Neither side was therefore in position to force the issue, and the inquiry dragged on from day to day, really waiting the moment when it would be quietly pigeonholed. Both sides steadily went through the motions of pretending desperate efforts to discover what both knew and both were very anxious to keep secret. If it had not been for the disappearance of Professor Shishkin, the whole matter would probably have been allowed to drop. Professor Shishkin, however, was too distinguished a man to be allowed to drop out of sight so easily. His scientific brethren, especially those in the rest of Europe, were clamoring for an explanation of an attack on one of their number while engaged in scientific work in such a peaceable sea as the Baltic. Hints that the Professor had really been engaged in gold-hunting and that the attack had been made by a gang of thieves, had little effect in calming the agitation. They were simply disbelieved. Bristow’s inquiries in revolutionary circles had brought abundant confirmation of what he already knew, but had yielded little additional information. According to the nihilists, the whole affair had been carefully planned by the Russian police. A battalion of marines had been landed at the village of Burndo on the very afternoon of the attack, reaching it by the eastern inlet, and had climbed over the ridge and come down the hill behind the yacht, bringing two field-guns with them. As Miss Fitzhugh had guessed, the men were in peasant dress, and it was intended that they should appear to be a band of rioters such as were only too common in Russia in those troubled times. It was supposed that they would capture the yacht without trouble, loot her, and let her go, after perhaps murdering the Russians whom they should find on board. However, lest they should fail, several gunboats and destroyers had been ordered to the spot to intercept the yacht if she should escape. The orders to these were far more grim. This plan was disarranged by the suddenness with which Florence exposed her signal, and by the haste of the officer in command of the Russian troops. When the sparks from the yacht’s funnels showed that she was getting up steam, this officer feared she was about to flee with the gold, and, wanting the credit of capturing this, had made his attack before the field-guns were in position and before the gunboats had arrived off the mouth of the inlet. Had he moved a half an hour later, the _Sea Spume_ would have been captured or sunk by the hurrying warships.