There was, however, in Dan’s eyes the next moment, a grim look that considerably belied his words.
Dave hadn’t really tried hard to worm the secret from his friend, and now he gave it up altogether, but asked teasingly:
“Are you going to call upon me for any work, beyond saving your scalp when you get into too tight a corner?”
“You’re a guest aboard, without duties,” Dan informed him, then added, seriously:
“But I won’t deny that I realize how valuable your counsel may prove in some sudden emergency.”
Somehow, Darrin found that he tired of being on the bridge of a ship on which he had no duties, no authority. Leaving the bridge, after a few minutes, he descended and roamed the decks, fore and aft. Wherever he encountered sailors outside he found them in the garb of merchantman sailors; below decks they wore the uniform.
The “Prince” was kicking along at about eight knots an hour, and was already out of sight of land. It was when he strolled down into the engine room that Dave was astonished to find engines that were furbished up to the last notch of perfection. Moreover, his practised eye noted that the engines looked as though capable of vastly faster work than they were performing.
“These engines appear to be the best part of the craft,” Darrin remarked to the engineer officer.
“They’re good engines—the best that the British know how to make,” nodded the engineer officer. “But for that matter, they’re not much behind the rest of the boat. She looks worse than she is, sir. The ‘Prince’ is renamed; she was a mighty good-looking craft before the naval camouflage gentlemen took her in hand and made such a tough-looking ship of her.”
From the course Darrin knew that the “Prince” was heading into the submarine zone. Dan was surely hunting trouble, and he had a knack of finding it.