For days past the westerly breeze had held. Smith was beginning to fret at the enforced detention, especially as he learnt from meteorological reports that only a few miles to the north the wind was almost exactly in the opposite direction.
"There you are!" exclaimed Stirling excitedly. "Didn't I say so?"
"Say what?" demanded the skipper, deliberately recharging his pipe.
"I'll read you Pfeil's letter. There are one or two words I can't make out without a dictionary, but I can make a very good guess at them:
"In answer to your letter, I hasten to send this by the next dispatch. I know your friends, Herr Hamerton and Herr Detroit, are in Heligoland, so there must be a mistake in the story that they met with a disaster. How I know is this: my brother Sigismund is in S174, one of the boats operating with us when I fell overboard and was rescued by your friends. Directly I was landed I wrote to him assuring him of my safety, and describing the yacht and her crew who treated me so kindly. In his reply he told me the English yacht was lying off Heligoland, and that Herr Hamerton and his friend had landed to be the guests of one of our German officers. The next day the yacht was towed away--I think it was to Bremen--to undergo some repairs. The Englishmen remained. Five days ago my brother's torpedo-boat destroyer S174 left for the purpose of towing her back to Heligoland. She has apparently been delayed by bad weather, for she has not yet returned. This ought to dispel any doubts in your mind concerning an accident to your friends. We leave for Stettin to-morrow on a three-weeks' cruise.
"There, old man, what do you think of that?"
Smith puffed vigorously at his pipe for a minute or so. His knitted eyebrows showed that he was deep in thought.
"Fishy; decidedly fishy," he remarked. "Stirling, you stand a chance of pulling off your scoop after all. It is fishy--very. The _Diomeda_, lying here in Delfzyl, is supposed to be at Bremen for repairs. The German destroyer S174 is supposed to be sent to tow her back. I wonder whether that vessel that is persistently hanging about off the entrance to the Dollart is S174?"
"We'll find out," said Stirling decisively. "Come along. Van Wyk will be able to tell us."