He was to take them back to Hamburg, or throw them overboard, or sink the _Fanny_ and take to her boats, according to circumstances.

But in London, instead of Crawford, Spender found the Hamburg skipper and packer, who told him of Crawford's escape from Langeland with the loss of the ship's papers.

Spender, knowing nothing of Crawford's change of plan, and anxious to convey to him the latest instructions, went off on a wild-goose chase to the Highlands of Scotland, where he spent the best part of an unhappy week watching the waves tumbling in Lough Laxford, and looking as anxiously as Tristan for the expected ship.
Meantime the _Fanny_ had crossed the North Sea, and Crawford sent Agnew ashore at Yarmouth on the 7th of April with orders to hurry to Belfast, where he was to procure another steamer and bring it to a rendezvous at Lundy Island, in the Bristol Channel.

Crawford himself, having rechristened the _Fanny_ for the second time (this time the _Doreen_), proceeded down the English Channel, where he had a rather adventurous cruise in a gale of wind.

He kept close to the French coast, to avoid any unwelcome attentions in British waters, but on the way had an attack of malaria, which the Captain thought so grave that, no doubt with the most humane motives, he declared his intention of putting Crawford ashore at Dunkirk to save his life, a design which no persuasion short of Crawford's handling of his revolver in true pirate fashion would make the Norwegian abandon.
In the heavy seas of the Channel the _Doreen_ could not make more than four knots, and she was consequently twenty-four hours late for the rendezvous with Agnew at Lundy, where she arrived on the 11th of April.
The Bristol Channel seemed to swarm with pilot boats eager to be of service, whose inquisitive and expert eyes were anything but welcome to the custodian of Ulster's rifles; and to his highly strung imagination every movement of every trawler appeared to betoken suspicion.