"Wonder where under the sun I can be?" was Tom's first thought, as he opened his eyes.
He had swooned from shock and immersion immediately after he had been dragged from the water by the crew of the tug, and had no clear recollection of anything that followed his being knocked overboard when the tug and the Sea Ranger collided.
But it was plain enough to him, on awakening, that he was in a place entirely strange, and of which he had no previous recollection.
He lay in a rough bunk on a pile of none too clean blankets. The walls of the small room were bare, but a round port light and the motion of the tug told him that he was out on the water.
The boy was striving to marshal his thoughts, when the sudden sound of voices struck on his ears. They seemed to come from an adjoining cabin. Tom listened, idly at first, but before long he was shocked into the keenest attention. It was evident that the conversation related to him and his companions of the Sea Ranger. With his senses vibrantly on the alert, he drank in every word that he could catch.
No doubt, the men who were talking so freely thought that the boy was still in a state of coma, for they took no trouble to lower their tones. As Tom listened, a vague sense of having heard at least two of the voices somewhere before stole over him. He could not recall where, at first, but suddenly he caught the name "Dampier," and a moment later "Walstein." The identity of the familiar voices was thus instantly revealed to him as by a flash of lightning.
"I tell you," were among the first words that struck Tom's attention, "that we've run into the biggest stroke of luck yet."
"Then you don't intend to throw the brat overboard, as he deserves?"
In the light of what he heard later, Tom identified this amiable proposal as coming from Walstein.
"Throw him overboard! Why, my dear fellow, I have nothing so crude in mind," came Dampier's sharp, rather fastidious tones. "If we use him rightly, we can make a pile of money with this lad."