Considerably elated, Lawless picked up the Eddystone light about an hour later. Then, having taken his bearings, he left Plymouth far away to starboard and headed down Channel, while, in obedience to his instructions, the quick-firer was taken out of the hold and mounted on deck and the damaged funnel repaired.
He had been the recipient of a brilliant inspiration.
"The young fool's been and got himself torpedoed, that's what he's done," said Skipper Chard in a tone of conviction.
He was seated with other patrol-boat skippers in the bar-parlour of a certain hostelry, and the conversation had turned on the mysterious disappearance of the Gelderland with her prize crew. A full week had elapsed since her capture by the O47, yet she had not been reported at Plymouth or any of the other western seaports.
"Skipper Trevail do say he saw she west of Lizard," remarked an old Cornishman.
Chard shook his head impatiently. He absolutely refused to credit the strange stories which, during the last few days, had been rife in the west. Patrol skippers had solemnly assured him that they had seen the Gelderland off the Cornish coast. One declared that, not knowing what she was, he had boarded her and seen her captain, a young man who could not speak a word of English; but, as her papers were in order, he had let her proceed without troubling to search her cargo. As day after day passed these stories were added to, or varied, until the Gelderland began to be regarded as a phantom ship, and was spoken of, not without awe, as the Flying Dutchman. The skipper of the O47 alone maintained a sceptical attitude, and reiterated his belief that she had been either torpedoed or mined.
At last the Admiralty, awaking to the fact that a captured ship had disappeared, sent wireless instructions to the officers in command of the patrols to make a systematic search for the vessel. And so, from Start Point to the Lizard, cruiser, destroyer, and patrol-boat swept the seas.
On the afternoon of the very day that these instructions were sent out, Skipper Chard stood in the wheelhouse of the O47 and swept the horizon with his glasses. Suddenly he uttered a cry, for just visible against the skyline was the Gelderland.
"Whack her up all you can!" he yelled through the voice-pipe. "We've sighted her!"