But he had hardly got it open before a gruff voice warned him to "Get back in there, if you know what's good for you." A hulking big tug-boat man stood outside the door. He was evidently stationed there to prevent any attempt to escape on the part of the prisoner. Poor Tom felt that the blockade was quite effectual.
There followed a dreary hour, in which it began to be borne in on the lad that he was exceedingly hungry and thirsty as well. He opened the door once more. The same sailor was on guard.
"Say, don't I get something to eat?" queried Tom pleasantly, in response to the man's growl to "Get back."
"Dunno, an' dun't care," grunted the sailor sullenly.
But Tom's appeal bore fruit, for half an hour later another sailor entered with a tray, on which was coffee, fruit, and a big dish of ham and eggs.
"Well, they don't intend to starve me, anyhow," said Tom, as his eyes fell on this unusual fare for tugboatmen to serve. He fell to heartily, and ate everything before him. So hungry had he been that it was not till the conclusion of his meal that he found leisure to examine the elaborate knife and fork that had been handed him to eat with. He gazed at the richly chased tableware with some interest now, however. It bore a name stamped on both knife and fork.
"S. S. DETROIT CITY."
That was what Tom read. The words caused his pulses to bound. He was actually then, as the overheard conversation had led him to expect, on board the mysterious wreckers' tug that the police of every big lake city were searching for. He recalled reading of the wreck of the Detroit City—a lake passenger steamer,—on a bitter February night. The craft had been lured to her fate—it afterward proved—by lights that had been tampered with.
"And these are the rascals into whose power I have fallen," gasped Tom, his eyes fixed on the bits of tableware which bore the name of the ill-fated craft.
Soon after, Walstein and two sailors entered the cabin. Under the leonine-headed seaman's direction, the sailors ordered Tom to thrust his hands into a pair of rusty and antique-looking handcuffs. His legs, also, were pinioned. This done, he was borne through the door and along the deck, to another doorway. Then his conductors—or rather jailers—conveyed him down a steep flight of metal steps and through the boiler room of the tug, into a dark, ill-smelling hole, suffocatingly hot.