“Hardly, when I got that blow on my head as suddenly as if a rock had fallen from the sky! But hold on, I do remember feeling some one grabbing me, and—well, my vest has been torn open, so I guess they must have been starting to search me when your coming scared the bunch away.”
“You were lucky, I tell you, Jack. And I hope after this you’ll be satisfied to take your constitutionals in the daytime. This dark deck isn’t a very safe place these times, when they douse the glim mostly, and try to keep every light from showing, so no lurking sub can locate us.”
“Oh, I’ve had my lesson, all right! Believe me, I don’t mean to try it a second time. Honest now, do you think they would have tossed me over the side after going through all my pockets and finding nothing worth while?”
Jack’s voice had a perceptible tremble to it, as though the idea were appalling to him, for which no one surely could blame the boy.
“I don’t know what to say to that,” Tom told him. “It seems monstrous; but then these German spies hold life cheap enough. See what some of them have been doing in America—putting bombs in the holds of passenger and freight steamers that carry munitions or food for the Allies, and which are timed to explode days later, perhaps sending the whole crew down to watery graves.”
“That’s so,” muttered Jack. Then following up the subject with feverish eagerness, as if it had a strange and horrible fascination for him after his own recent narrow escape, he added: “And they blow up munition plants, regardless of the helpless men and women who may be working there, set fire to grain elevators, and are ready for anything that will strike a blow against the enemies of their old Fatherland.”
“But come, suppose you let me help you get on your legs again Jack. Then we’ll go to our room and I’ll bathe your head with that witch hazel I have in my bag. And you musn’t forget to thank Bessie because you owe everything to her. It was her alarm and her hunting me up to tell me that brought us out to look for you.”
“I’ll never forget it, never,” said Jack in a low tone, as he managed to find the hand of the girl and squeeze it warmly. “And I guess I’m a lucky fellow to have such good friends looking after me. But see here, Tom, do you think they mistook me for you when they tackled me in the dark here?”
“I shouldn’t wonder if that were the truth,” his chum assured him, “seeing that you say you felt some one running his hands over your person as if trying to find a hidden paper or something of the sort. Even such clever chaps as we have come to believe these German spies to be can make blunders it seems. This Adolph Tuessig has queered his game in a number of ways, starting with his not finding more than a part of my father’s papers.”
Tom put an arm about his chum, and together they made their way along the deck.