There was a murmur from the crowd. It was known that soldiers aboard were not allowed to leave these particular ships, popularly believed to be transports destined for the invasion of England, and an equally stern rule that nobody was allowed to come near them.
Of course, Billy and Henri had no knowledge of the rule, and they crossed the deadline as care-free as clams.
Then something dropped. It was a heavy hand on the shoulder of Henri, a few feet in advance of his chum. Somebody set a vise-like grip on Billy’s wrist. A bevy of graybacks fluttered around them. They had committed the unpardonable sin of ignoring a military order, and also they were unpardonably foreign to the soil. They were English, until they proved themselves something else.
A lane opened in the muttering crowd, and through it marched the file of soldiers, with the suspects sandwiched between the leader and the next in line.
At the city hall the soldiers and the suspects abruptly deserted the lengthy street procession behind them, and the prisoners were presented without further ceremony to the bulky occupant of a revolving chair within a railed enclosure.
“What have we here?” sharply questioned the man behind the railing.
The soldier spokesman briefly related the cause of the arrest.
“Lock them up.” This order completed the first hearing.
Billy and Henri a few minutes later perched themselves on a sack mattress filled with straw, in a prison cell.
“‘In the prison cell I sit,’” chanted Billy.