“How are you feeling this morning after your adventure, Jack?” he asked, with a vein of real solicitude in his voice.
“Pretty punk, to be honest about it,” admitted the other, cringing when he pressed a trifle too hard on the swollen part of his head. “But that lump has subsided considerably, for which, thanks. Mebbe after all I can bear to have that new plaid cap on, by stretching it a bit. I hate to pay good money for a thing, and then not use it.
“How about telling the purser or the captain about what happened to me last night, Tom?” and Jack grew serious.
“I’ve been thinking it over, and concluded that we’d better keep quiet about it,” the other replied. “In the first place we have nothing to show who the men were, and it would be silly to ask the officers of the ship to search every stateroom, as well as put questions to every passenger, in hopes of discovering a German spy aboard.”
“Just as you say, Tom. We have only our suspicions to guide us, and they mightn’t interest the captain, who has problems of his own to wrestle with now that we’re getting so close to the danger zone. So we’ll call the incident closed; and after this take our walks on the hurricane-deck by daylight only.”
After breakfast the boys again made their way to the deck.
Jack wanted very much to have a chance to talk again with Bessie, but failed to find it. She walked the deck, but in company with her grim guardian; and never once did Mr. Potzfeldt allow her to be alone.
“Like as not he suspects she brought you along last night, before they had a full chance to search me through and through, Tom,” Jack remarked, well on toward noon.
“Just what I was thinking myself,” the other told him. “And I rather imagine you’ll not have another chance to get a word with the girl. If all goes well we ought to get to our destination by another morning. They say that by nightfall we’ll surely run across several destroyers, as they are always sent out to act as a convoy to big steamers in these tough times.”
“But the rest of the day is still ahead of us,” Jack ventured, “and nobody can say what may happen before the convoy reaches us. Notice that everybody has his or her glass in constant use. They scour the surface of the water ahead, and on both sides as far as they can, and are always looking for a stick that pokes up out of the sea like a warning finger; which would be a sub periscope, to a surety.”