Page:In the days of the comet.djvu/249

 a state of great bewilderment. Certainly there's something odd in the air. I was--I was rushing along a road in a motor-car, very much excited and preoccupied. I got down--" He held out a triumphant finger. "Ironclads!

"Now I've got it! We'd strung our fleet from here to Texel. We'd got right across them, and the Elbe mined. We'd lost the Lord Warden. By Jove, yes. The Lord Warden! A battleship that cost two million pounds--and that fool Rigby said it didn't matter! Eleven hundred men went down. . . . I remember now. We were sweeping up the North Sea like a net, with the North Atlantic fleet waiting at the Faroes for 'em--and not one of 'em had three days' coal! Now, was that a dream? No! I told a lot of people as much--a meeting was it?--to reassure them. They were war-like but extremely frightened. Queer people--paunchy and bald like gnomes, most of them. Where? Of course! We had it all over--a big dinner--oysters!--Colchester. I'd been there, just to show all this raid scare was nonsense. And I was coming back here. . . . But it doesn't seem as though that was--recent. I suppose it was. Yes, of course!--it was. I got out of my car at the bottom of the rise with the idea of walking along the cliff path, because everyone said one of their battleships was being chased along the shore. That's clear! I heard their guns--"