"It's likely. The German fleet won't wait for any declaration, I should
say, if they thought they could catch us napping. But they won't. I
fancy we're ready for them--here, anyhow!"

He jerked his thumb at some dark masses looming through the
darkness in the harbour, caught here and there by a glint of metal
reflected in the water. They were cruisers and submarines nosing
towards the harbour mouth.

"There's a crowd of 'em!" said the second mate, "and they stretch
across the Channel. . . . The Reserve men have been called out--
taken off the trams in Dover to-night. But the public has not yet woken
up to the meaning of it."

He stared out to sea again, and it was some minutes before he spoke
again.

"Queer, isn't it? They'll all sleep in their beds to-night as though
nothing out of the way were happening. And yet, in a few hours,
maybe, there'll be Hell! That's what it's going to be--Hell and
damnation, if I know anything about war!"

"What's that?" I asked, pointing to the harbour bar.

From each side of the harbour two searchlights made a straight beam
of light, and in the glare of it there passed along the surface of the
sea, as it seemed, a golden serpent with shining scales.

"Sea-gulls," said the mate. "Scared, I expect, by all these lights. They
know something's in the wind. Perhaps they can smell--blood!"