"Any orders, Herr Major?" asked the coxswain, as the Moke, Farrar, and the portmanteau were deposited in the spacious stern sheets.
"None," replied Sylvester curtly. "You have plenty of petrol, I hope. Last time one of your patrol boats caused me to miss a court of inquiry from a lack of petrol."
"Enough for four hours' run at fifty kilometres an hour, Herr Major," replied the cox swain obsequiously. He was a little, fussily important man who, the Moke decided, was like a gasbag; the bowman was of a different type—tall, broad-shouldered, and stolid. The third member of the crew, the artificer in the motor-room, was invisible. It was unlikely that he would cause much trouble.
"Cannot I have a lamp in the cabin?" asked Sylvester.
"I will see to it, Herr Major," replied the petty officer. "If the windows are screened it is permissible, but there would be much trouble if a single ray of light were allowed to escape."
He shouted an order to the bowman. The latter, his immediate work completed, had laid aside his boat-hook and was meditating a retirement to the fore-peak. Presently he came aft with an unlighted lantern. This he fixed in the cabin, drew shutters over the square panes of glass in the sides of the raised cabin-top, and finally lighted the lamp.
"It is ready, Herr Major," reported the coxswain.
The patrol boat was now clear of the harbour. The open sea was as smooth as a mill-pond. Not another craft of any description was in sight.
Farrar, shivering in the night air in his thin, shoddily made uniform, watched his companion with envious eyes as Sylvester entered the cabin. In the rôle of officer's servant he was experiencing several of the inconveniences that it is the lot of a common soldier to have to grin and bear.
There was no time to be lost, for the sooner the Moke put his plan into execution the better. Every revolution of the motor-boat's twin propellers was taking her nearer Trieste—and Trieste was a most unhealthy locality as far as the bogus Baron Eitel von Stopelfeld was concerned.