Before morning a change occurred in the weather, which Crawford regarded as providential.  He was gladdened by the sight of a sea churned white by half a gale, while a mist lay on the water, reducing visibility to about 300 yards.  It would be impossible for the Port Officer’s motor-boat to face such a sea, or, if it did, to find the Fanny, unless guided by her fog-whistle.  As soon as eight o’clock had passed—­the hour by which the return of the ship’s papers had been promised—­Crawford weighed anchor, and crept out of the narrow channel under cover of the fog, only narrowly escaping going aground on the way among the banks and shallows that made it impossible to sail before daylight, but eventually the open sea was safely reached.  But the Fanny was now without papers, and in law was a pirate ship.  It was therefore desirable for her to change her costume.  As many hands as possible were turned to the task of giving a new colour to the funnel and making some other effective alterations in her appearance, including a new name on her bows and stern.  Thus renovated, and after a delay of some days, caused by trifling mishaps, she left the Cattegat behind and steered a course for British waters.

The original plan had been to set a course for Iceland, and, when north of the Shetlands, to turn to the southward to Lough Laxford, the agreed rendezvous with Spender.  But the incident at Langeland, which had made the Danish authorities suspect illegal traffic with Iceland, made a change of plan imperative.  Before leaving Danish waters Crawford tried to communicate this change to Belfast.  But, meantime, information had reached Belfast of certain measures being taken by the Government, and Spender, hoping to catch Crawford before he left Kiel, went to Dublin to telegraph from there.  In Dublin he was dismayed to read in the newspapers that a mysterious vessel called the Fanny, said to be carrying arms for Ulster, had been captured by the Danish authorities in the Baltic.  For several days no further news reached Belfast, where it was assumed that the whole enterprise had failed; and then a code message informed the Committee that Crawford was in London.

Spender at once went over to see him, in order to warn him not to bring the arms to Ireland for the present.  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.