"By Jove!" exclaimed Bobby. "A tramp like her went out this morning—the Zug of Malmo."
"Possibly the same old hooker," commented Harborough. "Well, let's make for the police-station."
Three days passed. The mystery of Jack Villiers' disappearance remained unsolved. A police-inspector called upon Kristian Borgen in his office, but the Swede gave a complete explanation of his movements. It was true, he stated, that the Geier was bought by his firm and that her name was changed to Zug—a fact advertised beforehand in the press according to the requirements of the British Mercantile Shipping Act. The Zug had sailed for the Baltic and was due at Stockholm on the 30th inst. Her clearance-papers were quite in order.
The inspector, fully convinced that he had been put on a false trail, shook hands with Borgen, apologizing for having inconvenienced him, to which the amiable Swede replied that it was no inconvenience whatsoever, and that he was only too happy at all times to assist the law of the land that had offered him a temporary home.
Meanwhile there was no cessation of activity in the work of fitting out the Titania. Everyone on board realized that Villiers would have wished it so. But there was a feeling of depression that it was impossible to shake off. The uncertainty of Jack Villiers' fate, on the eve of what promised to be a successful enterprise, cast a shadow of gloom upon the proceedings.
The day of the Titania's departure having been fixed, Harborough saw no insurmountable reason for postponing it, and the rest of the crew agreed with him.
"If Villiers does turn up," he explained, "he can join us anywhere between here and Singapore; and delay will only mean increasing risks on the score of bad weather, to say nothing of the possibility of our rivals turning up before us."
So at 9 a.m., early in the month of November, the yacht Titania, Hugh Harborough, Master, slipped her moorings, and at a modest six knots dropped down Southampton Water on her long voyage to the Pacific. There were two absentees from her full complement, Jack Villiers was one, the other was Dick Beverley. An epidemic of mumps was raging in the school, and a swollen face intervened between Dick and a visit to the enchanting South Seas.