required immediate attention. He had received a number of code messages lately which did not even call for a reply. It was merely irritating.

When he reached the docks he found that his trunk was buried under a mountain of other baggage on the lower deck of the Hispaniola, and that he would not be able to get at it before they sailed. He had just ten minutes to dash ashore and ring up the German legation on the telephone. He wasted nearly all of them in getting the right change to slip into the machine. A most exasperating conversation followed.

"I wish to speak to the German minister."

"He is away for the week-end. This is his secretary."

"This is Sigismund Krauss speaking."

"Oh, yes."

"I have received a message about Uncle Hyacinth."

"I can't hear."

"Uncle Hyacinth's appetite!" This was bellowed.

"Oh, yes." The voice was very cautious and polite.

"I want to know if it's important."

"Whose appetite did you say?"

"Uncle Hyacinth's!" This was like Hindenburg himself thundering.

There seemed to be some sort of consultation at the other end of the wire. Then the reply came very clearly:

"I'm sorry, but we cannot talk over the telephone. I can't hear anything you say. Please put your question in writing."

It was an obvious lie for any one to say he could not hear the tremendous voice in which Herr Krauss had made his touching inquiry; but he fully understood the need for caution. He had tapped too many wires himself to blame his colleagues for timidity. He had only a minute to burst out of the telephone booth and regain the deck, before the gang-planks were hoisted in and the ship began to slide away to the open sea.

He was more than annoyed, he was disgusted, to find that half the people on board were talking English. Two or three of them, including the captain, were actually British subjects; while the purser, a few of the stewards and several passengers were citizens of the United States.

It was late that evening and the shore lights had all died away over the pitch-black water when the brass-bound trunk belonging to Mr. Neilsen, as we must call him henceforward, was carried into his stateroom by two grunting stewards. The mysterious letter could be of no use to the Fatherland now, and he certainly did not expect it to be important from a selfish point of view. Also, he was hungry, and he did not hurry over his dinner in order to decode it. It was only his curiosity that impelled him to do so before he turned in; but a kind of petrefaction overspread his well-fed countenance as the significance of the message dawned upon him. He sat on a suitcase in his somewhat cramped quarters and translated it methodically, looking up the meaning of each word in the code, like a very unpleasant schoolboy with a dictionary. He was nothing if not efficient, and he wrote it all down in pencil on a sheet of note-paper, in two parallel columns, thus:

Perhaps to make sure that his eyes did not deceive him Mr. Neilsen wrote the translation out again mechanically, in its proper form, at the foot of the page, thus:

U-boats instructed sink Argentine ships. Destruction Hispaniola essential. Cancel passage immediately.

It seemed to have exactly the same meaning. It was ghastly. He knew exactly what that word "destruction" meant as applied to the Hispaniola. He had been present at a secret meeting only a month ago, at which it was definitely decided that it would be inadvisable to carry out a certain amiable plan of sinking the Argentine ships without leaving any traces, while an appearance of friendship was maintained with the Argentine Government. Evidently this policy had suddenly been reversed. There would be a concentration of half a dozen U-boats, a swarm of them probably, for the express purpose of sinking the Hispaniola, just as they had concentrated on the Lusitania; but in this case there would be no survivors at all. The ship's boats would be destroyed by gunfire, with all their occupants, because it was necessary that there should be no evidence of what had happened; and necessity knows no law. There was no chance of their failing. They would not dare to fail; and he himself had organized the system by which the most precise information with regard to sailings was conveyed to the German Admiralty.

He crushed all the papers into his breast pocket and hurried up on deck. It was horribly dark. At the smoking-room door he met one of the ship's officers.

"Tell me," said Mr. Neilsen, "is there any possibility of our—of our meeting a ship—er—bound the other way?"

The officer stared at him, wondering whether Mr. Neilsen was drunk or seasick.

"Certainly," he said; "but it's not likely for some days on this course."

"Will it be possible for me to be taken off and return? I have found among my mail an important letter. A friend is very ill."

"I'm afraid it's quite impossible. In the first place we are not likely to meet anything but cattle ships till we are in European waters."

"Oh, but in this case, even a cattle ship—" said Mr. Neilsen with great feeling.

"It is impossible, I am afraid, in any case. It is absolutely against the rules; and in war-time, of course, they are more strict than ever."

"Even if I were to pay?"

"Time is not for sale in this war, unfortunately. It's verboten," said the officer with a smile; and that of course Mr. Neilsen understood at once.

He was naturally an excitable man, and his inability to obtain his wish made him feel that he would give all his worldly possessions at this moment for a berth in the dirtiest cattle boat that ever tramped the seas, if only it were going in the opposite direction.

He returned to his stateroom almost panic-stricken. He sat down on the suitcase and held his head between his hands while he tried to think. He was a slippery creature and his fellow countrymen had often admired his "slimness" in former crises; but it was difficult to discover a cranny big enough for a cockroach here, unless he made a clean breast of it to the captain. In that case he would be incriminated with all the belligerents and most of the neutrals. There would be no place in the world where he could hide his head, except perhaps Mexico. He would probably be penniless as well.

At this point in his cogitations there was a knock on the door, which startled him like a pistol shot. He opened it a cautious inch or two—for his papers were all over his berth—and a steward handed him a telegram.

"This was waiting for you at the purser's office, sir," he said. "The mail has only just been sorted. If you wish to reply by wireless you can do so up to midnight." The man was smiling as if he knew the contents. There had been some jesting, in fact, about this telegram at the office.

A gleam of hope shot through Mr. Neilsen's chaotic brain as he opened the envelope with trembling fingers. Perhaps it contained reassuring news. His face fell. It simply repeated the former sickening message about Uncle Hyacinth. But the