Before the subs could enlighten Captain Pennington as to the nature of the mystery the unter-leutnant came up.
"You vill haf to vork, kapitan," he said without further preliminaries. "If you no keep your crew up to concert pitch trouble you vill haf. You men vill vork vatch and vatch, see?"
Captain Pennington merely nodded in reply. He realized that passivity was desirable; on the other hand, having heard of Armstrong's little plan, it would not do to show unwonted eagerness to assist in working the ship.
"Turn up der men," ordered Klick.
"One minute," interposed Captain Pennington. "We are not at sea now. My men have insufficient head-gear. It's risking sunstroke."
The unter-leutnant considered the affair for a few minutes. Personally he didn't care a rope's-end whether the strafed Englishmen had sunstroke or not, until it occurred to him that a number of invalids would hamper operations. Finally he gave orders for a number of solar topees or sun-helmets to be issued to the British crew.
It was eight o'clock in the morning when the Myra weighed. Already the sun was unpleasantly hot. There was no wind. Under the shade of the mangroves the mists still held, while the black mud left uncovered by the falling tide gave out a most noxious vapour.
To Denbigh's satisfaction Armstrong had been sent for'ard to superintend the weighing and catting on the anchor. The stern anchor had already been hove short.
Under the action of the steam winch the cable came home. Manoeuvred by means of the twin screws the Myra swung round in mid-stream, and as the "hook" broke out from the muddy bottom the tramp forged slowly ahead.
Half a dozen British seamen were on the fo'c'sle together with three Germans. The latter took good care to leave most of the work to the prisoners, so that Armstrong had a clear opportunity to withdraw the real forelocks from the anchors and replace them with the wooden ones.