The wisdom of Crawford’s system of packing was fully vindicated.  There was no confusion, no waiting to bring ammunition from one part of the ship’s hold to match with rifles brought from another, and bayonets from a third.  The packages, as they were carried from the steamer or the cranes, were counted by checking clerks, and their destination noted as each car received its load.  But even the large number of vehicles available would have been insufficient for the purpose on hand if each had been limited to a single load; dumps had therefore been formed at a number of selected places in the surrounding districts, where the arms were temporarily deposited so as to allow the cars to return and perform the same duty several times during the night.

While the Mountjoy was discharging the Larne consignment on to the quay, she was at the same time transhipping a smaller quantity into a motor-boat, moored against her side, which when laden hurried off to Donaghadee; and she left Larne at 5 in the morning to discharge the last portion of her cargo at Bangor, which was successfully accomplished in broad daylight after her arrival there about 7.30.

Crawford refused to leave the ship at either Larne or Bangor, feeling himself bound in honour to remain with the crew until they were safe from arrest by the naval authorities.  It was well known in Belfast that a look-out was being kept for the Fanny, which had figured in the Press as “the mystery ship” ever since the affair at Langeland, and had several times been reported to have been viewed at all sorts of odd places on the map, from the Orkneys to Tory Island.  Just as Agnew was casting off from Bangor, when the last bale of arms had gone ashore, a message from U.V.F. headquarters informed him that a thirty-knot cruiser was out looking for the Fanny.  To mislead the coast-guards on shore a course was immediately set for the Clyde—­the very quarter from which a cruiser coming from Lamlash was to be expected—­and when some way out to sea Crawford cut the cords holding the canvas sheets that bore the name of the Mountjoy, so that within five minutes the filibustering pirate had again become the staid old collier Clydevalley, which for months past had carried her regular weekly cargo of coal from Scotland to Belfast.  As before at Langeland, so now at Copeland, fog providentially covered retreat, and through it the Clydevalley made her way undetected down the Irish Sea.  At daybreak next morning Crawford landed at Rosslare; and Agnew then proceeded along the French and Danish coasts to the Baltic to the rendezvous with the Fanny, in order to bring back the Ulstermen members of her crew, after which “the mystery ship” was finally disposed of at Hamburg.