"Kill her?" Tom asked.

"Blew her all to pieces," said his companion, as he took the poor little trinket and continued to polish it on his knee.

Of all that Tom Slade had read about the war, its grim cruelties, its thousands slain and maimed, its victims struggling frantically in the rough ocean, the poor starving wretches in Belgium, nothing had impressed him so deeply nor seemed to bring the war so close to him as this little crumpled piece of brass—the sad memorial of a little girl who had been blown into eternity while she was studying her lessons. A lump came up in his throat, and he stood watching his companion, and saying nothing.

"That was the blond beast, that was," said the stranger. "I saw him stickin' his old head out of the ocean, too, and we got a pop at him last trip. Here, I'll show you something else."

Out of the bag he drew a photograph. "There; that's our gun crew; that's Tommy Walters—he's the one says I'm a mascot. I'm taking him some apples now. That feller there is Hobart. And that's old Billy Sunday himself, right in the middle," he added, pointing to a long, horizontal object concealed by a canvas cover; "that's him, the bully old boy!"

"A gun, is it?"

"You'd say so if you heard it pop and saw it jump—that's how it got its name."

In the photograph three young men in khaki, one with his sleeves rolled up, were leaning against a steamer's rail.

"Are they Americans?" Tom asked, for he was puzzled about his new friend's nationality.

"You said it."

One of the gun crew was smiling straight at Tom so that he almost smiled back, and the lump came up higher in his throat and his eyes glistened.

"Do you live around here?" he asked. "I'd like to know what your name is and what—and how you——" he broke off.

"You see that house over the hill? I live there. And I'm going back on the job now. What d'ye say we move along?"

They lifted the valise and started along the road.

"This is the last day of my leave," said the youth. "Here, see?" And he exhibited a steamship card with the name of a steamer upon it and the name of Archibald Archer written in the blank space underneath.

"That's my ship, and I go aboard her to-day, thank goodness! This'll be my third trip across, and the second time I've been home. This bag is half full of apples. Tommy Walters is crazy about 'em. The last trip, when I was home, I took him some russets. He wouldn't let me pop the gun, but he said if the dirty beast came near enough I could let him have the core of an apple plunk in his old periscope. If you were there, we'd sit on the main hatch eatin' apples and watchin' for periscopes. I don't have much to do after I get my berths made up."

"Do you work on the ship?" Tom asked.

"You bet! I'm one of the steward's boys. Gee, if you had to make fifty-seven beds with a life preserver on, you'd know what it is to be tired! Carrying this old suitcase is a cinch compared to that!—Say, if there's a Zep raid in London while I'm there I'll get you a souvenir. But the trouble is they never come when you want 'em to. Do you live in Leeds?"

"I live in Bridgeboro, New Jersey," said Tom, "and my name is Slade. I'd tell you to call me Tom, only I won't know you more than half an hour or so, so what's the use?"

"Half an hour's better than nothing," said Archibald Archer. "Are you on your way home?"

"I just came from the camp," said Tom, side-stepping the real object of his trip. "You know Temple Camp, don't you? I work for Temple Camp."

He was glad that his companion did not pursue his inquiries.

"That's where all the scouts come in the summer, isn't it?" he queried.

"I'm all alone," said Tom. "You're lucky to have a home up in the country to come to. And you're lucky to have a job like that too."

"I told you I was lucky," said Archibald Archer.

They walked on in silence for a little while, carrying the bag between them.

"You've seen something of the war, all right," commented Tom, "and I'll bet you're not eighteen yet. You sure are lucky! I don't blame you for calling Germany the blond beast. I wish I could be in it like you."

"Why don't you enlist?"

"I promised I wouldn't—not till I'm eighteen. I got to talk to my scoutmaster about it, 'cause I said I would. I wouldn't lie about how old I am, because he says if a feller lies about one thing he'll lie about another.... I wonder if you'd call it being with the Colors, working like you do?" he added.

"If you saw Old Glory flying from the stern and did your work with a life preserver wrapped around you and spent most of your time piking for subs and practicing emergency drills, just to let old Blondy know he can't stop us from coming across—you'd say you were with the Colors! If you stood where I did and saw that little old periscope topple over like a ninepin and heard Tommy say, 'Go get me another apple, Archie—we'll hit 'em again for good luck!'—you'd say you were with the Colors, all right! You might be in the third-line trenches a whole year an' have nothing to do with yourself but carry buckets and dig in the dirt. I know."

Tom was fascinated.

"All you got to do is say the word," his companion went on, reading his thoughts. "The steward'll put you on. They only sign you up for one trip at a time. If you're over sixteen, it's all right. They're taking up the shore passes to-day. Nobody knows when we'll sail, or even where we're going—except the captain. If I say I know you, it'll be all right. You get a hundred and sixty dollars for the trip, and you'll have about two weeks shore leave on the other side. The principal thing they'll tell you is about keepin' your mouth shut. Are you good at that?"

"There's nobody can get anything out of me if I don't want to tell," said Tom doggedly; "and I think you are with the Colors. I call it being in the war, and it's what I'd like to do, that's one sure thing!"

"I could tell you a lot of things," said Archer, "only I'm not supposed to tell 'em to anybody."

"I got to go home," said Tom; "I'm glad I met you, though. We can go in on the train together, can't we? I have to go to New York to get home. I got to go to scout meeting to-night. I'm going to stop in the postoffice when we get to Leeds; then we'll go down to Catskill Landing together, hey? I'm glad I had company, 'cause I was feeling kind of lonely and queer, like. When you talk it makes me feel as if I'd like to do that, only I see I can't."

Archibald Archer gave a curious look at Tom as they plodded along.

"What you tell me about that little girl makes me want to get into it all the more," Tom said.



CHAPTER XIII

AS OTHERS SAW HIM

In Leeds Tom left his companion sitting on a carriage step in the main street while he went over to the postoffice. As soon as he was out of young Archer's presence the tempter who had been pulling at his elbow left him, and his thoughts flew back to Roscoe and home.

He asked if there was a letter for him, and eagerly took the envelope which the clerk handed out. It was addressed in an unfamiliar, neat bank hand. Anxiously he stepped over to the better light near the window and read:

"DEAR TOM:

"Here I am, and it's twenty-three for mine." (Tom paused in suspense at this ominous phrase.) "My registration card is numbered twenty-three, so I'm the only original skiddoo soldier—take it from your Uncle Dudley.

"When I toddled up to Doc Fuller and told him that I was out of town Wednesday and just couldn't get back, you ought to have seen the look he gave me—over the top of those spectacles of his. I just stood there as if I was on the firing-line facing German clam-shells, and never flinched. I wouldn't mind a few Krupp guns now—not after that look.

"But Doc's a pretty good skate—I'll say that for him. He was better than the other members of the Board, anyway.

"Well, I got away with it, all right, only it's good another day didn't slip by, for then my name would have gone in and—g-o-o-d-ni-ight!

"Tommy, you're one brick! When I think of that old towhead of yours and that scowl and that old mug, I know we'll win the war. You'd walk right through that Hindenburg line if you ever got started.

"I've got to hand it to you, Tom—you brought me to my senses, all right, and I won't forget it in a hurry.

"But, Tommy boy, you're in Dutch down here—I might as well tell you the truth. And it makes me feel like a criminal. Old Man Temple has got the knife in you. Greatly disappointed in him—that's what he told Ellsworth and Pop Burton. Can't you see the old man frowning?

"I went in to put some mail on his desk and the whole three of them were in there pounding away with their little hammers. The old man was as nice as pie to me—patted me on the shoulder and gave me the glad hand. Said I was Uncle Sam's boy now. They didn't even know I wasn't registered Wednesday."

Tom was glad of that. He had succeeded better than he had dreamed. His awe of Roscoe Bent had not entirely vanished, and he was proud to receive so familiar a letter from him. He was so generously pleased that for the moment he did not think of much else. Then he read on:

"Ellsworth said he'd been afraid you would do just what you had done—run off and join the army. He said you promised him you wouldn't, but he guessed you couldn't stand the strain when you saw the fellows lining up to register.

"A couple of Boy Scouts told Ellsworth they saw you coming out of a pawnshop, and they were chewing that over in the old gent's office. But I guess those kids were dreaming, hey?

"The old gent said he guessed you were afraid to go up on the platform at the rally but didn't like to tell him so. Tom, I never knew you were scheduled for that—why didn't you tell me? You're aces up—you're one bully old trump. I never even knew you till now. You're a brick, you stubborn, tow-headed old forest fighter! You're fourteen-karat and you don't even know it yourself—you're so blamed stupid!"

Tom gulped slightly as he read this and his eyes glistened, but he read on with a kind of stolid indifference:

"I was going to tell them the whole thing, Tom, but I guess I was too mean and too much of a coward. Anyway, I promised you I wouldn't. I hope your ankle is better, and if you can't get home, let me know and I'll come up after you.

"In a hurry, "Rossie."

"P.S. When Pop Burton told Margaret E. that you had run off to join the army, she said that was splendid. He told her you'd have to lie about your age, and she said that was glorious. Can you beat that? Old Man Temple went to Chicago to-night, thank goodness, to buy some railroads and things. So long—see you soon."

Tom was glad, he was even proud, that the letter was signed by the familiar nickname, and he was glad of the friendly "So long."

Before he allowed himself to think of anything else he read the letter over again, lingering upon the familiar and humorous phrases which seemed to constitute himself and Roscoe as close friends. The part pertaining to himself he read in a half daze. It seemed to knock the bottom out of his whole theory that he who does right is always safe. Tom's mind, in some ways, was very, very simple, and now that he read the letter in relation to himself it was a knockout blow.

For a few minutes he stood gazing out of the postoffice window, watching two men who were taking down the registration-day decorations from the hotel opposite. A soldier in khaki went by and stopped to chat with them. A farmer came in for his mail, and Tom heard his voice as in a dream.

Then suddenly he shook off his abstraction and walked back to the little grated window.

"I want to get a stamped envelope," he said.

At the writing shelf he tore a sheet out of his scout blank book and wrote:

"DEAR ROSCOE:

"I got your letter and I'm glad you got registered and that nobody knows. If you had told, it would have spoiled it all.

"I see I did get misjudged, and if they want to think that I tell lies and break promises, let them think so. As long as they think that, anyway, I've decided I will go and help the government in a way I can do without breaking my word to anybody.

"You can see, yourself, I'm not one of the kind that tells lies.

"I've got my mind made up now; I made it up all of a sudden like, as long as that's what they think. So I'm not coming back to Bridgeboro. I'm going away somewhere else. The thing I care most about is that you got registered. And next to that I'm glad because it helped us to get to be friends, because I like you and I always did, even when you made fun of me.

"Your friend, "TOM."

He put the letter in his pocket, thinking it would be better to mail it from New York. Then he went out and over to where young Archer was sitting.

"I've decided I'll go if you can get me a job," he said "and if you're sure I don't have to tell them I'm eighteen. Maybe you wouldn't call it being in the war exactly, but——"

"Sure you would," Archer interrupted, with great alacrity, "I'll tell you something I didn't tell you before, but you have to keep your mouth shut. We're going to be a transport pretty soon—as soon as the boys begin coming out of the camps. We'll be taking them over by the thousands around next November—you see!"

"Do you think they'll take me?" Tom asked.

"They'll grab you—you see!"

To be sure, this assurance of a job was not on very high authority, but it was quite like Tom to place implicit confidence in what this engaging young stranger told him. His faith in people was unbounded.

He sat down on the carriage step beside Archer as if there were nothing extreme or unusual in his momentous decision, and with his usual air of indifference waited for the trolley car which would take them to the station at Catskill Landing.

"What d'you say we hit up a couple more apples?" said Archer.

"Will you have plenty left for Tommy Walters?" said Tom.

"Sure! I got enough to last him right through the danger zone."

"Through the danger zone," Tom mused.

For a few minutes they sat munching their apples in silence.

"There's two reasons," said Tom abruptly. "One is because I just got a letter that shows people think I'm a liar and break promises. The other is on account of what you told me about that little girl. If we take food and things over now and take soldiers over later, I guess that's helping, all right. Anyway, it's better than making badges. In another year I'll be eighteen, and then——"

"Here comes the car," said Archibald Archer.



CHAPTER XIV

TOM GETS A JOB

The momentous step which Tom had resolved to take did not appear to agitate his stolid nature in the least. Nor did he give any sign of feeling disappointment or resentment. His whole simple faith was in young Archer now, and he trusted him implicitly.

He sat in the train, sometimes looking straight ahead and sometimes out at the beautiful Hudson where he had spent so many happy hours in the troop's cabin launch, the Good Turn.

After a while he said abruptly, "If a feller does what's right and does a good turn and he gets misjudged, then after that he's got a right to do as he pleases."

His companion did not offer any comment upon this, but looked at Tom rather curiously.

After about ten minutes of silence, Tom observed: "I like mysteries; I'm glad we don't know where we're going. It makes it like a book, kind of. I hope the captain won't tell me."

"You can trust him for that," said Archer; "don't worry!"

* * * * *

If mystery was what Tom craved, he soon had enough to satisfy him. Indeed, no author of twenty-five-cent thrillers could possibly produce such an atmosphere of mystery as he found when he and young Archer reached the pier in New York.

The steamship company, aided and abetted by Uncle Sam, had enshrouded the whole prosy business of loading and sailing with a delightful covering of romance, and Tom realized, as he approached the sacred precincts, that the departure of a vessel to-day is quite as much fraught with perilous and adventurous possibilities as was the sailing of a Spanish galleon in the good old days of yore.

A high board fence protected the pier from public gaze, and as Tom read the glaring recruiting posters which decorated it he felt that, even if his part in the war fell short of actual military service, he was at last about to do something worth while—something which would involve the risk of his life.

A little door in the big fence stood open and by it sat a man on a stool. Two other men stood near him and all three eyed the boys shrewdly.

"This is the first barbed-wire entanglement," said Archer, as they approached. "You keep your mouth shut, but if you have to answer any questions, tell 'em the truth. These guys are spotters."

"What?" said Tom, a little uneasy.

"Secret Service men—they can tell if your great-grandfather was German."

"He wasn't," said Tom.

"Hello, you old spiff-head!" said Archer to the gate-keeper, at the same time laying down his satchel with an air of having done the same thing before. The two Secret Service men opened it and rummaged among its contents, one of them helping himself to an apple.

"You bloomin' grafter!" said Archibald.

"That's all right, Archie," said the other man, likewise helping himself. "It's good to see your smiling phiz back again. Who's your friend?"

"He's goin' in to see the steward," said Archer, "I told him I'd get a feller for the butcher——"

"All the passes are taken up," said the gate-man, as he took Archer's pass. "Everybody's on board, and there's nobody needed."

"Oh, is that so?" said Archer derisively. "Just because everybody's on board it don't prove nobody's needed. I didn't say there was any vacancies."

"He'll only come back out again," said the gate-keeper.

"Oh, will he?" said Archer ironically.

"Let him in," laughed one of the Secret Service men, and as he spoke he pulled Tom's pockets inside out in a very perfunctory way and slapped his clothing here and there. It was evident that young Archer was a favorite. As for Tom, he felt very important.

"Didn't I tell you I was lucky?" Archer said, as he and Tom together lugged the big valise down the pier. "Spiffy's a good sketch—but they're getting more careful all the time. Next sailing, maybe, when we're taking troops over, President Wilson couldn't get by with it.... You heard what he said about all the passes being taken? That means all hands are on board. It don't mean we'll sail to-day—or maybe not to-morrow even. We'll sneak out at night, maybe."

Tom had never been in close proximity to an ocean steamer even in peace times, and the scene which now confronted him was full of interest. Along the side of the pier rose the great black bulk of the mighty ship, beneath the shadow of which people seemed like pygmies and the great piles of freight like houses of toy blocks.

The gangways leading up to the decks were very steep and up and down them hurried men in uniforms. Near a pile of heavy, iron-bound wooden cases several soldiers in khaki strolled back and forth. Tom wondered what was in those cases. Hanging from a mammoth crane was part of the framework of a great aeroplane. Several Red Cross ambulances and a big pile of stretchers stood near by, and he peered into one of the ambulances, fascinated. Tremendous spools, fifteen or more feet in diameter, wound with barbed wire, stood on the pier; there were fifty of them, as it seemed to Tom, and they must have carried miles of barbed wire. There were a lot of heavy, canvas-covered wagons with the letters U.S.A. on them, and these were packed with poles and rolls of khaki-colored canvas, which Tom thought might be tents. There were automobiles bearing the same initials, and shovels by the thousand, piled loose, all similarly marked.

There was no doubt that Uncle Sam was getting his sleeves rolled up, ready for business.

At the foot of one of the gangways Archer had to open his bag again to gratify the curiosity of another man who seemed to know what he was about and who, upon Archer's statement of Tom's errand, slapped Tom here and there in the vicinity of his pockets and said, "All right, Tommy," which greatly increased Tom's veneration for the sagacity of Secret Service men.

"He just meant he knew you wasn't German," said Archer.

He led the way along the deck, down a companionway and through a passage where there were names on the doors, such as Surgeon, Chief Steward, Chief Engineer, First Mate, etc. They entered the chief steward's cabin, where a man in uniform sat at a desk with other men standing all about, apparently awaiting orders. When his turn came, Archer said:

"Do you remember, Mr. Cressy, you said you wished you had more youngsters like me in the steward's department? I got you one here. He's a friend of mine. He's just like me—only different."

"Well, thank goodness for that," said the chief steward, sitting back and contemplating Archibald with a rather rueful look. "Did I say that?"

"Yes, sir, you did. So I brought him; Tom Slade, his name is, and he wants a job. He'd like to be chief engineer, but if he can't be that——"

"Maybe he'd be willing to be butcher's assistant," concluded the steward. "Archer," he added, as he reached for one of several speaking tubes near his desk, "if I thought you'd sink, I'd have you thrown overboard.—How'd you enjoy your visit home?"

A brief talk with some unseen person, to which Tom listened with chill misgivings, and the steward directed his young subordinate to take Tom to the purser's office and, if he got through all right there, to the ship's butcher. He gave Tom a slip of paper to hand to the purser.

The purser's cabin was up on the main deck, and it was the scene of much going and coming, and signing and handing back and forth of papers. A young man sat on a stool before a high desk with a huge open book before him.

"He's the third purser," whispered Archer; "don't you be afraid of him."

It was to the third purser that Tom told the history of his life—so far as he knew it; where he was born and when, who his parents were, where they had been born, when and where they had died; whether Tom had ever worked on a ship, whether he had any relatives born in or living in Germany or Austria, whether he had ever been employed by a German, and so on and so on.

All this went down in the big book, in which Tom had a page all to himself, and the last question left a chill upon him as he followed his young companion from the cabin—Whom to notify in case of accident.

"Accident," he thought. "That means torpedoing."

But against this was the glad news that for the round trip of presumably a month, he would receive one hundred and sixty dollars, forty dollars payable on arrival in a "foreign port," the balance "on return to an American port."

There would be no call upon this stupendous sum, save what he chose to spend in the mysterious, unknown foreign port, and as Tom reflected on this he felt like the regular story-book hero who goes away under a cloud of suspicion and comes back loaded with wealth and glory.



CHAPTER XV

THE EXCITED PASSENGER

"They'll turn you down if you have a German-silver watch in your pocket," commented Archer, as they descended another companionway; "or if you had the German measles. Didn't I tell you I'd get you through all right? You stick on the job, and they'll sign you up for transport service—then you'll see some fun."

"I got to thank you," said Tom.

"You notice I'm not afraid of any of them?" Archer boasted; "I know how to handle them—I've got them all eating out of my hand—all but the captain. We're like a big family here; that's on account of the danger and there not being many passengers. I understand," he whispered significantly, "that there's some soldiers on board—a few of Pershing's men, I guess."

The butcher's domain seemed to be a long way below decks. It had all the appurtenances of a regular store—chopping block, hangers, etc.—and the butcher himself was a genial soul, who took Tom in hand without any ceremony after the usual banter with the flippant young Archibald, who here took his departure, leaving Tom to his fate.

"Come up to five-ninety-two on the promenade deck and you can bunk with me—I'll fix it with the deck steward," said Archer; and he was as good as his word, for later Tom joined him in an airy stateroom, opening on the main deck, where they enjoyed a sumptuousness of accommodation quite unusual in the ordinary state of things, but made possible by the very small passenger list.

Indeed, Tom was soon to find that, while discipline was strict and uncompromising, as it always is at sea, there was a kind of spirit of fraternity among the ship's people, high and low, caused no doubt, as Archer had said, by their participation in a common peril and by the barnlike emptiness of the great vessel with freight piled on all the passenger decks and in the most inappropriate places. There was a suggestion of camping about all this makeshift which seemed to have gotten into the spirits of the ship's company and to have drawn them together.

"Now I'll take you down," said the butcher, "and show you the store-rooms and refrigerators—you'll be running up and down these steps a good part of the time."

They were no steps, but an iron ladder leading down from the butcher's apartment to a dark passage, where he turned on an electric light.

"Now, these three doors," he said, "are to the three store-rooms—one, two, three."

Tom followed him into one of the rooms. It was large and delightfully cool and immaculately clean. All around were rows of shelves with screen doors before them, and here were stored canned goods—thousands upon thousands of cans, Tom would have said.

"You won't touch anything in here," his superior told him. "None of this will be used before the return trip—maybe not then. Come in here."

Tom followed him through a passage from this room into another exactly like it. Along the passage were great ice box doors. "Cold storage," his superior observed. "You won't have to go in there much."

"Now here's where you'll get your stuff. It's all alphabetical; if you want tomatoes, go to T; if you want salmon—S. Just like a dictionary. If I send you down for thirty pounds of salmon, that doesn't mean thirty cans—see?"

"Yes, sir," said Tom.

"Make up your thirty pounds out of the biggest cans—a twenty and a ten. There's your opener," he added, pointing to a rather complicated mechanical can-opener fastened to the bulkhead. "Open everything before you bring it up."

"Yes, sir."

He led Tom from one place to another, initiating him in the use of the chopping machine, the slicing machine, etc. "You won't find things very heavy this trip," he said; "but next trip we'll be feeding five thousand, maybe. Now's the time to go to school and learn.—Here's the keys; you must always keep these places locked," he added, as he himself locked one of the doors for Tom. "They were just left open while they were being stocked. Now we'll go up."

That very night, when the great city was asleep and the busy wharves along the waterfront were, for the night's brief interval, dark and lonesome, two tug-boats, like a pair of sturdy little Davids, sidled up to the great steel Goliath and slowly she moved out into midstream and turned her towering prow toward where the Goddess of Liberty held aloft her beckoning light in the vast darkness.

And Tom Slade was off upon his adventures.

Indeed, the first one, though rather tame, had already occurred. He and Archer, having received intimations that the vessel might sail that night, had remained up to enjoy her stealthy nocturnal departure, and the fact that they did not know whether she would leave or not had only added zest and pleasant suspense to their vigil.

They were leaning over the rail watching the maneuvering of the tugs when suddenly a man, carrying a suitcase, came running along the deck.

"We're not sailing, are we?" he asked excitedly, as he passed.

"Looks that way," said Archer.

"Where's the gangway? Down that way?" the man asked, not waiting for an answer.

"He'll have a good big jump to the gangway," said Archer. "I guess he was asleep at the switch, hey? What d'you say if we go down—just for the fun of it?"

"Come ahead," said Tom.

At the opening where the gangway had been several men, including the excited passenger, were gathered. The rail had been drawn across the space, and the ship was already a dozen feet or so from the wharf. Tom and Archer paused in the background, wisely inconspicuous.

"Certainly you can't go ashore—how are you going to get ashore—jump?" asked an officer good-humoredly.

"You can have the gangway put up," insisted the man.

"You're talking nonsense," said the officer. "Can't you see we're out of reach and moving?"

"You'd only have to back her in a yard or two," said the man excitedly.

"What, the ship?" asked the officer, in good-natured surprise; and several other men laughed.

"There's no use my starting without my aparatus!" said the passenger, his anger mounting. "It will be here to-morrow morning; it is promised! I was informed the ship would not sail before to-morrow night. This is an outrage——"

"I'm sorry, sir," said the officer.

"There's no use my going without my belongings," the man persisted angrily. "I demand to be put ashore."

"That's impossible, sir."

"It is not impossible! This is an unspeakable outrage!"

"The wharf closed this afternoon; notice was posted, sir," said the officer patiently.

"I saw no notice!" thundered the man. "It's of no use for me to go without my belongings, I tell you! I cannot go! This is outrageous! I cannot go! I demand to be put ashore!"

By this time the vessel was in midstream, his "demands" becoming more impossible every moment and his tirade growing rather wearisome. At least that was what most of the by-standers seemed to think, for they sauntered away, laughing, and the two boys, seeing that nothing sensational was likely to happen, returned to the forward part of the ship.

"Do you think he was a German?" said Tom.

"No, sure he wasn't. Didn't you hear what good English he talked?"

"Yes, but he said aparatus," said Tom, "instead of saying it the regular way. And he was sorry he said it, too, because the next time he said belongings."

"You make me laugh," said Archer.

"There's another thing that makes me think he's a German," said Tom, indifferent to Archer's scepticism.

"What's that?"

"He wanted the ship brought back just on his account."



CHAPTER XVI

TOM MAKES A DISCOVERY

Tom slept fitfully in his upper berth, thinking much of home and the troop and the people back in Bridgeboro. He realized now, as he had not before, the seriousness of the step he had taken. It came home to him in the quiet of the long night and tinged his thoughts with homesickness.

Once, twice, in his restlessness, he clambered down and looked out through the brass-bound port-hole across the deserted deck and out upon the waste of ocean. Not a single reminder was there of the old familiar life, not a friendly light in the vast, watery darkness.

He began to regard what he had done as a kind of wilful escapade, and though not exactly sorry for the action, he felt strange and lonesome, and his thoughts turned wistfully to the troop meeting which he knew was now over. He thought of Pee-wee, with his trusty belt-axe, going scout-pace up Main Street on his journey homeward; of Roy leaving Mr. Ellsworth where the street up Blakeley's Hill began; of the office and Margaret Ellison, and of his accustomed tasks.

No, he was not exactly sorry, but he—he wished that the vessel had not started quite so soon, and so suddenly. He had never dreamed that the momentous and perilous step of crossing the ocean was begun with so little ceremony.

This train of thought suggested the passenger who had wished to go ashore, and as Tom lay in his berth, wakeful but pleasantly lulled by the slow, steady vibration of the great ship, he wondered who the man was and why he couldn't sail without his belated luggage. He recalled how the man had said aparatus once and how, after that, he had said belongings. Then he recalled young Archer's laugh at his suspicion, and he decided that it was only his own imagination that had given rise to it. He thought rather wistfully how Roy had often called him Sherlock Nobody Holmes.

To be sure, the man's apparent willingness to have the world turned upside down for his personal convenience had quite a German flavor to it, but it was not, after all, a very suspicious circumstance, and the cheerful light of morning found Tom's surmise quite melted away. It needed only the memory of Roy's taunting smile to turn his thoughts to sober realities.

"When you get through, come aft and we'll jolly the gun crew," said Archer, as Tom left the little room.

He made his way along the deck, bent on his new duties, bucking the brisk morning breeze, and holding on to the peaked service cap which he had been given, to keep it from blowing off. The steel-colored water rolled in a gentle swell, reflecting the bright sunlight, and little flaky clouds scurried across the sky, as if hurrying to their day's tasks also. Far off toward the horizon a tiny fleck of white was discernible, but no other sign of life or of man's work was visible in the illimitable waste.

To Tom it did not seem an angry ocean, but, like the woods which he knew and loved so well, a place of peace and quietude, a refuge from the swarming, noisy land. And across the vast waste plowed the great ship, going straight upon her business, and never faltering.

The door of the wireless room was thrown open as he passed, and the young operator was sitting back, with the receivers on his ears and his feet on the instrument shelf, eating a sandwich.

"H'lo, kiddo," said he.

In this strange environment Tom was glad to hear the operator say, "H'lo, kiddo," just as he might have said it on the street. He paused at the door for a moment and looked about the cozy, ship-shape little room with its big coil and its splendid, powerful instrument.

"Do you live in here?" he asked.

"Nope," said the operator; "but I'm doing both shifts, and I s'pose I'll have to sleep right here with the claps on this trip."

"Isn't there another operator?" Tom asked.

"Yup—but he didn't show up."

Tom hesitated, not sure whether he ought to venture further in familiar discourse with this fortunate and important young man, whom he envied.

"The man at the gate said everybody was on board," he finally observed; "he said all the passes were taken up."

The operator shrugged his shoulders indifferently. "I don't know anything about that," said he.

"I got a wireless set of my own," Tom ventured. "It's just a small one—for boy scouts. It hasn't got much sending power."

"He used to be a boy scout," said the operator pleasantly. "That's where he first picked it up."

"The other operator?"

"Yup."

"I learned some myself," said Tom.

The operator did not seem inclined to talk more, and Tom went along the deck where a few early risers were sauntering back and forth enjoying the fresh morning breeze. He noticed that life preservers were laid across the rail loosely tied and that others stood in little piles at intervals along the deck, loosely tied also.

He ate his breakfast in messroom No. 2 with the deck stewards and their boys and greatly enjoyed it, though his thoughts more than once turned enviously to the wireless operator. After breakfast he went down into his own domains, where, according to instructions, he took from a certain meat-hook a memorandum of what he was to bring up from below.

Descending the dark companionway, he turned on the electric light, and stood puzzled for a moment, paper in hand.

"That's just exactly like me," he said. "I got to admit it."

The fact was that despite his tour of initiation under the butcher's guidance he was puzzled to know which of the two doors opened into the room from which supplies were for the present to be drawn. At a hazard he opened one of them, and on entering did not immediately perceive the room to be the wrong one.

Sliding open one of the screen doors, he stooped and lifted out a couple of cans from a lower shelf. As he did so he heard the usual, unmuffled ticking which was pretty sure to accompany the stooping posture with Tom and which always notified him that his big trusty nickel watch was dangling on its nickel chain.

But it was not dangling this time, and Tom paused in surprise, for the ticking continued quite audibly and apparently very close to him. He took out his watch and held it to his ear, and was surprised to find that its sound was quite distinct from another and slower ticking somewhere near by.

He looked about for a clock, but could see none.

"Huh, that's funny," he said, still listening.

Then, of a sudden, he lifted several more cans from the shelf and knelt down, holding his ear close to the space. From somewhere behind the cans came the steady tick, tick, tick, tick, tick....

For a moment he knelt there in surprise. Then hurriedly he lifted out can after can until there lay revealed upon the shelf a long, dark object. The ticking was louder now.

He touched the object gingerly, and found that it was held fast in place by a wire which ran from a screw in the shelf to another screw in the bulkhead above it, and was thus effectually prevented from moving with the rolling of the ship. Some excelsior lay upon the shelf, which had evidently been stuffed between the ticking object and the back row of cans.

Something—Tom did not know just what, but some sudden presentiment—prompted him to step quickly through the passage in order to make sure that he had entered the right room. Then he discovered his mistake.

The room he had entered was the store-room from which no supplies were to be taken on the present trip.

He turned back and knelt again, the cans he had removed standing all about him. One of them, which in his haste he had laid upon its side, began to roll with the jarring of the vessel, and Tom shuddered with a kind of panic fright at the sudden noise it made, and with trembling hands he set the innocent can upright.

Tick, tick, tick, tick....

What did it mean? What should he do?

His next impulse was to run upstairs and report what he had discovered. He did not dare to touch the thing again.

Then he realized that something—something terrible—might happen while he was gone. Something might happen in five minutes—the next minute—the next second!

Still kneeling, for strangely he could not bring himself to move, he watched the thing in a sort of fascination.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick—it went, on its steady, grim journey toward——

Toward what?

Still Tom did not budge.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick—it went; heedless, cheerful, like a clock on a mantelpiece.

And still Tom Slade remained just where he was, stark-still and trembling.



CHAPTER XVII

ONE OF THE BLOND BEAST'S WEAPONS

Then, of a sudden, Tom Slade, ship's boy, disappeared, and there in his place was Tom Slade, scout; calm, undismayed—the same Tom Slade who had looked about him, calm and resourceful, when he was lost in the great woods, and who had kept his nerve when menaced by a savage beast.

He cautiously removed the encircling wire, lifted the object out with both hands, finding it surprisingly heavy, and laid it carefully upon the stationary table where cans were usually assorted and opened.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick—it went cheerfully along on its tragic errand.

It appeared to consist of a piece of ordinary stovepipe about twelve inches long. The face and works of an alarm clock, being of a slightly smaller circumference, had been placed within one end of the pipe, the face out, and the intervening space around this was packed with cotton waste. The other end of the pipe was closed with a kind of gummy cement.

Tom observed that the little alarm dial in the clock's face was set for nine o'clock, which of course afforded him infinite relief, for it was not yet seven.

With the greatest of care and hands trembling a little, he pulled out some of the cotton waste around the clock face, holding the dial steady with one hand, and found that nothing save this packing was holding the clock in place. He joggled it very gently this way and that to make sure that it was not connected with anything behind. Then he lifted it out and stood it upright on a shelf with cans on either side of it to keep it in place.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick—it went just as before, as if not in the least disappointed that its tragic purpose had been thwarted; tick, tick, tick, tick—like the old alarm clock that used to stand on the shelf above the sink in Barrel Alley.

There was no Gold Cross for this little act of Tom's, and no "loud plaudits," as Pee-Wee would have said, but Tom Slade had saved a couple of hundred lives, just the same.

It occurred to him now that pretty soon he would be expected upstairs. The hands of the clock pointed to a quarter of six and Tom's own watch, which was as honest, plain and reliable as he was himself, said twelve minutes of seven.

"That's funny," said he.

He peered into the open space which the removal of the clock had left in the pipe's end. It ran for about four or five inches, where the pipe appeared to be sealed with the same gummy substance as at the other end.

On the inside of the pipe was a rough-looking, yellowish area about two inches square, and from this two black, heavy cords ran to the cement wall.

Tom understood at once the mechanism of this horrible thing. The bell of the alarm clock had been removed, and the clock so placed that at the fatal tick the striker would have vibrated against this rough area, which was probably inflammable like a match-end and which, on being ignited, would have ignited the fuse.

Tom's imagination traced the hurrying little flames, racing along those two cords to see which would get there first, and he shuddered, thinking of the end of that sprightly little race to the awful goal....

His lip curled a little as he looked at the now harmless piece of junk and as his eyes wandered to the impenitent clock which, without any vestige of remorse or contrition, was ticking merrily up there on the shelf, out of harm's way between the sentinels of cans.

"Huh, I don't call that fighting!" he said.

Tom's knowledge of war was confined to what he had learned at school. He knew about the Battle of Bunker Hill and that ripping old fight, the Battle of Lexington. These two encounters represented what he understood war to be.

When Mr. Ellsworth had taken him in hand, he had told him a few things known to scouts: that it was cowardly to throw stones; that it was contemptible to strike a person in the back or below the waist; that fighting was bad enough, but that if fights must be fought they should be fought in the open. That a boy should never, never strike a girl....

And what kind of fighting was this? thought Tom. Was it not exactly like the boy who sneaks behind a fence and throws stones?

"That ain't fighting," he repeated.

Methodically he went upstairs. His immediate superior was "Butch," but his ultimate superior was Mr. Cressy, the steward; and to him he now went.

"I got somethin' to tell you, Mr. Cressy," he said hurriedly. "I made a mistake and went into the wrong room, and there's a bomb there. It was set for nine o'clock. I fixed it so's it can't go off."

"What?" ejaculated the steward.

"I fixed it so it can't go off," Tom repeated dully. "If I'd waited till I told you, it might 'a' gone off by mistake."

His manner was so entirely free from excitement that for a moment the steward could only stare at him.

"There ain't any danger now," said Tom.

The steward whistled to himself thoughtfully.

"Go down there and wait till I come, and don't say anything about this to anybody," said he.

Tom went down, feeling quite important; he was being drawn head and shoulders into the war now. Once the thought occurred to him that perhaps he would be suspected of something. For he thought he knew now how easily people did "get misjudged." But that seemed absurd, and he dismissed the thought of it—just as he had dismissed the thought of Roscoe Bent's really doing anything wrong or cowardly.

But still a vague feeling of uneasiness held him....



CHAPTER XVIII

SHERLOCK NOBODY HOLMES

In a few minutes the steward came down with the captain and the first officer and a man in civilian's clothes, who carried a cigar in the corner of his mouth and who Tom thought must be of the Secret Service. Tom stood greatly in awe of the captain, who seemed the very type of exalted dignity. But a cat may look at a king, and he stared at that autocrat, resolved to answer manfully whatever questions were asked him.

"Confirms your suspicions, eh?" said the captain to the man in plain clothes, after a gingerly inspection of the ominous piece of stove pipe.

"Hmmm," said the other man; "yes; no doubt of it. Wish I'd taken him up last trip when he sent that message. We'll have a job finding him now."

"I don't see how he could have got ashore since nine o'clock last night," said the first officer.

"Well, he did, anyway," said the Secret Service man; "they're getting by every day, and they will until we have martial law along the waterfront. You see, this is where he had to come through to his locker," he added, looking about.

The captain gave a brief order to the first officer to have the vessel searched at once for more bombs. The officer hurried away and presently came back again. The Secret Service man was intently examining the floor, the jamb around the door, and the casing of the port-hole. The captain, too, scrutinized the place, as if he hoped it might yield some valuable information; and Tom, feeling very awkward, stood silently watching them.

"Here you are," said the Secret Service man, indicating a brown stain on the door jamb.

The other three men stepped over to the spot, but Tom, who did not dare to join them, stood just where he was, looking uncouth and out of place in the ill-fitting white duck jacket and blue peaked service cap which had been given him.

"There you are, Captain," said the Secret Service man; "see that finger-mark? The skin lines aren't as clear, see? That's from constant pressure. That's the finger he uses to press his wireless key."

"Hmm," said the captain.

"I've had my eye on that young operator for the last two trips," said the plain-clothes man; "he's undoubtedly the fellow who sent that code message that tipped Ekler off and posted him about the Republic's sailing, I never liked his name—Hinnerman. We might have known he wouldn't show up for this trip."

"He was a hold-over on board," said the first officer, "and didn't come in for the government quiz. They should have all been thrown out.—Think the other operator's all right?" he added.

"Oh, yes; he's got two brothers in military service," said the captain conclusively.

"See, here's another finger-mark—thumb. And here's a couple more," said the plain-clothes man, indicating several less distinguishable marks around the port-hole.

No one paid any attention to Tom. He watched the four men as they examined the little signs which they thought verified their conclusion that the missing wireless operator had placed the bomb.

"You see, he knew this room wouldn't be used, probably not entered this trip," said the Secret Service man.

"It was a lucky mistake this boy made," said the first officer, glancing not unkindly at Tom.

"Mmmm," said the captain.

Tom did not know whether to take this for praise or not. He stood, silent but very thoughtful. None of his four superiors took the trouble to acknowledge his act, nor even to address him, and he had to piece together as best he could, from their conversation, the reasons for their long-standing suspicions of the missing operator's disloyalty. Never in all his life had Tom felt his own insignificance as he did now.

The Secret Service man was very self-confident and very convincing. His conclusions, in view of past suspicions, seemed natural enough, and Tom could not help envying and admiring him from his obscure corner.

"I'll send a wireless right away," said the captain, as the four moved toward the door.

For a few seconds Tom struggled to master his timidity. He felt just as he had felt when he talked to Margaret Ellison and when he had faced Roscoe Bent's father. These uniformed officials were as beings from another world to poor Tom, and the Secret Service man seemed a marvel of sagacity and subtle power.

As they reached the door, he spoke, his voice shaking a little, but in the slow, almost expressionless way which was characteristic of him.

"If you'd wait a minute, I got something to say," he said.

"Yes, sir," said the first officer not unpleasantly. The captain paused impatiently. The Secret Service man smiled a little. Indeed, there was plenty to smile at (for the captain, too, if that dignitary would have so condescended) for Tom's sleeves, which were ridiculously long, were clutched in his two hands as if to keep them from running away and the peak of his cap was almost over his ear instead of being where it belonged.

"I heard this morning," said Tom, "that the other operator—the one that isn't here—that he used to be a scout. I'm a scout, and so I know what kind of fellers scouts are. They ain't traitors or anything like that. Something happened to me lately, so I know how easy it is to get misjudged. If he was a scout, then he wasn't a German, even if he might have had a German name, 'cause Germans stay by themselves and don't join in, kind of...."

The captain made a move as if to go.

"But that ain't what I wanted to say," said Tom.

The captain paused.

There was something about Tom's blunt, plain-speech and slow manner which amused the first officer, and he listened with rather more patience, than the others.

"There was a man tried to get off the ship last night," said Tom. "He——"

"Oh, yes, that was Doctor Curry from Ohio," laughed the first officer indulgently. "I hunted him up on the purser's list—he's all right. He flew off the handle because his baggage didn't come. He's all right, boy."

"The man that started the English scouts," said Tom, undaunted, "says if you want to find out if a person is foreign, you got to get him mad. Even if he talks good English, when he gets excited he'll say some words funny like."

The captain turned upon his heel.

"But that ain't what I was going to say, either," said Tom dully. "Anybody that knows anything about wireless work knows that operators have to have exactly the right time. That's the first thing they learn—that their watches have got to be exactly right—even to the second. I know, 'cause I studied wireless and I read the correspondence catalogues."

"Well?" encouraged the Secret Service man.

But it was pretty hard to hurry Tom.

"The person that put that bomb there," said he, "probably started it going and set it after he got it fixed on the shelf; and he'd most likely set it by his own watch. You can see that clock is over an hour slow. I was wonderin' how anybody's watch would be an hour slow, but if that Doctor Curry came from Ohio maybe he forgot to set his watch ahead in Cleveland. I know you have to do that when you come east, 'cause I heard a man say so."

A dead silence prevailed, save for the subdued whistling of the Secret Service man, as he scratched his head and eyed Tom sharply.

"How old are you, anyway?" said he.

"Seventeen," said Tom. "I helped a feller and got misjudged," he added irrelevantly. "A scout is a brother to every other scout—all over the world. 'Specially now, when England and France are such close partners of ours, like. So I'm a brother to that wireless operator, if he used to be a scout.—Maybe I got no right to ask you to do anything, but maybe you'd find out if that man's watch is an hour slow. Maybe you'd be willing to do that before you send a wireless."

The captain looked full at Tom, with a quizzical, shrewd look. He saw now, what he had not taken the trouble to notice before: a boy with a big mouth, a shock of rebellious hair, a ridiculously ill-fitting jacket, and a peaked cat set askew. Instinctively Tom pulled off his cap.

"What's your name?" said the captain.

"Tom Slade," he answered, nervously arranging his long arms in the troublesome, starched sleeves. "In the troop I—used to belong to," he ventured to add, "they called me Sherlock Nobody Holmes, the fellers did, because I was interested in deduction and things like that."

For a moment the captain looked at him sternly. Then the Secret Service man, still whistling with a strangely significant whistle, stepped over to Tom.

"Put your cap on," said he, "frontways, like that; now come along with me, and we'll see if Doctor Curry from Ohio can accommodate us with the time."

He put his arm over Tom's shoulder just as Mr. Ellsworth used to do, and together they left the store-room. It seemed to Tom a very long while since any one had put an arm over his shoulder like that....



CHAPTER XIX

THE TIME OF DAY

When that flippant youth, Archibald Archer, making his morning rounds from stateroom to stateroom, beheld Tom Slade hurrying along the promenade deck under the attentive convoy of one of Uncle Sam's sleuths, he was seized with a sudden fear that his protege was being arrested as a spy.

But Tom was never farther from arrest in all his life. He hurried along beside his companion, feeling somewhat apprehensive, but nevertheless quite important.

The federal detective was small and agile, with a familiar, humorous way about him which helped to set Tom at ease. He had a fashion of using his cigar as a sort of confidential companion, working it over into one corner of his mouth, then into the other, and poking it up almost perpendicularly as he talked. Tom liked him at once, but he did not know whether to take literally all that he said or not.

"Long as you told me your name, I guess I might as well tell you mine, hey? Conne is my name—Carleton Conne. Sounds like a detective in a story, don't it? My great-great-grandfather's mother-in-law on my sister's side was German. I'm trying to live it down."

"What?" said Tom.

Mr. Conne screwed his cigar over to the corner of his mouth and looked at Tom with a funny look.

"You see, we want to meet the doctor before he has a chance to change his watch," said Mr. Conne more soberly. "If he set that thing a little after nine last night (and he couldn't have set it before), he was probably too busy thinking of getting off the ship to think of much else. And he ought to be just coming out of his stateroom by now. We must see him before he sees a clock. You get me?"

"Yes, sir," said Tom, a little anxious; "but I might be wrong, after all."

"Maybe," said Mr. Conne. "There are three things we'll have to judge by: There's his trying to get off the ship last night, and there's the question of how his watch stands, and there's the question of how he acts when we talk with him—see?"

"Yes, sir."

"Since you're a detective, remember this," Mr. Conne added good-humoredly: "it's part of the A B C of the business. Three middle-sized clues are better than one big one—if they hang together. Six little ones aren't as good as three middle-sized ones, because sometimes they seem to hang together when they don't really—see?"

"Yes, sir."

"Where'd you ever get your eyes and ears, anyway?" said Mr. Conne abruptly.

"You learn to be observant when—you're a scout," said Tom.

Mr. Conne moved briskly along the deck, and Tom kept beside him with his rather clumsy gait. Here and there little groups of passengers stood chatting as they waited for breakfast. Among them were a few men in khaki whom Tom understood to be army surgeons and engineers—the forerunners of the legions who would "come across" later.

"Which would you rather be," queried Mr. Conne, "a detective or a wireless operator?"

"I'd rather be a regular soldier," said Tom; "I made up my mind to it. I'm only waiting till I'm eighteen."

Mr. Conne gave him a shrewd sideways glance, his cigar pointing upward like a piece of field artillery.

"But I hope I can work on this ship when she's a regular transport, and keep working on her till I'm eighteen."

"You haven't answered my question yet."

"I don't know which I'd rather be," said Tom.

"Hmmm," said Mr. Conne.

At the after-companionway he picked up a deck steward and asked him to point out Dr. Curry, if he was about.

"What do you suppose became of the other operator?" Tom asked, a little anxiously.

"I don't know," said Mr. Conne. "We'll have to find some one who does know," he added significantly, and Tom wondered what he meant.

"Do you think he's guilty of anything?" he asked.

"Don't know. You've knocked my theories all endways, young fellow," Mr. Conne said pleasantly; and then he added, smiling, "You say he was a scout; I'm getting to have a pretty good opinion of scouts."

"But those finger-prints——"

"Were his," concluded Mr. Conne.

Tom was greatly puzzled, but he said nothing. Soon Dr. Curry was pointed out to them. He was pacing up and down the deck, and paused at the rail as they neared so that they were able to get a good look at him. He was tall and thin, with a black mustache and a very aristocratic hooked nose. Perhaps there was the merest suggestion of the foreigner about him, but nothing in particular to suggest the German unless it were a touch of that scornfully superior air which is so familiar in pictures of the Kaiser.

"So that's the Doctor, is it?" Mr. Conne commented, eyeing him with his cigar cocked up sideways. "Looks kind of savage, huh?"

But the doctor's savage mien did not phase Mr. Conne in the least, for he sauntered up to him with a friendly and familiar air, though Tom was trembling all over.

"Excuse me, would you oblige me with the time?" Mr. Conne said pleasantly.

The stranger wheeled about suddenly with a very pronounced military air and looked at his questioner.

"The time? Yes, sir," he said, with brisk formality and taking out his watch. "It is just half-past six."

Mr. Conne drew out his own watch and looked at it for a moment as if perplexed. "Then one of us is about an hour out of the way," he said sociably, while Tom stood by in anxious suspense. "According to the alarm clock down in the store-room, I guess you're right," he added.

"What?" said the passenger, disconcerted.

"According to the time-bomb down below," repeated Mr. Conne, still sociably but with a keen, searching look. "What's the matter? You suffering from nerves, Doctor?"

The sudden thrust, enveloped in Mr. Conne's easy manner, had indeed taken the doctor almost off his feet.

"I do not understand you, sir," he said, with forbidding dignity and trying to regain his poise.

"Well, then, I'll explain," said Mr. Conne; "you forgot to set your watch when you left Cleveland, Doc, so there won't be any explosion down below at nine o'clock, and there won't be any at all—so don't worry."

He worked his cigar over into the corner of his mouth and looked up at his victim in a tantalizing manner, waiting. And he was not disappointed, for in the angry tirade which the passenger uttered it became very apparent that he was a foreigner. Mr. Conne seemed quietly amused.



"Doc," said he sociably, almost confidentially, "I believe if it hadn't been for this youngster here, you'd have gotten away with it. It's too bad about your watch being slow—German reservists and ex-army officers ought to remember when they're traveling that this is a wide country and that East is East and West is West, as old brother Kipling says. When you're coming across Uncle Sam's backyard to blow up ships, it's customary to put your watch an hour ahead in Cleveland, Doc. Didn't they tell you that? Where's all your German efficiency? Here's a wideawake young American youngster got you beaten to a stand-still——"

"This is abominable!" roared the man.

"Say that again, Doc," laughed Mr. Conne. "I like the way you say it when you're mad. So that's why you didn't get off the ship in time last night, eh?" he added, with a touch of severity. "Watch slow! Bah! You're a bungler, Doc! First you let your watch get you into a tight place, then you let it give you away.

"I don't know who you are, except you came from west of Cleveland; but here's an American boy, never studied the German spy system, and, by jingoes, he's tripped you up—and saved a dozen ships and a half a dozen munition factories, for all I know. German efficiency—bah! The Boy Scouts have got you nailed to the mast! This is the kind of boys we're going to send over, Doc. Think you can lick 'em?"

Tom was blushing scarlet and breathing nervously as the fierce, contemptuous gaze of the tall man was bent for a brief second upon him. But Mr. Conne winked pleasantly at him, and it quite nullified that scornful look.

Then, suddenly, the detective became serious, interrupting the stranger, who had begun to speak again, and brushing his words aside.

"You'll have to show me your passport, sir," he said, "and any other papers you have. I'll go to your stateroom with you. Then I'm going to lock you up. I'll expect you to tell me, too, what became of the young fellow who happened to discover you down below last night. You and he had a little scuffle down there, I take it.—Better run along about your duties now, Tom, and I'll see you later."



CHAPTER XX

A NEW JOB

For a few moments Tom stood gaping at the receding figures, with Mr. Conne's remark ringing in his ears: I shall expect you to tell me what became of the young fellow who happened to discover you down below last night.

Was that the possible explanation of the missing wireless boy? The thought of this complication shocked him. What could it mean? The detective had evidently fitted the whole thing together.

Finger-prints were finger-prints, thought Tom, and a finger-print with illegible markings in the center meant a telegraph operator, so far as this particular incident was concerned. He so greatly admired Mr. Conne that as usual he forgot to admire himself....

The man must have been discovered, either in the act of placing the bomb, or perhaps of trying to remove it when he found that he must sail with the ship, and there had been a scuffle and——

And what? Where was the wireless boy?

Alas, though the spy was apprehended, it was to be many long months before the mystery of the missing wireless boy should be cleared up. And who, of all the people in the world, do you suppose cleared it up? Who but Pee-wee Harris (don't laugh) and his trusty belt-axe. But that is part of another story.

The arrest of "Dr. Curry" as a German spy and plotter was a nine hours' wonder on the ship, and the part which Tom Slade had played in the affair did not pass without comment. Neither the ship's officers nor Mr. Conne took him into their confidence as to the character of the papers found on the "doctor," but he understood that that scornful personage was safely lodged somewhere "below," and Mr. Conne did go so far as to tell him that "our friend" had set his watch right. Tom did not dare to ask questions, even of his friend the detective, who chatted pleasantly with him whenever they met.

He was the last boy in the world to expect more consideration than was due him or to make much of his own exploits, and if his superiors did not take him into partnership and make him their confidant and adviser, as undoubtedly they would have done in a story, they at least treated him with rather more consideration than is usually given to ships' boys, and the awkward young fellow in the ill-fitting duck jacket and peaked hat askew was pointed out among the army men and passengers, as he occasionally passed along the decks, as one who had a head on his shoulders and a pair of eyes in his head.

No one questioned that he had saved the vessel by making known the clew which had sent Dr. Curry to the ship's lock-up, and Tom, satisfied to have done something worth while for Uncle Sam, attended to his menial duties, and did not think of very much else.

But if Uncle Sam's Secret Service man had thought it best not to be too confidential with him, kind Fate decreed that it should be Tom Slade and none other who should clinch the case against this foreign wretch whose plans he had thwarted.

It happened the very next day, beginning with a circumstance which made Tom feel indeed like a hero in a cheap thriller.

"The captain wants to see you," said a young officer from the bridge, as Tom sat with his flippant but now humble admirer, Archibald Archer, upon one of the after-hatches.

"Me?" stammered Tom.

"He's going to make you first mate," said Archer, "and give you ten thousand dollars—go ahead."

"What?" said Tom.

"That's the way they do in the Dick Dauntless Series; go ahead—beat it!"

Tom followed the officer forward and up those awful steps which led to the holy of holies where the master of the ship held his autocratic sway.

The captain sat in a sumptuously furnished cabin, and Tom stood before him, holding his cap in one hand, clutching his long, starched sleeve with the other, and greatly awed at the surroundings.

"You said something about understanding wireless," said the captain. "Do you think you could be of assistance to the operator?"

"I ain't—I'm not an operator," stammered Tom, "but I know the American code and the International code and some of the International abbreviations. I can send and receive with my own instrument, but it's a kind of—not exactly a toy, but——"

"Hmm. What I mean is, could you work under the operator's direction, so that he could get a little sleep now and then? He'd sleep right in the wireless room."

Tom hesitated.

"I don't—I don't know if I should say, Aye, aye, sir—I hear some of 'em doin' that," said Tom awkwardly.

"You mean, yes, you can?" said the captain, with the faintest suggestion of a smile.

"Yes, I—as long as he's right there with me—yes, sir, I think I could."

"Well, then, you go down there now, and I'll notify the steward."

Tom half turned, then hesitated, clutching his sleeve tighter. "I—I got to thank you," said he.

The captain nodded. "All right; keep your mouth shut, do your best, don't make mistakes, and remember we're at war. And maybe we'll have to thank you," he added.

"It's—it's helping in the war, isn't it?" Tom asked.

The captain nodded. For a moment Tom had a wild notion of asking whether he might continue in the wireless room when the ship was taken over for regular transport service, but he did not dare.

Those who saw him as he went back along the deck saw only the stolid-looking, awkward young fellow in the stiff white jacket three sizes too large for him who had come to be a familiar figure about the ship. And they did not know that the heart of Tom Slade was beating again with hope and joy just as it had beat when he had listened to Mr. Temple and when he stood looking down from the office window into Barrel Alley. And if his hopes and triumphs should be dashed again, they would not know that either ...

On the deck he met Mr. Conne.

"Well, I see the captain beat me to it," said he. "I was thinking of working you into secret service work, but never mind, there's time enough."

"Maybe I won't satisfy them; sometimes I make mistakes," said Tom. "I made a mistake when I went into the wrong store-room, if it comes to that. They always called me Bull-head, the fellers in the troop did."

Mr. Conne cocked his head sideways, screwed his cigar over to the extreme corner of his mouth, and looked at Tom with a humorous scrutiny.

"Did they?" said he. "All right, Tommy, Uncle Sam and I mean to keep our eyes on you, just the same."

So at last the cup of joy was full again—and that same night it overflowed. For as Tom Slade sat at the wireless table, while his new companion slept in his berth near by, there jumped before his eyes a blue, dazzling spark which told him that some one, somewhere, had something to say to him across the water and through the black, silent night.

Quickly he adjusted the receivers on his ears and waited. The clamorous buzzing sound caused the other operator to open his eyes and raise his sleepy head to his elbow.

Dash, dash, dash—dash, dot, dot, dot.

"What is it?" said the operator sleepily.

"Official business abbreviation," said Tom. "I'll take it—lie down."

It was no more than right that he should take it.

Hold Adolf von Stebel using passport Curry if on board. Tall, black mustache. Wanted for plotting and arson. New York.

"Huh!" said the chief operator sleepily. "Ring for a cabin boy and send it up to the bridge. Sign your own initials. G-good-night."



CHAPTER XXI

INTO THE DANGER ZONE

There was one part of the ship forbidden to passengers and all but forbidden to crew, where Archibald Archer disported and which was a spot of fascination to Tom in his numerous leisure hours. This was the railed-off stretch of deck astern where Billy Sunday and the gun crew held constant vigil. This enticing spot was irresistible to the ship's boys, and they lingered at the railing of the hallowed precinct, the bolder among them, such as Archer, making flank movements and sometimes grand drives through the rope fence, there to stand and chat until they were discovered by the second officer on his rounds.

The members of the gun crew who were not occupied in scanning the water with their glasses were glad enough to beguile the tedium of the days before the danger zone was reached in banter with these youngsters.

The next day after Tom's promotion Archibald Archer came running pell-mell to the wireless room where he was reading in the berth.

"A submarine! A submarine!" he shouted at the top of his voice. "Come ahead, Slady!"

The regular operator did not seem in the least concerned, but Tom, roused out of his usual calm, followed Archer up the steps and to the rope railing where several of the ship's boys were congregated.

"Let him see," commanded Archer.

Tommy Walters handed the marine glass to Tom. "Over there to the west," he said.

"It's just a periscope," said Archer. "See? See it sticking up?"

Looking far out over the water, Tom could see through the long glass a dark, thin upright object which seemed to move as he looked at it.

"O-o-oh, ye-e-es!" he exclaimed, gazing intently. "It's a periscope, sure!"

"Look over there to the west!" shouted Archer suddenly. "Is that another one?"

Tom turned the glass to the westward, and sure enough, there was another one.

"We're surrounded! There's a whole fleet of 'em! Oh, joy!" exclaimed Archer. "Look there to the south!"

Tom looked, and to his great excitement there was another periscope.

"Now turn the glass upside down," said Archer.

Tom did so, and perceived to his amazement that the periscope stuck out of the sky instead of out of the water.

By this time everybody was laughing, and Tommy Walters leaned against the gun, shaking with glee.

"Now look on the other end of the glass," said Archer, dodging behind a stanchion.

Tom, in bewilderment, obeyed, and pulled out a match-end.

"Tag; you're it," said Archer delightedly; "don't throw it away."

"Why not?" said Tom, laughing sheepishly.

"Because you have to wear it with a ribbon," said the irrepressible Archer, fastening it to Tom's buttonhole with a piece of baby ribbon. "You're easy, Slady!"

"I always was," said Tom.

"You should worry," laughed Walters. "They all have to stand for that."

When Tom got back to the wireless room, Cattell, the operator, looked at the badge with a knowing smile.

"Stung, eh?" said he. "I thought you were on to Archer by this time."

"It's always easy to jolly me," said Tom.

"That's an old trick," said Cattell. "Don't you know we won't be in the danger zone until Monday?"

"I never thought about that," said Tom.

"You're easy," laughed Cattell. "When we get into the Zone, you'll know it."

And so Tom found, for early Monday morning, as he went along the deck on his way to breakfast, he noticed several persons wearing life preservers. They looked clumsy and ridiculous, and if the occasion had been less serious even Tom's soberness must have yielded at their funny appearance.

As he passed along he noticed members of the crew in the life-boats removing the canvas covers, and as these were taken off he could see that the boats were already stocked, each with a cask and a good-sized wooden case. A member of the crew patrolled the rope rail which shut off the guncrew's little domain, and no one could trespass there now. From a distance Tom could see Billy Sunday fully revealed without any vestige of canvas cover, and the boys in khaki scanning the waters in every direction with their glasses. All day long this continued, and once or twice when he met them hurrying along the deck they hardly recognized him.

Cattell, calm as usual, sat all day at the instrument shelf with the receivers on, and ate his luncheon there. Tom forsook his berth, where he was wont to spend his spare time reading, and remained close to the telephone where open connection was kept with the bridge.

It was a day of suspense. Ship's officers hurried back and forth with serious faces and looks of grave responsibility. Twice through the day the emergency drill was gone through, the boats occupied and vacated and the tackle tested, to the dismal voice of the megaphone on the bridge. And as night came on the more constant callings of the lookouts from their wind-swept perches and the answering call through the darkness had an ominous and portentous sound which shook even Tom's wonted stolidness and made him feel apprehensive and restless.

Not a light was there upon the ship as she plowed steadily upon her course, and little knots of people stood here and there in the darkness looking grotesquely ill-shapen in their cumbersome life-belts.

Along the deck, as he came back from supper, which had been served behind closed portholes and with but a single dim light, Tom met Mr. Conne sauntering along at his customary gait, with no sign of life-belt, but with his companionable cigar dimly visible in the darkness.

"H'lo, Tommy," said he cheerily.

Something, perhaps the tenseness which had gripped the spirits of all on board and affected even him, prompted him to pause for a moment's chat with Tom. He leaned against the rail in the black solitude, his easy manner in strange contrast to the portentous darkness and rising wind, and the general atmosphere of suspense.

"Where's your life-belt, Tommy?"

"I don't want to be bothered with one," said Tom. "I'll grab one if there's one handy when the time comes."

"Ain't you 'fraid old Uncle Neptune'll get you?"

"I've risked my life before this," said Tom; "I just as soon put one on, though," he added; "only I never thought about it."

"Hmmm," said Mr. Conne, looking at him sharply. "There was a fellow last trip put one on before we got outside Sandy Hook," he added.

"Why don't you wear one?" Tom asked.

"Me? Oh, I don't know—I don't think I look real well in a cork sash.... I bet you wouldn't have your photograph taken in one of those things," he added, after a moment's pause.

"Is Mr. von Stebel all right?" Tom ventured to ask.

"Oh, yes, he's all right; but glum as a rainy Sunday."

"Did he have any papers?" Tom asked, encouraged by the detective's agreeable manner.

"Well, he had a passport. Of course, it was forged. He had a trolley transfer from Wyndham, Ohio, 'bout a hundred miles west of Cleveland, and, let's see, a hotel bill of the Hotel Bishop in Cleveland. He has a suite there, I guess. I'd like to rummage through his trunk. I tripped him up two or three times, enough to find that he's got a lot of information about army places. Seems to have more of it in his head than he had in his pockets."

"You'll take him back, won't you?" Tom asked.

"Yes, or maybe send him back on the first ship across. They'll turn him inside out in New York. I don't believe he'll leave you anything in his will, Tommy."

Tom laughed. "It would be bad if he got to Germany, wouldn't it?" he asked. "I mean with all the information he's got."

"It would be worse than bad," said Mr. Conne. "It might be disastrous."

He moved on, clinging to the hand-rail along the stateroom tier to steady himself, for the wind was rising to a gale and driving the sea in black mountains which burst in spray upon the deck, wetting Tom through and through as he scurried back to the wireless room for the night's long vigil.



CHAPTER XXII

SOS

Bzzz ... bzzz, bzzz, bzzz...... bzzz ... bz, bz, bz, bz ... bz ... ... bzzz, bz, bz ... bz, bzzz ... bzzz, bz, bzzz, bzzz.

"What is it?" Tom asked, standing in the doorway of the wireless room and looking at the black outline of Cattell's form as he sat at the instrument shelf. He could hardly see Cattell for the darkness. It seemed darker, even, than it did out on deck. Some small object fell, and the sound seemed emphasized by the darkness.

"Huh, there goes my paperweight again," said Cattell; "it's getting rough, isn't it?"

Tom groped around and found it; then, standing, grasped the door-jamb again.

"I had to grab the hand-rail coming along," he said; "do you want to turn in?"

"No; I couldn't sleep, anyway; I might as well be here."

"What was that you took?" Tom asked, as he clambered up into the berth and settled himself comfortably. He, too, could not sleep.

"Same old stuff," said Cattell; "To the day. They're drinking each other's health again."

"I got that a couple of times," said Tom; "what is it, anyway?"

Cattell reached out and pushed the door shut. "Must be pretty chizzly for those fellows up in the crow's-nest," he said.

"Yes; it's queer to hear them calling in the dark, isn't it?"

"You didn't see any lights in the stateroom ports as you came along, did you?" Cattell asked.

"Nope; there's a sailor marching back and forth outside along the starboard tier. Everything's as dark as pitch."

They were silent for a few minutes, listening to the rising wind and to the sound of the spray as it broke over the deck. Cattell folded a despatch blank and stuffed it in the crack of the door to stop its rattling.

"It's comfortable in here, anyway," said Tom; "it's kind of like camping."

Again there was silence, broken only by the wind outside and the occasional voice of the lookout, thin and spent as from another world, and the scarcely audible, long-drawn-out answer from the bridge.

"'To the day,'" said Cattell, sticking his feet upon the shelf, "means to the day the Kaiser will own the earth—emperor of the world. In the German navy, whenever they take a drink they always say, 'To the day.' The day that poor Austrian guy was murdered in Serbia—you know, that prince—and the Kaiser saw his chance to start the ball rolling, all the high dinkums in the German navy had a jambouree, and some old gink—von Somebody or other—said: 'Now, to the day.'

"Well, it got to be a kind of password or slogan, as you might say. If a German spy wants to let another German know that he's all right, he uses a sentence with those three words in. And the sub-commanders are all the time slinging it around the ocean—testing their instruments sometimes, I dare say. It don't do any harm, I suppose. Talk's cheap."

"I wondered what it meant," said Tom.

"That's all it means. When you hear that you'll know some sub-captain is taking a drink of wine or something. When the Emden captured an English ship a couple of years ago, it happened there was a nice, gentlemanly German spy on board the Britisher. The German captain was just going to pack him off with the others as a prisoner when he said something with those three words in it. The German commander understood, and they didn't take any of his things, but just let him stay among the English, and the English weren't any the wiser."

"Huh," said Tom.

Again there was silence.

"I think the other operator is all right, don't you?" Tom asked.

"Sure—is or was. He may have been killed down there and thrown overboard. He was straight as a bee-line. You put Conne on the right track, all right."

"Do you think they'll ever find out about the rest of it?" Tom asked.

Cattell shrugged his shoulders. "Search me," he said.

All night long the wind blew and the swell broke noisily against the ship and beat over the rail. At intervals, when Tom climbed down and stumbled over to open the door for a glimpse of the sullen night, the slanting rain blew in his face, and he closed the door again with difficulty. It would have been a ticklish business to make one's way along the deck then, he thought.

It was a couple of hours before dawn, and Tom, lulled by the darkness, had fallen into a doze, when he was roused by a sudden shock and sat upright clutching the side of the berth.

"What is it?" he said. "Are you there, Cattell?"

Afterward, when he recalled that moment, and tried to describe the shock, he said it seemed as if the vessel were shaking herself, as a dog shakes himself. The crash, which he had so often read about, he did not hear at all; no sound except the heedless wind and the restless, beating sea. It merely seemed as if the mighty ship were cold and had shuddered.

"It ain't anything, is it?" he asked, nevertheless climbing down from his berth.

Then he became aware of something which startled him more than the shock had done. The steady throbbing which had been continuously present since that midnight when the ship first sailed, had ceased. The absolute stillness under his feet seemed strange and ominous.

"It ain't—anything wrong—is it?" he repeated.

"I think we're struck," said Cattell quietly.

For a moment Tom breathed heavily, standing just where he was.

"Can I turn on the light?" he asked. The groping darkness seemed to unnerve him more than anything else now—that and the awful stillness under his feet.

"No—put the flashlight on the clock and see what time it is."

There were sounds outside now, and amid them the doleful distant voice of the megaphone.

"Not three yet," said Tom.... "You—you sending out the call?"

"Yup."

A man in oilskins, carrying a lantern, threw open the door. The rain was streaming from his garments and his hat.

"We're struck amidships," he said.

The telephone from the bridge rang.

"Answer that; find out where we are," said Cattell.

As Tom repeated the latitude and longitude the urgent "S O S" went forth into the night. Lights were now visible outside, and the emergency gong could be heard ringing, mingled with the hollow, far-off voice of the megaphone.

"Better beat it to your post," said Cattell calmly, as his finger played the key. "I'll take care of this." He did not seem at all excited, and his quiet manner gave Tom self-control.

He went out and along the deck where the drenching rain glistened in the fresh glare of the lights. Once, twice, he slipped and went sprawling to the rail. He wondered whether it was from the roughness of the sea or because the vessel was tilting over.

All about hurried people with life preservers on, some sprawling on the deck like himself, in their haste. One man said the ship had been struck above the waterline and would float. Others said she was settling; others that she was sinking fast.

Tom's emergency post was at port davits P 27 on the promenade deck. He knew what to do, for he had gone through the emergency drill twice a day, but the tumultuous sea and the darkness and the cold, driving rain disconcerted him.

Reaching the rail by the life-boat davits, he saw at once that the ship was canting far over. The life-boat, which in the drills swung close to the vessel's side, now hung far away. It was already filled and being lowered.

Falling in line with several of the crew, Tom grasped the rope, and was surprised at the ease with which the boat was lowered by means of the multiplied leverage of the block and falls. In the drills, they had manned but never lowered the boats.

"Don't try that," some one called from the descending boat. "You can't make it, and we're crowded." The voice sounded strangely clear. "Better go up on deck," another voice said.

Tom thought that some one must be trying to reach the descending boat from one of the portholes below.

Then the rope slackened and an officer called, "All right?"

"All right," some one answered; "but she can't ride this."

Tom pressed close to the rail and looked down through the blinding rain. He could see only dark figures and a lantern bobbing frantically.

"Pull her round crossways to the swell and get away from the side—quick!" the officer in charge called.

"She's half full of water," answered a voice amid the wind and storm.

Men came rushing from the starboard deck where they said the boats could not be launched because of the angle of the ship's side which prevented them from swinging free. They were obedient enough, but greatly alarmed when told that they must wait their turn.

The few army men on board were models of efficiency and quiet discipline, herding back the excited passengers and trying to keep them away from the rail, for the slant of the deck was now almost perpendicular.

"Help those people launch that hatch if they want to," said an officer to Tom.

Acting on the suggestion, a dozen or more men ranged themselves around the hatch and Tom helped to lift it, while others clustered about, ready to climb upon it.

"You'll have to clear away from here," said an officer; "sixteen is the limit for one of those hatches. There are seven more." Evidently the rescuing capacity of the hatches had already been ascertained.

The frightened people hurried along through the driving rain and the darkness, some of them slipping on the streaming deck and sliding pell-mell to the rail, which broke away with the impact in one place and precipitated several screaming persons into the ocean.

Hurriedly Tom counted those around the hatch and found that the officer had evidently included him among the sixteen who should man it.

"Do you mean for me to go too?" he asked, in his usual dull manner.

"You might as well," the officer answered brusquely.

The great vessel had lost all its pride and dignity, and seemed a poor, reeling, spiritless thing. The deck was deserted save for the little group about the hatch who strove with might and main to launch this last poor medium of rescue. The abrupt pitch of the deck made their frantic efforts seem all but hopeless, and walking, even standing, was quite out of the question. Tom could feel the ship heeling over beneath him.

Even the cheerily authoritative voice of the megaphone up on the bridge had now ceased, and there was no reassuring reminder of life there—nothing but the black outline of the trestled structure, slanting at a dreadful angle with the water pouring from it.

Tom and his distracted companions were evidently the last on board.

The rail was now so low that the plunge of the hatch would not be very hazardous at all events, for the seething waters beat over the deck now and again, rolling up as on a beach at the seashore and adding their ominous chill to Tom's already chilled body.

Out of the turmoil of the sea sounds rose, some the even tones of command, sounding strangely out of place in the storm; others which he recognized with a shudder as the last frightful gasps of drowning persons.

In a minute—two minutes—he would be plunged into that seething brine where he still might hear but could not see. Instinctively he increased his exertions with this makeshift raft which, if they could but cling to it till the sea subsided, might bear them up until succor came.

As soon as the hatch was raised, it began to slide away, and those who had lifted it jumped upon it, clinging as best they could.

From somewhere out of the darkness a man came rushing pell-mell for this precarious refuge. As he jumped upon it, clutching frantically at the moulding around its edge, Tom stepped off.

The angle of the careening ship was now so steep that he could not stand upon the deck, but as he slipped he caught hold of a vent pipe and so managed to reach the stateroom tier where all the doors hung open like the covers of so many inverted cigar boxes, flapping in the wind and rain.

The hatch had slid to the deck's edge and was held precariously by the doubtful strength of the straining rail.

"Get on!" one of the men called to Tom. "Hurry up!"

"The officer said only sixteen," he answered.

"Are you crazy?" another man called. "Get on while you can!"

"He said only sixteen," Tom called back impassively.

"It's every man for himself now and no orders!" shouted another. Perhaps it was the man who had usurped Tom's place.

"He said only——"

The rest of his answer was drowned by the crashing of the rail as the hatch went plunging from the deck into the black turmoil below. The last they saw of him, he was clinging to one of the flapping doors, his foot braced against a cable cleat, his shock of hair blowing wildly this way and that, the rain streaming from his face and soaking clothes.