“Why should Adolph Tuessig be coming down to this steamer if he hadn’t meant to go aboard?” continued Jack, again showing excitement. “Seeing us frightened him off, apparently, but then he may come back again later, and sneak aboard.”
Tom looked serious, as though digesting the suggestion advanced by his chum.
“Well, there might be some truth in that idea, Jack,” he finally remarked.
The two youths went aboard the steamer. The passengers were looking rather subdued, and while there were affecting leave-takings, little of the customary merriment connected with these sailings for Europe was manifested.
The reason was not difficult to understand, for even the neutral gray color of the once jet black steamship told of perils of the sea entirely foreign to such ordinary things as gales and floating icebergs. Vessels went into that barred zone with the nerves of those aboard keyed up to a tense pitch and sleep was a stranger to their eyes for perhaps two whole nights of terror and anxiety.
The boys meant to stand watch until the steamer left her dock, some time toward the middle of the night. They wished to discover whether Adolph Tuessig really came aboard and if they were fated to have him as a fellow passenger on their voyage across.
“In one sense it would be a good thing for us,” Tom remarked, as they stood by the rail and watched the bustling scenes going on below, where the dock was crowded by a jostling throng of stevedores, porters hurrying baggage aboard, passengers still arriving, friends leaving sorrowfully, some of them weeping as though heartbroken.
“Tell me what you mean,” demanded his companion.
“Well, if Tuessig had picked on this vessel on which to cross, we might count it as a sort of insurance that nothing unusual was going to happen to us. If he is, as we strongly suspect, a secret agent of the German Government, he would be apt to know just what special steamers the subs were ordered to try to catch napping. Perhaps this one isn’t loaded with the munitions they aim to sink whenever they can.”
“But I’m afraid we’ll never be able to keep watch here for hours, Tom. Already I’m beginning to shiver like everything, on account of that chilly wind coming down the Hudson River. And besides, it’s about time dinner was announced; for we were told we’d get that meal aboard.”