Thereafter for three weeks, steamships and sailing ships would follow the course upon which they were ordered, without hurt or loss.
After three weeks, the murderous business would begin again.

There was but one explanation in Hillyard's opinion.
"The submarines come out of Pola.

When they reach the line between the Balearics and the Spanish coast, they have oil for ten days' cruising, and then return to their base," he argued.
Now, if a submarine had been provisioned by Jose Medina in a creek of Mallorca, the ten days' cruise would be extended to three weeks.

This had never happened.

Moreover, the date fixed by Pontiana Tabor happened to fall precisely in the middle of one of those periods of three weeks during which the terror did not haunt those seas.