“I was that villain,” replied that operative with a smart smile. “I found the key in the door, and watched my opportunity to enter and search the room.”
“Then that was all a bluff you put up when you came to our room and called me down,” said Guy.
“Pure and simple. I wanted to see what Gunseyt was doing there.”
Little of importance occurred during the rest of the voyage. They arrived at New York early in the morning two days later and were met at the landing by a throng of men, women and children. Information of the rescue of most of the castaways on the iceberg had been communicated by wireless, and the Burton boys found their father and mother among the foremost in the crowd.
The scene at the landing was pathetic and thrilling. Not only were many relatives and friends of the rescued present, but also numerous relatives and friends of many that perished. Cheers, congratulations, happy faces, hysterical laughter, and sad tearful eyes and subdued, hopeless utterances were heard and seen on every hand. Guy and Walter were hurried to a hotel where their story was listened to eagerly by Mr. and Mrs. Burton.
Then came the newspaper ordeal. It was an odd and enigmatical affair. The reporters were there, at the landing and the hotel, in good numbers; but they were the most unimaginative, unindustrious congregation of press representatives that ever assembled with instructions to “soft pedal” a story. Mr. and Mrs. Burton knew the meaning of their “lazy manner” and smiled wisely at the disgust of some of the interviewed.
“What does this all mean?” demanded the big red-faced man, who had decreed a conditional extermination for the Carnegie medal dispensers after hearing the story of Walter’s heroism. “Didn’t you cheap, two-by-four pencil pushers bring photographers along to take pictures of that wireless hero?”
The identity of this challenger of the scribes and advance critic of the hero fund trustees was then revealed for the first time to Walter and Guy. He was one Amos Wiltshire of Vermont, a business acquaintance of Mr. Burton’s. His last choleric invective was directed at the “sleepy” newspaper reporters at the landing, from which place he accompanied the Burtons to their hotel. There the father of the wireless heroes explained the situation to Mr. Wiltshire and the boys as follows:
“You see the government officials felt that the situation was extremely delicate. There was enough evidence to convince them beyond reasonable doubt that the Herculanea was sunk by a floating German mine. It looked as if the mine was planted over here by a German U-boat before we got into the war, and the authorities were afraid of public wrath if as much publicity were given this affair as was given the sinking of the Lusitania. We are still nominally at war with Germany, you see, and many believe we ought not to have stopped fighting when we did, but have continued the drive all the way to Berlin. It was feared, at least, that the treaty negotiations would be seriously interfered with by a reawakening of public anger. So it was decided to ask all the newspapers of the country to tone the story down. By common consent, therefore, it was censored, and every paper limited its space for the affair to a few sticks of very mildly worded news.”
As for the two Eskimos, a collection was taken for them among the iceberg survivors, and they were sent back to Greenland, each with a large trunkful of fishing tackle and hunting outfit, on a government vessel patrolling the northern seas.