"We were," declared Dick mendaciously, for he considered himself quite justified in bluffing the fellow. "We were, but the long cruise has been abandoned. Don't know why." "You'll be quite a traveller. Have you journeyed on the Continent before?" Dick shook his head. "No? Then I'll have to give an eye to you," continued Mr. Wilson. "Rather a long journey without having anyone to talk to." "Don't think I'd take it on if I were you, Mr. Wilson," said Dick in a well-simulated, confidential tone. "You see, I'm let out before I ought to be. I only came out of the sanny yesterday." "The sanny?" queried Mr. Wilson, in perplexity. "Yes, that is the sanatorium, you know," explained Dick, warming to his part. "Scarlet fever; 'fraid I haven't quite finished peeling yet." "Er--er--I don't quite understand," murmured the stranger uneasily, moving back a pace. "Of course with proper precautions it may be all right," continued the fever-stricken youth cheerfully. "I've been cautioned to keep to the lee side of the boat so that the germs--beastly things germs--don't get blown on the people. In the train I've got to keep the window open at night, if other passengers don't object, and sniff carbolic powder. But I'll be free from infection by the time we get to Brindisi, I expect." Chuckling to himself, Dick watched Mr. Wilson beat a hurried retreat. "If I'd taken old Jaques' advice about keeping silence I'd have had to have been awfully rude," he soliloquized. "As it is, I've put the wind up him. Wonder who he is? And he said he knows my father, too. That's rich!" He did not see Mr. Wilson again, save for a glimpse of his back at the Gare du Nord, during the journey to the south of Italy. "Mr. Wilson", or to give him his real name, Herr Kaspar von Giespert, thought fit to alter his proposed route, for instead of proceeding via Brindisi he booked to Marseilles, hoping to catch a Messageries boat to Singapore. It was a pure coincidence that von Giespert and Dick were fellow-passengers on the Folkestone-Boulogne boat, but Mr. Jaques' over-cautious exhortation had given the Hun a clue. Happening to hear the word _Titania_, von Giespert pricked up his ears. He decided to sound the open-faced British boy; he might have succeeded but for an initial false move in assuming that Jaques was Dick's parent. Von Giespert was cooling his heels at the southern French seaport days after Dick Beverley joined the yacht _Titania_ at Taranto. CHAPTER XIV Sunk in Collision It was a dark, windless night. The _Titania_, under power, was gliding through the tranquil waters of the Red Sea. The port watch had just been relieved, and Bobby Beverley, having "handed over" to Jack Villiers, lingered on the deck to have a yarn with his particular chum.