CHAPTER IX
"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.