Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/276

238 between fringes of curling hair. Still he looks young, possessed of an abundant vitality. He springs up, smiling a welcome. He lights a cigarette, pacing about the room as he talks. His smile never hides the uninterrupted anxiety of his eyes. That makes him seem at first like the very different figure in the alpaca jacket.

I spoke, I remember, of the trawlers I had seen in St. George's Channel and the Irish Sea—hundreds of tossing trawlers, fishing for submersibles, and, when necessary, making themselves the bait. I had marvelled at the bravery of their sailors. As I watched the smiling, active figure, as I saw the smoke curl from his cigarette, I realised that there are harder tasks, that the assumption of responsibility may be a greater sacrifice, than the risk of one's life. Through the leather door at any moment might slip a tragic reflection of his system; word, perhaps, of many lives lost through a breakdown somewhere.

Certainly this room was too cheerful. It made it more difficult to picture the details of a story I had recently heard—one of those cases about which little is said, because it involves signalling, and the simple word makes any official tongue-tied. Yet it is obvious that the German spies have used that form of communication under favourable conditions. At any rate, not long before a