“Oh, this wasn’t anything,” declared Jerry. “We just heard the row and came to do what we could.”
“Well, I, for one, am mighty glad of it,” exclaimed the panting nurse, who had been in danger from the attack of the crazed soldier. “I shall never forget it! I went through a good part of the war, and I didn’t want to have to wear a wound stripe on the way home,” and she nodded to the three chums.
“This bids fair to be an eventful voyage,” remarked Jerry, when he and his friends were up on the main deck again. “We started off with a bad omen—putting back to port; Bob has to fight for his life; and now we rescue some of the nurses. I wonder what’s next on the program?”
“Don’t you think we’d better report what we saw down in the passage?” asked Ned, “and that we smelled what might have been a burning fuse?”
“Well, let’s first think it over a bit,” suggested Jerry. “I’d hate, like all get-out, to give a false alarm. Suppose we go to the ship captain, or our captain, which would be the proper procedure, and tell him what we saw? What evidence have we?”
“Well, we saw that pepper-hash individual with something black under his arm,” declared Ned.
“Might have been a box of cigarettes he was taking to some of the wounded men,” interposed Jerry.
“He ran back when he saw us,” persisted Ned.
“Yes, because of the encounter we had before,” agreed Jerry. “That doesn’t prove anything.”
“Well, I’m sure I smelled powder smoke—the same as when a bomb fuse is lighted,” declared Ned.