So the officer went away down the corridor, and Neeland sat down on his bed, opened the box, went over carefully every item of its contents, relocked it with a grin of satisfaction, and, taking it with him, went off to pay a visit to the captain of the Volhynia.
The bearded gentleman in the stateroom across the 215 passage had been listening intently to the conversation, with his ear flat against his keyhole.
And now, without hesitating, he went to a satchel which stood on the sofa in his stateroom, opened it, took from it a large bundle of papers and a ten-pound iron scale-weight.
Attaching the weight to the papers by means of a heavy strand of copper wire, he mounted the sofa and hurled the weighted package into the Atlantic Ocean.
“Pig-dogs of British,” he muttered in his golden beard, “you may go and dive for them when The Day dawns.”
Then he filled and lighted a handsome porcelain pipe, and puffed it with stolid satisfaction, leaving the pepper-box silver cover open.
“Der Tag,” he muttered in his golden beard; and his clear eyes swept the starlit ocean with the pensive and terrifying scrutiny of a waiting eagle.