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.