all.'

This was a new light.

'What do you mean?' I asked.

'He must have left the yacht when he got to Hamburg; some other
devil's work, I suppose. She's being sailed back now, and passing
here--'

'Oh, I see! It's a private supplementary inquiry.'

'That's a long name to call it.'

'Would the girl sail back alone with the crew?'

'She's used to the sea--and perhaps she isn't alone. There was that
stepmother--But it doesn't make a ha'porth of difference to our
plans: we'll start on the ebb to-morrow morning.'

We were busier than usual that night, reckoning stores, tidying
lockers, and securing movables. 'We must economize,' said Davies, for
all the world as though we were castaways on a raft. 'It's a wretched
thing to have to land somewhere to buy oil,' was a favourite
observation of his.

Before getting to sleep I was made to recognize a new factor in the
conditions of navigation, now that the tideless Baltic was left
behind us. A strong current was sluicing past our sides, and at the
eleventh hour I was turned out, clad in pyjamas and oilskins (a