Just as they were about to turn away and seek the warm saloon Jack pointed to a large and handsome motor car that had managed to force its way through the tangle of vehicles and rolling trucks, and from which some people, evidently intending passengers, were alighting.
“As pretty a young girl as ever you set eyes on, Tom,” he hastened to say, for Jack was much fonder of girls’ society than his chum had ever shown himself to be. “I hope we shall get to know her before the voyage is over. Just take a peep and tell me if she hasn’t got other girls beaten a mile for good looks.”
To please his chum Tom did glance that way. He saw a diminutive girl who could hardly have been more than twelve years of age, and scarcely looked even that; but she was remarkably attractive, so far as rosy cheeks, dancing eyes, and a wealth of golden hair went. In spite of her apparent lack of years, there was a grown-up air about her that some girl babies seem born with and that makes friends for them among older people from the start.
“Yes, she is as pretty as a peach, for a fact,” Jack’s chum admitted. “I suppose I’ll see little of your company if ever you get to be on speaking terms with such a fairy. But there goes the call to dinner,” he added as a steward was seen hurrying to a number of the passengers bending over the rail and watching the busy scene below, to say something to each in turn, and point toward the companionway leading to the dining saloon.
Later on, before the boys were through eating dinner, they discovered the girl again. She was given a seat at the same table as the boys, and Jack could consequently feast his eyes on her pretty face to his heart’s content.
There was a man with her, who may have been her father, though Tom made up his mind that there could be very little real affection between the two, for the girl acted as though she secretly feared her guardian, while on his part the man with the snappy eyes and rather cynical cast of features frowned often when speaking to his young companion.
Somehow Tom was himself becoming mightily interested in the girl, a fact which would be apt to surprise Jack when he learned it. He wondered what the relationship between man and girl could be, and why they were taking these desperate chances to cross to the other side at a time when no one dreamed of making a pleasure voyage.
Again the two chums sought the outer air. It was even more disagreeable than earlier in the evening, and they could not stay very long. A raw wind whistled down the broad North River, as the Hudson is called at New York City, and seemed to bring with it reminders of fields of ice that were still lingering far up toward the border of the Catskills.
“We’d better give it up as a bad job,” suggested Tom after awhile, “and keep in where it’s warm. Either he’s safe aboard by this time, or else he doesn’t mean to sail on this boat, now that he knows we’re going.”
“Yes,” admitted even the sanguine Jack, “he may take a notion we’ll give him away to the British authorities, and cause his arrest as a German spy. Though I’ve no doubt he’s clever enough to have a false passport that describes him as a Swede, or perhaps a Swiss going home to do his bit in guarding the Alpine frontier against the Huns. But we can keep our eyes open all the time, Tom, while we’re aboard.”