"You ain't going to frighten me in that way, Larry," he said. "Besides, if it bust this show it might send us clear of her. Of course I know it would be awkward to go to the bottom like a stone, to find yourself boxed in this steel cage, unable to move out, waiting to be suffocated; we won't think of that! Let's think of France, of the fighting there that we're going to take a part in."
"That we mean to take part in," said Jim, with determination. "Wonder if these fellows'll give us something to eat, it was breakfast time at daybreak, and we've had nothing since then."
As if summoned by the speech, the door leading to the narrow compartment into which they had been thrust opened and a German sailor pushed his head in.
"Come out!" he commanded, and led the way over only a few short feet of deck to the central part of the vessel, where was all the apparatus that controlled her movements.
"Now tell us who you are," demanded the officer who accosted them, and who spoke excellent English. "First—British or American?"
"American," said Larry, pushing himself to the fore and speaking before Bill could get in an answer.
"Good country to come from—you'll never see it again," came the sardonic answer. "But as you're American, and not British, perhaps you'll get off lighter. If you'd been British I'd have pushed you overboard."
Larry looked at the man, contempt written on every feature of his sharp, determined face, Jim's lips curled, only Bill stood staring at the German as if he thought him a monster.
"Well?" demanded the naval officer.
"See here," said Larry, who made himself the spokesman, "this ain't the sort of place for you and I to have a conversation on this matter. If things was reversed, and you was me and I was you, which I'm glad it ain't, but if it was like that, then we might have a pow-wow. Being as it is, few words the better. As for us, if you says you'll push us overboard, we're bound to believe you. What then—we're Americans—what'll you do?"