Smartly the Boxer came alongside, and without the loss of so much as a square inch of paint was soon moored to the jetty.
"Ready, Mr. Smith?" asked Mallet, after Stirling had duly introduced the skipper of the Diomeda to the lieutenant-commander of the destroyer. "Good! we'll get out a hawser at once. The tide won't serve us much longer. The sooner we start the better, for, unless I am very much mistaken, there's heavy weather knocking about within fifty miles of us."
Octavius Smith had, in fact, already made all preparations for the Diomeda's departure. As soon as he had received a communication from the Admiralty, acquainting him of the special visit of a British destroyer to tow the yacht back to Lowestoft, he obtained his clearance papers at the Custom House, reprovisioned the craft, and stowed away or securely lashed on deck every article that might otherwise be swept overboard or damaged down below.
"What's the game, old man?" he asked of Stirling, as the latter returned with him to the yacht. "It seems a queer thing to do to send a destroyer solely for the purpose of towing us home. Of course I'm jolly glad, although I enjoyed my detention at Delfzyl. At the same time the letter from the Admiralty is so emphatic on the point that the yacht must be brought home that I can't help fancying that there's more in this than meets the eye."
"There I cannot help you," replied Stirling. "For one thing, I know our friend S174 has cleared off. You received those papers I sent you safely?"
"Oh yes—thanks awfully! It was a rotten climb down on the part of the British and American authorities at Berlin, but I'm inclined to think they are lying low about something."
"I hope they are," agreed Stirling. "By the by, how have you been getting on since I left you in the lurch?"
"Can't complain," drawled the skipper of the Diomeda. "Business fairly brisk; sent off four instalments of those idiotic 'Heart-to-heart Chats' and answered a regular batch of queries from love-sick servant girls. And—funny thing—old Dangler wrote and asked me to contribute a series of articles on 'Art in the Home'. Of course I started the wretched things, but as I couldn't get hold of any copies of London furniture manufacturers' catalogues I was a bit hung up. You can't get inspirations on 'Art in the Home' when you're cooped up in this dog-box of a cabin, can you? They'll have to wait till I get back. But there's the hawser coming aboard."
It did not take long to get the six-inch hawser from the Boxer to the Diomeda, where the end was bent round the yacht's mainmast close to the deck and securely stopped to the gammoning-iron. The bowsprit had already been run in, so as not to have the risk of its being snapped off by the tow rope in the broken waters of the North Sea.
The ropes that held the Diomeda to the quay were cast off, the destroyer's propellers began to churn twin columns of white foam, and the hawser slowly tautened.