have come to speak to you on--hist!--England. Ha! You get me now?"

Captain Kettle stood squarely in his doorway and nodded towards the field opposite. "That pond down there, with the ducks on it," he explained, "is deep, and you haven't told me if you can swim. If you've business, say in three words what it is. If you waste any more of my time, you'll bathe. Got that?"

"You are a man after Holly Holroyd's own heart, Sir Owen--brisk and curt and business-like. The stage, I'll admit it, leads one to rigmarole. You should have seen me in former days when I was on the Stock Exchange. But to my business, and in three words, as you say. Do these thrill you? Cotton; Germany; Stop?"

"Not a bit. They're in the paper every morning. If you'd a workable plan for stopping cotton, there might be something in that."

"Holly Holroyd is the one man in this Empire who has that plan. Are we observed?"

"We are. Those ducks are listening for all they're worth. Come in if you like. But if you waste my time, and I tell you I'm in the middle of a very important article on manures in the _Craven Herald_, you'll learn what a duck's life really is."

"M'Lord, lead on," said Mr. Holroyd with simple dignity. "An I capture not your interest, may I be writ down failure and dolt."

Now, from a commencement so unpromising, it says a good deal for Mr. Holroyd's power of persuasion that he gained so tough a subject as Captain Kettle as ally through the medium of less than an hour's talk.

"This War," he said, as he got into a chair, "this War is kept going by our politicians. I suppose we're agreed on that, Sir Owen?"

Captain Kettle stared. Then he got a box of cigars from a cupboard in the wall and offered them.

"Put your finger on cotton. All propelling explosives nowadays are made from cotton. If we'd stopped all cotton going into Germany from August, nineteen fourteen, the Germans to-day wouldn't be able to fire a shot. Isn't that logic?"

"Here are matches," said the host. "Bite the end from that vegetable and light up."

"I'm not talking through my hat. I was once runner-up at a Parliamentary Election. If I'd got in, there was £1,000 a year for me so long as I voted as I was told. I got kicked out, and so remained passably honest. But you can take it from me, Sir Owen, there's as much money in politics now as ever there was."

"That's not news. No one ever supposed any man went in for the dirty game of politics for the good of his health. Why should he?"

"Very well, then. Supposing you were in politics--I don't care on what side--and you were told that your livelihood depended on your letting Germany have cotton, wouldn't you let?"

"I'd see Germany in hell first," said Captain Kettle violently.

Mr. Holly Holroyd spread an expostulatory palm. "That's not answering my question. You merely prove you're no politician. You're merely a clean Englishman."

"Welshman."

"Well, there are clean Welshmen, too. They're showing themselves in considerable number since the war started. But there aren't enough, and they haven't the gift of talk. The politicians have the monopoly of that, and they shout the rest of the nation down and get their own way, and earn their graft. They've tons of excuses when you start to tackle them--and they keep the supply of cotton for Germany going strong. Good Lord! but for the small matter of a score of tipsy miners voting the other way, shouldn't I be doing the same thing myself at this moment."

"I thought you were a celebrated actor?"

"I am. I will show you my press-cutting book to prove it if you like, but as a man of the world, Sir Owen, you can't imagine I'd be an actor if I could be anything else?"

"No," Captain Kettle admitted. "That sounds true enough. Have some whisky and soda?"

Mr. Holroyd helped himself to a moderate peg, and produced a pocket-book. "But, of course, I have to make a bit as I go along. I have here a schedule of all the cotton that has gone into European neutral countries over and above their normal supply. The figures are surprising. Like to see them?"

"I should not. I hate big figures."

"So do I. I made my living as a chartered accountant for a number of years, and saw enough of figures to last me the rest of my natural. But the facts are plain. As we can't tackle our paid politicians on the spot, neutral countries are the places to stop cotton in. Private individuals can do it. I know how."

"That would mean a high-class row."

"And are you scared of a row, Sir Owen?"

"By James, no," said Captain Kettle, and then bit on to his cigar and smoked furiously. He felt that he had been letting out the secret of his own private weakness to a comparative stranger.

Mr. Holroyd sipped at his whisky, smoked for a minute, then said "Ha, ha!"

"What the mischief are you sniggering at?" inquired his host.

"Your curiosity, m'lord. You're aching to know how it could be done."

"I am," said Captain Kettle.

It was in company with this queer adventurer then that Captain Kettle found himself attempting to make the voyage from England to a certain seaport on the continent of Europe. To his surprise he found himself stopped at the onset. Whether it was suspicion as to his motive or official incapacity he could not make out. But one thing was certain, no permission was forthcoming within a reasonable time to leave the country.

"I always knew," he commented, "that a Government Department takes ten days longer than a business office to answer an ordinary letter, but three weeks is too much. They don't say we've got to stay at home. They simply sit tight and do nothing. So if they won't give proper leave, we'll go without leave. I've not been all my life at sea without knowing sea roads. As you haven't got any shirts of your own, Mr. Holroyd, Lady Kettle will lend you two of mine, and you can have my other portmanteau, and, mind, don't forget those--those----"

"Call them chemicals," suggested Mr. Holly Holroyd. "Most embracing word, chemicals. I called moonlight whisky that when I was brewing it on the strict Q.T. in the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina. And we'll each carry one of the popguns so as to distribute the risk, as we insurance agents say. Those pop-guns are rather the key to the situation, Sir Owen. We couldn't replace them in--on the Continent. I also hope to the Lord we don't get dropped on with them on us. If any of the authorities over yonder got wise to our little game, there'd be a hanging in which we should both take a keen, personal interest."

"Speak for yourself," said Captain Kettle sharply. "I don't allow any goggle-eyed continental to hang me. I'm not talking through my hat either--a lot have tried. If you'll excuse me for a minute I'll just slip up and give Arthur a half dose of Horner's Perfect Cure. By the way that child has been tucking into unripe gooseberries this day, his grandmother will be treating him for appendicitis and chill on the liver to-morrow if I don't get ahead of her with Horner. Then, if you're packed, we will drive into Grassington and catch the train."

"Right, and I'll bring down your baggage for you."

"If you could--um--contrive to forget the long package that's laid across the armchair, I'd be obliged to you."

"Certainly. But I don't quite understand. What's the scheme?"

"Well, you see," said Kettle rather uncomfortably, "it's my second-best leg. Lady Kettle wants me to take it across for general wear. It's all right for use on the farm here, but I don't mind telling you I hate wearing it before a mixed audience. It's so infernally old-fashioned. If I had forgotten it when my lady met us at the station, I'm afraid there'd be a domestic scene. If it was your fault, I don't fancy she'd say much."

It is a pity that a gap must occur in the tale here, and that the name of the steamboat that carried them, the nationality of the submarine that held them up _en route_, and most emphatically of all, the name of the river they steamed up and the port they landed at must all be rigorously censored. Captain Kettle cocked his cigar at a fierce angle and looked with a farmer's eye at the rich, flat pasture lands beyond the river's bank as they steamed along, and he wrote an ode (in his mind) to the local breed of cow. At the quay he played second fiddle, as per arrangement, to the flamboyant Mr. Holroyd. At a subsequent hotel he meekly signed his name (with all the outward ensigns of shame) "Professor Owen."

"My friend, the Pro-fessor, and I," Mr. Holly Holroyd announced in that nasal accent which does duty on the continent of Europe for good United States, "the Professor and I are here on a scientific investigation for the good of mankind and on behalf of the University of Ballahassee, Tennessee. A nootral country is necessary for our researches. We have with us all the necessary chemicals, but will guarantee they make no smell. Do I make myself clear?"

"Perfectly," said the landlord, who did not understand one word in ten. "A private sitting-room will be extra."

"Tut, tut!" said Mr. Holroyd. "You do not understand, man. We cannot work together. We must have a private sitting-room apiece, and two bedrooms, all, of course, _en suite_."

The landlord perceived the dignity of his customers, and his bows increased. "I have at your service, sirs, our Ambassadors' suite on the first _étage_."

"We will try and make that do," Mr. Holroyd condescended. "We were prepared to be cramped when we came here. In war time one puts up with war quarters and war privations. We expect even your dinner and your wines to be bad. But be quick now. We have business to do."

"And who," demanded Captain Kettle three minutes later, "who do you suppose is going to pay for all this useless splash? I won't."

"And I can't, most excellent, my lord. We'll skip all right when the time comes. But at the moment it was necessary to impress the landlord. He'd a most damnable fishy eye. As it is, he'd never dream of putting the police on to the Ambassadors' suite."

"Hum," said Captain Kettle. "Don't you dream, my lad, of landing me into anything more like this without getting leave beforehand. Now, on which part of the river front is the cotton landed?"

"Search me. I know no more about the place than the man in the moon. But after we have had an elaborate luncheon and grumbled because there are no ortolans--always have ortolans in Ballahassee, Professor--I guess we'll have a pasear and take in the town. Aren't I Amurrican to the life?"

"You sound like an Englishman who has spent one week-end in New York. And now, my lad, what about those precious chemicals of yours? This place is bound to be raided the minute we turn our backs, if I know anything about continental cities."

"You're right, m'lord, all the time. I've brought along a special set of obscure chemicals and bacteriological specimens for them to find. For the real stuff we must make a magazine. The question is, where?"

"That depends on the quantity and the danger of your material. You must remember you've been so mighty mysterious about it that you've never shown me so much as a specimen yet."

"Don't you worry about ideas, your Eminence. I'm brimming with them. The only trouble is cash to carry them out. If only the British Government were subsidising this expedition I could get on swimmingly. But under the circumstances, as they don't know about it, they naturally couldn't. M'lord, could you advance me fifty guilders? They'll save our necks for the time being. If I don't turn up to pay, you can screw it out of the Chancellor of the Exchequer when you get home."

Captain Kettle produced a note. "I don't know what you want it for," he observed unpleasantly, "but if it turns out afterwards you've blown it on a spree, I'll give you something that will keep you teetotal for a fortnight."

"Most Potent," said Mr. Holroyd, "your honoured trust shall not be betrayed. I return anon. But, for the Lord's sake, stick here like glue. The city reeks of German spies, and the moment we both turn our backs the rooms will be searched down to the bone. With your lordship's permission, I will now for a while take my leave."

Mr. Holroyd returned in an hour's time carrying a large brown-paper parcel, which on being opened disclosed a portmanteau of eminently continental cut. This he proceeded to decorate with the labels of hotels in Homburg, Vienna, and Monte Carlo, and to the handle he affixed a rubric which stated that it was the property of an officer well known in the Kaiser Wilhelm's service (but who was just then, so the papers said, in Russia), and that it was to be left till called for. After which he stored within it certain matters, and then deposited it in an empty bedroom on the opposite side of their passage.

"There," said he, "if that's found, everyone will think the other fellow's put it there. The servants in this pub can be estimated in tons, and they're the most muddling lot I ever struck in all my travels. No method. I've kept enough samples of our--er--chemicals in my waistcoat pocket for you to experiment on, m'lord, as you still seem sceptical."

"I'll have to comb your hair yet," said the little sailor reflectively. "Now just here, and before we go any further, and without any frills of talk, kindly say with clearness what it is you have got."

"Fluxite tabloids and a deferred ignitor."

"What's that?"

"You see, you don't understand. I knew you wouldn't. So I absolutely must explain, and don't blame me if I get gassy over the dramatic bits. You've heard of Louvain?"

"I have."

"The Germans burnt it?"

"So I read."

"Oh, they did, all right. They'd a corps of men specially appointed for the job. Probably been drilling them for that particular enterprise since 1870. Special uniform and special swear words, all complete. Their equipment was a box of matches and a haversack of tabloids like this"--he showed a couple of small black dice balanced on the back of his hand. "Each tabloid is guaranteed to set fire to anything, from a kitchen range to a chest of drawers when touched off. It really is wonderful stuff.

"Very well, then. An intelligent Belgian found a dozen and a half of this amiable corps hard at work. He helped them, and after a hard day's work took them to a cellar where there was some good, old champagne, and filled them up choc-a-block. Then he turned on the gas and left. Next morning he came and found eighteen good Germans and took from them their stores of fluxite tabloids for which they had no further use. He set fire to the cellar they were in, so as not to cause any unpleasantness with their friends, and got across to England with the tabloids. As he'd picked up some shrapnel in the knee on his travels, he handed the tabloids to me, and they're now in that portmanteau."

"But what's this other thing you talked of--something about deferred ignition?"

"A mere trifle, m'lord, but being a little thing of my own, I cherish it. Once I thought I'd be a chemist, and really learned quite a bit about chemistry before I chucked it. There are lots of substances which, when mixed together, produce fire, at once or sooner. There are quite a few which take their time over it; warm up to their work slowly and thoughtfully in fact; but do it none the less efficiently for all. My tabloids are the latter sort. I won't trouble you with their composition. Indeed I may as well go so far as to say that when I have advertised them well by our present trip--always supposing we don't get scuppered in the process--I mean to retail the recipe to the War Office people, if I can wake them out of their winter sleep. Then I shall be able to repay that fifty guilders I've soaked you in for, not to mention those two second-best shirts which Lady Kettle so kindly, but so reluctantly, provided."

"Well," said Captain Kettle, "your stuff may be good and may be bad, and is probably bad, but anyway I'm not going to be satisfied till I see it tried. So come out now and we'll find where this cotton is stored."

They had not to go far in their exploration of that continental seaport city without finding cotton. Quays, warehouses, streets even, were piled with cotton bales; trains clattered away with them over the frontier into Germany as fast as sweating men could load them; and every minute more bales were discharged from steamers fresh in from the ocean. Every bale sent into Germany meant death for ten soldiers of the Allies, but it also meant money for the thrifty neutral who passed it through his territory, money for the free and independent Southern States planter, money for the shipper, money for the broker, money (according to Captain Kettle) for the British lawyer-politician, money in fact for so many worthy and pushing people that the mere soldier (who as often as not did not possess a vote) had naturally to go to the wall.

"My great James!" said Captain Kettle. "Here's a way to carry on war!"

"Rather surprising, isn't it, we didn't ship them cordite whilst we were at it, and bag the manufacturing profit as well? It would have been quite as consistent. Do you know we are being followed?"

"Yes, by a tall party with a kaiser moustache and glasses. He came on with us as convoy when we left the hotel. He's pointed us out to four other people that I've seen during our stroll, and probably to more."

"My compliments on your wits, m'lord. You've seen more than I did. Are we going into the hotel? It's probably a trap."

"If anybody here wants trouble," said the sailor truculently, "I'm the man to provide it. Go inside. We'll dine in our rooms, and the Lord help the Dutchman who tries to interfere."

But there were men in that city as daring as Captain Owen Kettle. Half-way through dinner an embarrassed waiter announced "Some visitors, chentlemen," and on his heels there pressed the big German with the spectacles and the upturned moustaches, and three friends. They elbowed the waiter out into the passage, and shut the door behind them.

The big German folded his arms and addressed the sailor, in good English--"You are a Britisher."

"I have always suspected it," said Kettle dryly.

"And your name is not Professor Owen, but Captain Owen Kettle. We have met before, as you will remember. And now I am going to settle up for what I owe you."

"I hear you say it."

"Speak the truth. What do you want here?"

"What the hell's that to you? Get out of this room, one-time, you crossed-eyed son of dog. There's the door. If you don't use that you'll be thrown through the window. Understand? I don't like your face."

Here was a touch of the Kettle of an earlier era. The modern German always had that kind of emetic effect on him. This specimen, however, was not the man to take insults calmly. He lugged out a revolver, and was plainly on the verge of shot. But a large and heavy water carafe, thrown with the full strength of Kettle's right arm, caught him fairly on the chest, where it burst like a shell. The sailor followed up the attack as quickly as he could limp across the room, wrenched the man's revolver away, and beat the sense out of him with the butt of it.

Another, advancing to the help of this first, had his legs plucked violently from beneath him, and his head pounded against the iron kerb fender till the subsequent proceedings interested him no more. Then Captain Kettle turned his eyes and looked across the room, and saw the other two intruders ranged against the wall with their hands above their heads, and Mr. Holly Holroyd menacing them with a most murderous-looking carving knife and carving fork.

"Aren't I the complete cannibal m'lord?" he asked. "The citizen at present offering his liver to the knife is so far untouched, but the ruffian on my fork-hand has a dozen punctures in him for which he is probably none the better. Congratters on the way you killed your brace. I suppose we ought to make good Germans of these two, but my trouble is I can't kill sitters."

"You wait there, my lad," said Captain Kettle, "till I get some sheets from one of the bedrooms torn into strips, and then I'll show you how to tie up a man efficiently. It's an art. I'm also going to make fast my two in case they see fit to come to life again before they're needed, the dirty Dutch swine. I wonder what I once did to this party with the unpleasant moustache."

"And now," said Mr. Holroyd when the operation was ended, "we can't take it for granted that all four of these mummified gentlemen were orphans. The odds are that at any rate one of them has a dear friend who'll inquire for him. The only question is, how soon will they begin to get anxious."

"The answer to that is just under the window. There are a blessed regiment of them; the place is as German as Hamburg; and though it would tickle me finely to stay and see it out with them, business is business, and that cotton is waiting for attention before we can afford to waste time on pleasure. We must skin out of this spot, one-time."

"But how, Most Wise? According to you the doors will be guarded."

"Quite so. But the roofs won't be--yet at any rate. Get that portmanteau with the chemicals, and come along. I mapped out the course from the square below before we came in."

"Me for the cat-act on the tiles," said Mr. Holroyd cheerfully.

"And don't use that low-down theatre talk, or you'll be getting my boot into you. I'll not have my ears contaminated. I was on the edge of composing a pleasant bit of verse then, before you blundered in and put me off.'"

That retreat across the roofs deserves a chapter to itself, but space cannot be afforded in this brief memoir. The roofs were high-pitched and the passage eminently dangerous. Moreover, to have detached tiles and let these clatter to the street below would have advertised their passage, and so had to be avoided at all costs. But Holroyd developed an unexpected activity (which he explained by saying he had been in the gym eight at Rugby), and Captain Kettle climbed like a sailor that he was. And in the end, after they had clambered half-a-mile from the hotel, they found an unoccupied attic, and entered it to sit down and rest.

Captain Kettle looked with distaste at his soiled knees and grimy hands and did his best to remedy these with the help of his pocket-handkerchief. In his sea days he had always been noted for his personal spruceness, and though he was now the complete farmer, his tastes in this direction had not changed. I found out once that a firm in Piccadilly makes a square-topped bowler hat for him specially.

"Now," said the sailor, "we've created a lot more interest in ourselves than is wholesome, and I hate advertising anyway. We've work to do, and we've got to get somewhere quiet to do it. The place they're likely to hunt for us least in will be a truck or a coach in a train that's going to start sometime for Germany. Main thing is, we must pick one that's not going to start too soon, and one also that commands a view of those cotton bales. D'ye think you can find all that in the dark?"

"I'm sure I can't."

"Well, I'm sure I can. That's the advantage of a sea education. Walk delicately down these steps, and if anybody interferes, bottle him."

They trod like mice down dark and resounding stairways, expecting alarms at every turn. Doors yawned at them on every landing. From the third half-pace a rat's eyes gleamed at them and then were noiselessly eclipsed. But not till they had got to the ground floor was there a sound of human life. There on the right, a door lay open, with the room beyond it extravagantly lit with showy electrics. In a great blue satin arm-chair a blowsy servant girl sprawled and snored.

Captain Kettle was always a man with neat instincts. "The hussy," he said. "Lady Kettle has trouble with them just the same. And, of course, all the lights are on and running to waste. The papers may preach till they're black in the face, but you'll never get that sort to practise war-time economy."

Then they went out into the evening streets, mingled coolly with the stolid crowd, and went their ways without let or hindrance.

The city was old, and its streets wandered as waterside streets do. On two occasions the dead-reckoning of even Captain Kettle led them to turn off to a wrong direction, to his own wrath, and to his friend's amusement. "I love to hear you get mad," Mr. Holroyd chuckled, "when you miss a simple turning. I, personally, have no more idea than an unborn Astrakan lamb whether our way is north or south, or indeed which is north or south."

"Quite so," snapped Kettle. "It is not your job to know. It is mine. Bear away to starboard, please, and give me a spell with the portmanteau. If weight means anything, it should contain a powerful lot of your fire-raisers. I wish to goodness we'd got out earlier, before the telegraph offices were shut. I want to get another message through."

"Want to telegraph your report of what we've done up to date to the War Office?"

"No, sir, not now. I want to wire Lady Kettle not to give Arthur curd cheesecakes. She always does it if I don't remind her every time he comes to stay with us, and they always upset him. Then her ladyship takes it as a reflection on her cooking, and there's a row, and the girl usually leaves.... No, don't go that way, or you'll step into a canal. We must walk round the next block before we come to the railway yards."

To gain a hiding-place, when they came to the chosen ground seemed impossible. The whole quay-space was lit as bright as day with sizzling arc-lamps, and work was proceeding at three times normal speed. The phlegmatic natives were being hustled by Prussians. Every third man there seemed Prussian, square shouldered, and capable. To carry on the Great War Germany needed cotton for explosives, and this was one of the ways she saw that she got it. But it was to this press and bustle that the two Britons owed immunity. Everybody was too busy to bother with them. Anybody who spared them a thought imagined that they were helping Germany.

There was a concrete water-tower at the flank of one of the warehouses, its head above the reflection of the arc lamps, its front lit like day, its back in black shadow. A ladder-way led to the top, luckily on the dark side. Up this Captain Kettle led, laboriously carrying the portmanteau with him. Holroyd followed. And in due time the pair of them, sweating and exhausted, lay and panted on the wooden covering of the tank high up above the area of the light. A stork's nest, with Madame Stork in possession, occupied one corner of the roof-space. The intruders apologized for their disturbance and the lady continued her duties unruffled.

A train of box cars clanked out to the eastward, jolting noisily over the turntables.

"By James!" said Captain Kettle, pulling himself together. "Every second we sit idling here means a gain to somebody who is selling cotton, and a waste of English soldiers' lives. Open your magazine, and give me one of the guns. You take the bales to the left, and I'll pelt those to the right. And for the Lord's sake don't make a noise, or we'll have these swine coming up and wanting to make a fuss, and we'll have to waste time killing them instead of getting busy with that cotton."

The two pumped up the reservoirs of their air-guns, inserted the composite wad of fluxite and slow detonator, took aim at one of the ragged untidy cotton bales below, and pulled trigger.

In a way it was not exciting work; there were none of the accompaniments of ordinary shooting; there was no noise beyond an almost apologetic "click"; there was no flash; there was no movement on the part of the target to register a hit. Even Madame Stork did not notice the firing. "The little beasts just quietly imbed themselves," Holroyd had said, "without so much as a rustle. They only get about an inch in, and the cotton closes over them, and there's nothing to see unless you know what to look for. Then a bit later they go off in a swirling blaze. I tried that on a cotton bale at Liverpool. I've often wondered whose bale it was. I should like to have told the owner he was suffering for his country's good."

Men and trucks and cranes were handling many of the bales immediately beneath them, and loading these into covered box cars. They were careful not to touch these men, but always shot at bales that were marked for next handling. Lives, British lives, depended on their quickness.

"By James!" said Captain Kettle at the end of the first half-hour, "if this stuff of yours doesn't go off, my lad, I'll wring your neck."

"Go on shooting for another ten minutes," replied the other coolly, "and I'll show you. You're as bad as young Arthur and the curd cheesecakes, m'lord; you're too anxious for quick results.... Gee-whiz! I take that back, though. There you are!"

A roman candle of flame spouted suddenly from one of the brown and white bales beneath them, sending up gouts of burning cotton into the night for the fingers of the breeze to spread. Here seemed the commencement of a bonny blaze. But a sharp guttural order barked out, and men dropped everything and ran, and returned in a matter of seconds dragging hoses from which the water already spouted.

"Smart, that," commented Captain Kettle with a disciplinarian's appreciation. "Ah, there you are, my lad, our big German with the moustaches I dislike, and the manners I'm not going to put up with. Seems to think he owns this city. Well, he'll probably get taught otherwise. But I wish I could remember where it was I met that swine before, and what I did to him."

But no extinguishing appliances were efficient to cope with those fluxite fires. Bale after bale broke into flame, and spouted destruction. A train of cars got nervous and pulled out, but the jolting irritated its simmering combustion, and it fled hooting and clattering away through the night towards Germany, in a perfect ribbon of flame.

The bales in the open popped and burned like coals, the warehouses caught and burst like over-ripe pods, and the vessels in the basin, despite their hurried casting-off of shore fasts were smitten in their turn, and burned like torches also.

"I hope you're satisfied," the inventor exulted. "About time we quitted. Even that blessed stork is getting uneasy."

"Not whilst we've this handful of cartridges left. That man who doesn't like me is going to save the train over there to the Nor'ard if we don't look lively. We'll shoot everything we've left at that, and trust to luck that one of the pellets goes off with a short fuse."

"I'm getting cooked. This tower is made of ferro-concrete, which they say doesn't burn. So we shall merely cremate. When they're examining our cinders they'd probably decide we were Parsees. By gad, Captain, look at your pal. Did you fire the shot that set light to him, or did I?"

Captain Kettle stared down at the train on the northward siding. The energetic man with the eyeglasses and the upturned moustaches who was trying to save it, suddenly clutched at his clothes, and then crumbled into flame. But he did not cry out. He ran quickly round the corner of the building, and was lost to the watchers' sight, and there is the end of him as far as this memoir is concerned.

"You aren't shooting any more?" asked Holroyd.

"I've given them my last cartridge."

"So have I. I wonder which of us bagged your pal. What about catching the last 'bus home?"

"After you, my lad," said Captain Kettle. "By James! I wish I could remember what I did to that man. Hullo, there goes Mrs. Stork. Now, quick down that ladder, or we shall cook."

Once more, to avoid custom-house and passport formalities, Captain Kettle and his friend let the mail-boat take her trip without them, and crossed to England by another less obvious route. The fare on board was meagre, and they went to an inn at the unobtrusive port to which their boat was consigned to supply the void. They found there an English paper.

"I see," said Mr. Holly Holroyd over his chop, "that there have been cotton fires at that place where we've been, but they're quite unimportant and no damage was done."

"I'm not in the least a betting man," said Captain Kettle, "as betting is a thing the Wharfedale Particular Methodists strongly disapprove of, but I'll stand you two days' rabbit shooting on my farm if cotton isn't made contraband before the month's up."

"How's that?"

"At the time I sent that first wire about Arthur and the butterfly bottle I happened to send another to a British M.P. I knew, telling him he might expect that the cotton shipment his friends had got through would be spoiled, and that the dose would be repeated if needful. I guess that man knows when to come in out of the wet."

"You're a marvel," said Mr. Holroyd. "I was intended for the diplomatic service myself if I'd passed high enough out of Harrow, but the good old Governor went phut for two millions in nitrates just then, and I had to go in for medicine instead. But I should never have been your equal in diplomacy. Well, there's one thing I bagged out of this trip and that's an option on a £100,000 parcel of German dyewares now in----er----, the neutral country where we've been operating. No trouble at all importing them, and Bradford's aching for all it can get. I shall make a cool fifty thou'."

"You've a great head on you," said Captain Kettle, "though some of the things in it are a bit hard to follow. I hope that boy Arthur's all right, but between ourselves Lady Kettle spoils him dreadfully, and I expect he'll have a liver on him like a Strasburg goose by the time I get back."