Then, leaving Agnew to get sufficient stores on board the _Fanny_ for a
three-months' cruise, Crawford returned to Hamburg on the 20th, and
thence to Belfast to report progress. Agnew's orders were to bring the
_Fanny_ in three weeks' time to a rendezvous marked on the chart
between the Danish islands of Langeland and Fünen, where he was to pick
up the cargo of arms, which Crawford would bring in lighters from
Hamburg through the Kiel Canal.

While Crawford was in Belfast arrangements were made to enable him to
keep in communication with Spender, so that in case of necessity he
could be warned not to approach the Irish coast, but to cruise in the
Baltic till a more favourable opportunity. He was to let Spender know
later where he could be reached with final instructions as to landing
the arms; the rendezvous so agreed upon subsequently was Lough Laxford,
a wild and inaccessible spot on the west coast of Sutherlandshire.
Crawford was warned by B.S. that he was far from confident of a
successful end to their labours at Hamburg. He had never before shipped
anything like so large a number of firearms; and the long process of
packing, and Crawford's own mysterious coming and going, would be
certain to excite suspicion, which would reach the secret agents of the
British Government, and lead either to a protest addressed to the German
authorities, followed by a prohibition on shipping the arms, or to
confiscation by the British authorities when the cargo entered British
territorial waters.

These fears must have been present to the mind of B.S. when he met
Crawford at the station in Hamburg on the 27th on his return from
Belfast, for the precautions taken to avoid being followed gave their
movements the character of an adventure by one of Stanley Weyman's