"Where am I?"
Jack Villiers opened his eyes slowly, only to shut them again. During
the first moments of returning consciousness he was aware of a dull
throbbing pain in the region of the nape of his neck--a pain that
became almost excruciating when he made an effort to rise.
It was some moments before he attempted to reopen his eyes. With his
brain working slowly, he tried to account for his present state of
discomfort. Something was wrong--what? Had he been playing Rugger,
and been carried off the field? No; it couldn't be that. He hadn't
played footer for months. Strafed by Huns? Wrong again: he realized
that he had been "demobbed" and that there was no longer a war on.
Yet he was on board ship. He could feel the steady pulsations of the
engines and the thud of the propeller-shaft not so very far beneath
him. Odours of an unmistakably "shippy" nature assailed his nostrils.
Yes, he was at sea. The _Titania_ was under way.
Yet that theory puzzled him. She wasn't ready for sea. Beverley and
he were sleeping on board, and----
With an effort he raised himself on one elbow and tried to shout his
chum's name. But not a sound came from his parched throat. His
tongue, feeling as if it had swollen to abnormal dimensions, seemed
to press, hot and dry, against the roof of his mouth.
"Dash it all!" he ejaculated mentally. "Haven't I got a fat head?
Where am I?"
By degrees he became more rational. He lay still, not daring to move.
Even then every roll of the ship sent thrills of acute pain over his
body.
At first when he opened his eyes everything appeared to be of a
dull-reddish tinge, but presently the lurid mist cleared away and he
found himself watching an oval-shaped patch of light that,
penetrating a solitary scuttle, danced up and down the opposite
bulkhead with every movement of the vessel.
"What cabin is this?" he thought. "It's not mine; proper sort of a
dog-box this. Who put me in here?"
It was indeed a sorry sort of place. The walls and ceiling were
covered with cork-cement that was dripping with moisture. At one time
the composition had been painted white. It was now a sickly yellow
streaked with iron-rust. On the floor was a ragged piece of oak
linoleum. Underneath the scuttle, which was closed and secured by a
tarnished brass butterfly nut, was a bunk on which a piece of old
canvas had been placed to form a rough and ready mattress. And on the
bunk, with his head supported by a folded coat--his own, lay Jack
Villiers.
Further investigation showed that he was dressed in his own trousers,
socks, pants, and vest--and nothing more. His boots, shirt, and
waistcoat had gone.
"Good heavens!" he thought, as the full significance of his position
came home to him like a flash. "I've been shanghaied. Yes, I
remember, a fellow called me about a telegram."
Slowly he raised his arm and, bringing his hand back, very gingerly
rubbed his skull. There was a raised bruise that felt as large as a
duck's egg.
"Sandbagged!" he decided. "The rival crowd is one up. Well, I suppose
I'll be able to find out now who the fellows are. Wonder why they
singled me out for their unwelcome attentions."
As a matter of fact it was a case of mistaken identity. On that
momentous Saturday night one of the crew of the _Zug_--ex.
_Geier_--who was a past master in the art of speaking colloquial
English, hailed from the wharf-wall, fully expecting that Sir Hugh
Harborough was one of the two persons on board the _Titania_. The
pseudo messenger was not alone. Skulking behind a rusty and condemned
ship's boiler were three powerful men, one armed with a length of
rubber pipe filled with sand, and the others holding ropes and a gag
in readiness should the persuasive methods of the loaded india-rubber
pipe fail.
Unsuspecting and quite unprepared for foul play, Villiers was struck
down from behind. There was no need to gag and bind him. Quickly and
silently the four men carried their victim to a slipway, where a boat
lay in readiness. It was quite a simple matter and almost devoid of
risk. The night was dark, and even had there been any of the crews of
the neighbouring vessels about, the statement that it was only a
drunken man being taken off to his ship would have allayed suspicion.
But, unseen and unchallenged, the emissaries of Kristian Borgen
conveyed their senseless victim on board the _Zug_.
Kristian Borgen was waiting to receive them in the tramp's dingy
state-room. Save for his own assertion and the fact that he spoke
Swedish fluently and possessed credentials (forged, no doubt) from
Stockholm, there was nothing Swedish about him. He was a Hun, and a
Prussian at that. His real name was Kaspar von Giespert, and he had
been an Unter-Leutnant of the German light cruiser _Dresden_. He knew
the story of the _Fusi Yama's_ sunken gold, having heard it from a
brother-officer serving on board the _Nürnburg_, but he was not at
all sure of the actual position of the wreck. The _Dresden_ escaped
the fate that overtook her consorts in the engagement with Sturdee
off the Falkland Islands, but afterwards met with an ignominious end
by being sunk by her own crew at Juan Fernandez--Alexander Selkirk's
famous island. On the approach of a British cruiser, von Giespert was
interned by the Peruvian Government until the end of the war, and
upon being released promptly returned to Germany with the object of
fitting out an expedition to search for the lost gold.
There were serious difficulties in his path. The partial surrender of
Germany's mercantile fleet had made it an impossible matter to
procure a ship in any German port. As a Hun, von Giespert knew that
"his name was mud" in almost every important seaport on the Atlantic
and Pacific shores. A nation cannot "run amok" and institute a policy
of "sink everything without trace" and then expect to be treated on a
pre-war footing by the States whose flags she has wantonly flouted
and insulted. So von Giespert, quick to realize that as a German he
was "down and out", had no qualms about renouncing, temporarily at
all events, his nationality and becoming Kristian Borgen, a Swede.
And as such he found little difficulty in taking up his abode in
Southampton, whence he could control his latest mercantile enterprise
with comparative ease.
He had succeeded in getting a picked crew of twenty-two German
seamen--men who in pre-war days had served in the British Mercantile
Marine, where frequently 75 per cent of a crew sailing under the Red
Ensign were either "Dagoes" or "Dutchies". And these men could all
speak English as spoken on shipboard, and most of them, with the
Hun's versatility in learning languages, were equally at home with
Swedish.
Von Giespert had a firm hold upon his band of desperadoes. For one
thing he paid them well and made fair promises of a substantial share
of the treasure, if and when it were recovered. Anyone possessing
capital could do that, but von Giespert, being a Hun, went further.
The men he picked carefully from the crews of certain U-boats whose
record of piracy was of the blackest--men who had carried out
infamous orders with alacrity when they thought Germany was winning,
and who had not hesitated to mutiny and assault their officers when
they discovered the long-hidden truth that all was lost.
Von Giespert knew how to trade upon their fears. He told them that
they were "wanted" by the British Government for their past crimes,
and that the only safe course for them was to take the bull by the
horns, become Swedish subjects, and accept employment in the country
that was their former enemy, where, by their audacity, they would
fling dust into the eyes of the hated English. The _Zug's_ crew
accepted the statement and acted with corresponding discretion.
For the present he had no intention of sailing on the s.s. _Zug_ for
the Pacific. He was content to allow the vessel to proceed in the
charge of Siegfried Strauss, who had been a quarter-master in the
North German Lloyd Line before serving in the Imperial navy. Strauss
was under orders to navigate the _Zug_ by a circuitous route round
the Cape of Good Hope and pick up his employer at Batavia.
"Donnerwetter! Who is this?" inquired von Giespert angrily, as the
unconscious Villiers was unceremoniously dumped at his feet. "This is
not Harborough."
The kidnappers cowered before the wrath of their Prussian pay-master.
"This is the man who has been on board for the last four or five
nights, Herr Kapitan," replied one.
"He seemed in authority."
"You've blundered," declared von Giespert, "and you cannot undo your
mistake. Let us hope that his absence will throw that fellow
Harborough's plans out of gear. Herr Strauss, are you all ready to
proceed?"
"The pilot will not be on board before six tomorrow," replied
Strauss. "Those were your instructions."
"Very good," rejoined von Giespert. "We must have a pilot, of course.
Now when you drop him, steer eastwards to a point roughly ten miles
beyond the Nab Lightship. Then you know the rest. Keep this fellow
well out of sight. If he gives no trouble, carry him on to Las Palmas
and land him there. If he kicks, then drop him overboard. In any case
hoodwink him and try to find out our rivals' programme."
Forty-eight hours had elapsed since then, and Jack Villiers was
recovering his scattered senses. In that respect he was not helped
when the door of his cabin was opened and two men entered.
One--Strauss--was rigged out in a blue-serge suit with gilt buttons
and a double line of gold braid round his cuffs. The other man was
dressed in a pale-blue shirt, open at the neck, and a pair of canvas
trousers.
"So you are recovering," observed Strauss in an almost faultless
English accent.
Villiers tried to reply, but his parched throat gave no sound.
"Bring some brandy," ordered Strauss, turning to his subordinate.
The strong spirit had the effect of reviving Jack considerably. He
found his tongue.
"Where am I?" he demanded.
"On the s.s. _Zug_," was the reply. "We picked you up seven miles
south of St. Catherine's."
"Oh!" ejaculated Villiers, taken aback by this astonishing
intelligence. "How----"
"Don't talk," protested Strauss, with mock sympathy. "You're very
weak. I'll tell you. It was two days ago. We are bound from Malmo to
Monte Video, and this is a Swedish ship. Two days ago, I say, we were
standing down Channel when we sighted a ship's lifeboat drifting. We
altered our course, and on approaching we found you lying unconscious
on the stern-gratings. We did not touch at an English port, nor did
we sight any vessel bound up-Channel; so it seems as if you must
enjoy our hospitality until we reach Las Palmas."
"Haven't you wireless?" inquired Villiers.
The acting skipper of the _Zug_ shook his head.
"Otherwise we would be able to oblige you," he added. "But I will see
that you are made comfortable. Do you wish for anything to eat?"
Villiers felt far from wanting food. His throat was still painful,
and his head ached fearfully.
"I'm thirsty," he replied.
The two men went out, returning in a few minutes with a hair mattress
and pillow and a basin of hot soup.
"Take this and go to sleep," said Strauss, when the fresh bedding had
been substituted for the canvas sacking. "I will look in again in
half an hour or so."
Villiers managed to finish the soup, although every spoonful required
an effort to swallow. Then he lay back, wondering and pondering over
the brief story that the _Zug's_ master had just told him.
"Boats cost money, especially nowadays," he soliloquised. "Wonder why
I was cast adrift in a lifeboat when they might have dumped me into
the ditch? That would have saved them a lot of expense and would have
covered their tracks. Well, here I am, able to sit up and take
nourishment, but beyond that---- And Beverley, how's he taking it? I
suppose they didn't sandbag him, too?"
Still puzzling his tired brain over his strange predicament, Villiers
dropped into a fitful slumber.