"I am strong, but I am not a Hercules," replied the Dutchman with a shrug of his shoulders. "One I can carry to the cart. To-day is a heavy wash, so I must return for a second load. You twig?"
"In you get, Trefusis," ordered his companion, in a tone that would brook no refusal.
By dint of hunching his shoulders and bending his knees, Ross managed to get into the basket. The lid was shut, and Jan, assisted by the Sub, lifted the heavy load on to his shoulders.
Jolting over the cobble-stones, the cart proceeded at a rapid pace for nearly a quarter of an hour. Then Jan called to the dogs to stop. The lid was thrown back and Ross told to get out.
He found himself outside a small cottage by the side of a canal. Katje was on her knees washing a bundle of clothes; the operation assisted, with disastrous results to the interned officers' effects, by means of two large stones with which she pounded the saturated garments. Without even turning her head to watch the midshipman's exit from the basket, she proceeded vigorously with her task.
Jan led him into the cottage and pointed to a heap of clothes.
"Put these on you," he said. "I will now go for your friend."
Before the Flight-Sub rejoined him, Ross was rigged out as a Dutch youth, in voluminous trousers, long coat, stock, tall cylindrical hat, green stockings, and wooden shoes. His companion had to look twice before he recognized him.
"Now you come with me to Mynheer Guit," said Jan. "He is a bulb merchant, and lives just outside Ymuiden. You will then go on board a barge that brings the boxes of bulbs from Mynheer Guit's warehouse to the ship. I will be with you. The men in the barge will say nothing. Before to-night you will be safe on board the Hoorn."
Jan was as good as his word. That night the fugitives slept comfortably in the cabin of the mate of the steamship Hoorn; and at tide-time, early on Saturday morning while it was still dark, the vessel glided between the breakwater of Ymuiden, and shaped a course for the mouth of the Thames.
CHAPTER XXVIII. Almost Recaptured
"What's that light, Jan?" asked the Flight-Sub.
The Hoorn was now well beyond the three-mile limit. Ross and his fellow-passenger were standing aft, sheltering from the keen south-westerly wind. The mate of the vessel was with them, the skipper being on the bridge.
"Those lights?" corrected Jan. "They have been visible all the time. They are the two white leading-lights to Ymuiden harbour."
"No, I don't mean those," said the Flight-Sub. "Away to the south'ard, quite a mile from the harbour. See, it's showing again."
From the dunes a white light blinked thrice and then disappeared.
"I do not know," answered Jan gravely. He thought for a moment and then said: "Half a mo'. I will speak to the skipper."
"Hanged if I like it," muttered the Flight-Sub. "I say, Trefusis, that light blinking away looks very fishy. It would mean a fifty-pound fine in England; but here, apparently, it is not objected to."
The skipper and the mate were talking rapidly. Both men were leaning over the after side of the bridge-rails, with their eyes fixed upon the dark shore from which the mysterious light flickered at regular intervals.
"Light on the port bow," reported the helmsman. Both of the Hoorn's officers turned just in time to catch sight of a steady white light before it disappeared. Whatever its meaning, it was remarkable that from that moment the shore light ceased to blink.
"Put out our navigation lamps, Jan," said the skipper. "Someone has betrayed your English friends. Nevertheless I will do all in my power to aid them. We'll steer south-west for an hour. Perhaps we may outwit yon craft, whatever she may be, before dawn."
Ross and his companion were quick to note the alteration of helm. They knew, too, that the removal of the steaming-lights was for the purpose of baffling what must be, to a dead certainty, a German craft—a submarine, or perhaps a torpedo-boat, since the latter frequently ventured out of Borkum and crept stealthily towards the Schelde, keeping close to the Dutch territorial waters in order to avoid being snapped by the vigilant British destroyer flotilla.
Slowly the wintry day dawned. Anxiously the British officers scanned the horizon. The low-lying Dutch coast was now invisible. All around was a waste of grey, tumbling waves, unbroken by a sail of any description.
The Hoorn was ploughing her way at a modest ten knots. Short, beamy, and deep-draughted, she was pitching heavily, sending a frothy bow wave far to leeward each time she dipped her nose into the steep seas.
"I'd give a fiver for the sight of a good old White Ensign at the present moment," remarked the Flight-Sub anxiously. "Good heavens, what's that?"
Ten seconds later he laughed mirthlessly.
"Nerves going to blazes," he muttered. "A bit of wreckage gave me the jumps. By Jove, don't we look a pair of comical objects?"
They had discarded their grotesque head-dress. Ross had a woollen muffler wrapped round his head, while his companion had been given the loan of a red stocking-cap, but they still retained the weird garb in which they had made their journey down the ship canal.
Suddenly Ross gripped his companion's arm and pointed with his right hand to a spar-like object projecting a few feet, close to the waves, at less than a cable's length on the port quarter.
"A periscope!" ejaculated the Flight-Sub.
"Let's hope it's one of our own submarines," said Ross.
"We'll soon find out," added his companion. "It's forging ahead. Whatever it is, they've got us under observation."
Jan, who was now on the bridge, had his attention called to the disconcerting fact. He beckoned to his two passengers.
"You had better go below and stow yourselves away," he suggested. "We will be boarded before long."
"Not I," replied the Flight-Sub. "They've marked us already. If they do take us they won't have to dig us out of a coal-bunker."
The submarine was emerging. At a pace that more than held its own with the Hoorn, she shook herself clear of the water, although green seas were breaking across the flat deck as far aft as the conning-tower.
Then muffled forms clambered through the hatchway; a young, yellow-bearded officer appeared on the navigation platform and hailed the Hoorn in Dutch to heave to instantly.
Even then the tough old Dutch skipper was not going to give in without a protest.
"For what reason?" he shouted back. "This is a Netherlands ship."
"That I do not doubt," rejoined the officer of the submarine. "But you have two Englishmen on board who have broken their parole——"
"You lie!" interrupted the skipper vehemently.
"Not a word more!" exclaimed the German fiercely. "Heave to, or we sink you!"
Reluctantly the "old man" gave the order to stop the engines. Jan, sliding down the bridge ladder, communicated to the British officers the text of the conversation.
"Some rascal of a German spy has betrayed you," he added. "If I could lay my hands upon him——"
There was a look on the Dutchman's face which showed that his anger was genuine.
"All right, Jan," said the Flight-Sub. "It's the fortune of war."
"Deucedly rotten morning," remarked Sub-lieutenant Fox as he greeted the officer of the watch, whom he was about to relieve.
Eccles, the Lieutenant, who had been on the Capella's bridge for four long and dreary hours, merely nodded sleepily. He was thinking, with feelings of satisfaction, of the hot coffee and fragrant bacon and eggs awaiting him below. Three minutes had to elapse before eight bells. Wearily he rubbed his salt-rimmed eyelids with a heavily gloved hand.