"No, no, Wapping. I don't think we need take action. Hang it all, man, what with all these tin-pot scares about foreign spies, we shall be run off our feet."

"But don't you think this is something out of the ordinary?" asked Captain Douglas Wapping, M.V.O., R.N., of his chief.

"Out of the ordinary? Yes, quite—a letter written by a gimcrack hare-brained pensioner, with the evident idea of gaining notoriety prior to calling attention to some grievance real or imaginary. I know their game. Who is this Lieutenant Haslar?"

"I've looked him up in the Navy List, sir. Retired on pension. He was a ranker, promoted for meritorious service in the Bangwan River affair."

"Oh yes, I remember the man. Garrulous as an old washerwoman."

"But he states sufficient in the letter to justify investigation——"

"Well, well, Wapping, have your way then: you always do, somehow or other. Hang it, man, if I had your powers of persuasion I would have received Flag rank long before I did."

That morning Rear-Admiral Pennington had received a letter from an obscure Cornish fishing-hamlet, stating that the writer, Lieutenant Haslar, R.N. (retired), had reason to believe that a mysterious submarine, owned apparently by a foreign power, had been seen cruising in the waters of St. Ives Bay, and that, moreover, a huge airship, that must have its headquarters in the vicinity, was in the habit of making nocturnal passages overland in the direction of Plymouth.

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