And so it was, four hours later, with the lieutenant in the wireless room, and Slim in the battery room adjoining, and Joe and Jerry stowed away in the hiding places selected, their long night vigil began.
Hour after hour dragged itself by without a development, the intense silence broken only by the sounds of the engines and the wash of the sea against the ship. To the three boys, unable to see or talk to each other, and Joe and Jerry scarcely daring to move, the minutes lagged like hours, and the hours like dull, black, endless nights.
Dawn came, and with it new activities in all parts of the vessel, but without a reward for their watch, and as the two lads crawled from their places of concealment at either end of the passage, to join Slim and Lieutenant Mackinson, there were mutual feelings of disappointment, but none of weakened determination.
"What luck?" asked the captain, coming in at that moment.
"None, sir, at all," the lieutenant responded.
"Very well, then, try it again to-night," the commander ordered. "But in the meantime all of you get some sleep. You may get better results to-night, for by then we will be coming to the outer fringe of the submarine zone. I will arrange for another man to stay in the wireless room during to-day, and if an emergency arises he will call you."
So the four young men went to bed for some much-needed rest and sleep, and when they awakened it was almost time for mess—directly after which they were to take up their night watch again.
"I hardly think we will be troubled with U-boats to-night," the captain told them, "for it is perfectly clear and there will be a full moon. The sea is calm and we readily could discern a periscope a long distance away."
Truly it was a beautiful night. And it was in this alluring quiet of seemingly absolute peace that one of the tragedies of war soon was to be enacted.
The Brighton boys and their friend and superior officer, the lieutenant, had been in their appointed places hardly more than an hour when Joe and Jerry at the same instant caught the sounds of some sort of scuffle on the deck above.