Ned advanced to the swinging doors of the place, pushed them open and vanished. The anxious eyes of his squad followed him.
“I’ve a notion we’ll hear them two whistles in a jiffy,” remarked a man standing next to Herc.
“Well, if you do you’ll know that Ned is really up a tree,” responded Herc. “He’s not the sort that cries ‘wolf’ unless there’s real trouble bearing down on him.”
CHAPTER V.
“THE FAIR WIND.”
Within the doors he had so unceremoniously pushed open, Ned found a kind of shabby office and lounging lobby, equipped with ricketty furniture and smelling horribly of stale tobacco. The floor was littered with paper and cigar stumps and everything was dirty to a degree, a condition very offensive to the smart young Dreadnought Boy. But Ned was paying not much attention to these details. His eyes rapidly swept the room.
Behind a desk, caged off from the rest of the place, a fat, flabby-looking German with a pair of huge yellow moustaches was engaged on some sort of blotty bookkeeping. His big moustaches and round, unwholesome face made him look not unlike a big walrus. On the walls hung a few pictures of old-time clipper-ships and various other works of art, portraying “The Mary Anne Jennings in a Sou-wester off Ushant,” and “The American Barque Elisha J. Holmes Caught Aback off Cape Horn.” Under glass cases were curios of different kinds from the Seven Seas. Dust and grime lay thick on everything. Apparently it was many moons since a broom or soap and water had penetrated there.
The walrus-like German looked up as Ned entered, and right there Ned saw the wisdom of his move in coming in alone. The proprietor, as he guessed the man at the desk to be, greeted him with a nod.
“From der Manhattan, hein?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s my ship,” responded Ned, returning the nod. He saw at once that the man was quite unsuspicious of him and thought he was merely a foolish, weak-minded sailor out for “a good time.”