He had just reached this point in his thoughts when he saw the girl. She had apparently just come from her stateroom, for she was in company with the Red Cross nurse. There was a half-frightened expression on Bessie’s pretty face. Still, who could wonder at such a thing, when people many times her age were looking peaked and white in those critical hours.
The girl was looking in Tom’s direction now. He saw her make an involuntary gesture as if gripped by some emotion. Then she started forward—she was heading straight toward the spot where the youth sat, as though bent on speaking to him.
Tom put his magazine down. After all, the story he chanced to be reading was not one half as exciting as the conditions by which he found himself surrounded at that very moment.
“Oh, where is Jack?” asked the girl, as soon as she reached his side. “I hope he has not gone out on that gloomy deck to walk!”
“Just what he did some little time ago,” Tom told her, at the same time feeling a sense of coming peril gripping his heart and thrilling his pulses. “But why do you look so anxious, Bessie?”
“Oh, I hardly know! I heard so little of what they were saying, because they talked so low!” she told him, her eyes round with newly-awakened fears. “But don’t you see, they might mistake Jack in the dark for you?”
“Do you mean you have a suspicion some one intends to knock me down, if it can be done in the gloom of the night, Bessie?” he asked her.
“Yes, I am afraid it means just that! But please let us go and find Jack!” she begged, in a low, thrilling tone.
Of course Tom needed no urging. His heart was beating tumultuously as he left his chair and, followed by the eager girl, passed from the dim cabin to the utter darkness of the promenade deck. He was almost afraid of what he might find there.