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120 at first, my friend—a solid fourteen hours, my word for it! Feeling better now?"

Lanyard's essays to reply began and ended in a croak for water. The Prussian nodded, disappeared, returned with an aluminium cup of stale cold water mixed with a little brandy.

"Champagne if you like," he offered, as Lanyard, painfully propping himself up on an elbow, gulped like an animal from the vessel held to his lips. "We are holding a little celebration, you know."

Lanyard dropped back to the pillow, the question in his eyes.

"Celebrating our success," the Prussian responded. "We got her, and that means much honour and a long furlough to boot, when we get home, just as failure would have spelled—I don't like to think what. I shouldn't care to fill the shoes of those poor devils who let the Assyrian escape them off Ireland, I can tell you."

Something very much like true fear flickered in his small eyes as he pondered the punishment meted out to those who failed.

So the U-boat was homeward bound! Strange one noticed no motion of her progress, heard no noise of machinery.

"Where are we?" Lanyard whispered.

"Peacefully asleep on the bottom, about five miles south of, waiting till it is dark enough to slip in to our base."

"Base?"

The Prussian hiccoughed and giggled. "On the south shore of the Vineyard," he confided with alcoholic glee: