"That's well jumpt, thou nimble old man."

balance, overcame scruples and suspicions. "There are only three of us," he said grudgingly. "Three it is," Mallory said cheerfully. "We'll bring you some Hock next time we return." He tilted his own bottle. "Prosit!" he said, an islander proud of airing his German, and then, more proudly still, "Auf Wiedersehen!" The boy murmured something in return. He stood hesitating for a moment, slightly shame-faced, then wheeled abruptly, walked off slowly along the river bank, clutching his bottles of Moselle. "So!" Mallory said thoughtfully. "There are only three of them. That should make things easier" "Well done, sir!" It was Stevens who interrupted, his voice warm, his face alive with admiration. "Jolly good show!" "Jolly good show!" Miller mimicked. He heaved his lanky length over the coaming of the engine hatchway. "'Good' be damned! I couldn't understand a gawddamned word, but for my money that rates an Oscar. That was terrific, boss!" "Thank you, one and all," Mallory murmured. "But I'm afraid the congratulations are a bit premature." The sudden chill in his voice struck at them, so that their eyes aligned along his pointing finger even before he went on. "Take a look," he said quietly. The young soldier had halted suddenly about two hundred yards along the bank, looked into the forest on his left in startled surprise, then dived in among the trees. For a moment the watchers on the boat could see another soldier, talking excitedly to the boy and gesticulating in the direction of their boat, and then both were gone, lost in the gloom of the forest. "That's torn it!" Mallory said softly. He turned away. "Right, that's enough. Back to where you were. It would look fishy if we ignored that incident altogether, but it would look a damned sight fishier if we paid too much attention to it. Don't let's appear to be holding a conference." Miller slipped down into the engine-room with Brown, and Stevens went back to the little for'ard cabin. Mallory and Andrea remained on deck, bottles in their hands. The rain had stopped now, completely, but the wind was still rising, climbing the scale with imperceptible steadiness, beginning to bend the tops of the tallest of the pines. Temporarily the bluff was affording them almost complete protection. Mallory deliberately shut his mind to what it must be like outside. They had to put out to seaSpandaus permittingand that was that. "What do you think has happened, sir?" Stevens's voice carried up from the gloom of the cabin. "Pretty hp 720 digital camera owner27s manual obvious, isn't it?" Mallory asked. He spoke loudly enough for all to hear. "They've been tipped off. Don't ask me how. This is the second timeand their suspicions are going to be considerably reinforced by the absence of a report from the caique that was sent to investigate us. She was carrying a wireless aerial, remember?" "But why should they get so damned suspicious all of a sudden?" Miller asked. "It doesn't make sense to me, boss." "Must be in radio contact with their H.Q. Or a telephone-probably a telephone. They've just been given the old tic-tac. Consternation on all sides." "So mebbe they'll be sending a small army over from their H.Q. to deal with us," Miller said lugubriously.. Mallory shook his head definitely. His mind was working quickly and well, and he felt oddly certain, confident of himself. "No, not a chance. Seven miles as the crow flies. Ten, maybe twelve miles over rough hill and forest tracks and in pitch darkness. They wouldn't think of it." He waved his bottle in the direction of the watch-tower. "To-night's their big night." "So we can expect the Spandaus to open up any minute?" Again the abnormal matter-of -factness of Stevens's voice. Mallory shook his head a second time. "They won't. I'm positive of that. No matter how suspicious they may be, how certain they are that we're the big bad wolf, they are going to be shaken to the core when that kid tells them we're carrying papers and letters of authority signed by General Graebel himself. For all they know, curtains for us may be the firing squad for them. Unlikely, but you get the general idea. So they're going to contact H.Q., and the commandant on a small island like this isn't going to take a chance on rubbing out a bunch of characters who may be the special envoys of the Herr General himself. So what? So he codes a message and radios it to Vathy in Samos and bites his nails off to the elbow till a message comes back saying Graebel has never heard of us and why the hell haven't we all been shot dead?" Mallory looked at the luminous dial of his watch. "I'd say we have at least half an hour." "And meantime we all sit around with our little bits of paper and pencil and write out our last wills and testaments." Miller scowled. "No percentage in that, boss. We gotta do somethin'." Mallory grinned.