"Proceed at once."
"It means a night trip," observed Meredith. "Fortunately it's calm and the nights are short. It will rather upset your leave, old man, to find yourself back at Scapa to-morrow."
"Anything wrong, I wonder?" asked Cumberleigh.
"Don't suppose so," replied Kenneth. "Merely a brain wave on the part of some shore-loafing minion in the S.N.O.'s office. However, 'a norder's a norder; an' it's a nard life,' as I once overheard a matloe remark."
Apparently M.L. 1497 was in no hurry to return to her base, for shortly after midnight her engines "konked." For some hours she wallowed in the swell a few miles from the shores of Caithness, while sweating mechanics struggled with sooted plugs and choked jets.
It was broad daylight before the trouble was overcome, and the M.L. was able to resume her interrupted return run.
"I wonder what von Preussen is doing," remarked Cumberleigh, as the rocky shores of the Orkneys appeared above the horizon. "Somehow I've got the idea that he was up to some mischief when we spotted him aboard the Hohenhoorn."
"Shouldn't be surprised," agreed Meredith. "I reported the incident, but nothing seems to have been done. Unfortunately our people are hampered by the Allied Congress; otherwise the Huns wouldn't be on board now—nearly six months after the Armistice."
A quarter of an hour later Kenneth raised his binoculars.
"Seems much the same old show," he observed. "Fritz is still occupying the best berths in Scapa Flow. Wonder why we were recalled so hurriedly? Hello! There's old Wakefield coming out to meet us."