The weather had turned. The sky was overcast, and a gentle but persistent drizzle saturated everything. From the windows of the big house the grey sweep of the Thames, rolling towards the sea between the low mud flats, showed a cheerless and uninviting prospect. After a hurried breakfast Gregory Sallust surveyed the scene through his binoculars. The sloping meadows of his boyhood had been levelled into fine playing fields, but the shipping was almost nil and the only sign of life in the near distance a small tug, about a quarter of a mile from the shore, which seemed to be in difficulties. He could make out two men and a woman on the bridge, but the vessel did not seem to be under power. It floated swiftly, broadside on in the sweep of the tide, turning a little—first to this side, then to that—as fresh eddies caught it. ‘Somebody trying to escape to the Continent,’ thought Gregory, ‘but unable to handle the machinery, or perhaps their supply of fuel has already run out.’ He turned his glasses on H.M.S.
