Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound; Or, A Red Cross Worker's Ocean Perils

by Alice B. Emerson

“Wait!” exclaimed the captain. “I am willing to put one thing to the test.”

“You need do nothing to placate me, Captain Hastings,” declared Ruth. “I am quite, quite satisfied to drop the whole affair, I assure you.”

“It has gone too far, as it is, Miss Fielding,” declared Captain Hastings. “Dowd will not be satisfied if you do not have the opportunity of identifying the stoker you say you saw talking with Miss Lentz. And that, in itself, is no crime.”

“Then why trouble yourself—and me—about the matter any further?” asked Ruth, with a shrug, and her hand still on the knob of the door.

“Confound it, you know!” burst forth the captain, “it has to go on my report—on the log, you know. That fool, Dowd, insists. I want you to see the stokers together, Miss Fielding, as the watches are being changed at eight bells. If you can pick out the man you say you saw on the after deck, I will examine him. Though it’s all bally foolishness, you know,” added the captain in a tone that did not fail to reach Ruth Fielding’s ear and increased her feeling of disgust for the pompous little man, as well as her vexation with the whole situation.

She wished very much just then that she had not spoken at all to the Admiral Pekhard’s first officer.

CHAPTER XI—DEVELOPMENTS

At ten minutes or so before noon a smart little sub-officer came to Ruth’s stateroom and asked her to accompany him to the engine-room, amidships. As a last thought the girl took a chiffon veil with her, and before she stepped into the quarters where all the shiny machinery was, she threw the veil over her head and face. It had suddenly been impressed on her mind that she did not care to have the man she had taken for a German identify her, even if she did him.

She found both Mr. Dowd and the commander of the steamship on this deck. The first officer came to Ruth in rather an apologetic way.

“I did not know,” he said gently, “that I was getting you into any trouble when I repeated what you told me to Captain Hastings. This is my very first voyage with him—and, believe me, it shall be my last!”