"I guess you'll have to ask the master-at-arms," rejoined Herc, who was not prepossessed by his questioner's appearance. He was a heavy-set, low-browed man, with a pair of black eyebrows that almost met in the center of his forehead, giving him a sinister aspect. His companion was slight, and long-legged, with a delicate—almost an effeminate—cast of features.
"Oh, well, if you don't want to talk you don't have to," growled the heavy-browed man. "Say, Carl," he went on, turning to his companion, "this is a nice, sociable cellmate they've given us, isn't it?"
"You attend to your own affairs, Silas," snarled the other, who did not seem to be any more amiable than his heavy-browed friend; "leave the kid alone. We've got trouble enough of our own, haven't we?"
"Hum, yes; but overstaying leave isn't such a very serious matter, and think of the reward that's ahead in store for us. Only this cruise, and——"
"Hush!" broke in the one addressed as Carl, with an angry intonation; "you must be a fool to talk like that in front of the kid," he went on in a low undertone.
"Pshaw!" snarled the other in the same low voice, however. "He's just a country Reuben, with the hayseed still in his hair and the smell of the hog-pen on him—like that one we gambled with in New York—Hank Harkins—wasn't that his name?—on the old 'Idy'."
"Just the same, it's well to be prudent," counseled the other, and fell once more to his pacing of the cell.
As for Herc, to whom all this, including the reference to Hank, had been, as Carl had guessed, so much Greek, he laid down at full length on the bench. As he had not had more than a few winks of sleep during his seasick night, he soon dropped off into peaceful slumber, despite his uncomfortable couch and serious position.
How long he slept, he did not know, but he woke with a start, and was about to open his eyes, when he suddenly closed them again and feigned deep slumber.
He had heard something being discussed by the two men with whom he shared the cell that set his pulse to stirring and his heart to beating a wild tattoo.