Jack asked the questions in a bewildered voice the next morning. His head throbbed cruelly, and placing his hand to his forehead he found that it was enveloped in bandages. Then he looked about him. He lay in a neat white cot in a beautifully clean room.
A young woman whom he knew was a nurse, by her uniform, bent over him.
“Hush! Do not excite yourself. Here comes the doctor.�
A tall man, with spectacles, entered the room. He regarded Jack with satisfaction.
“Just as I said, only a flesh wound,� he said, after he had removed the bandages, “it is getting on nicely. In a few days you will be up.�
“In a few days!� gasped Jack, “but my ship will have sailed by then.�
“That is all right. Her owners have been communicated with and you will go home as a passenger on a liner owned by them. That will be after you have given your deposition against the man Alvarez, in a court of law. He is a prisoner and is also in the hospital. He was slightly hurt when the port was blown out by the force of the explosion and was found unconscious when rescuers reached the scene. He thought he was going to die and has made a full confession.�
“I don’t understand,� said Jack, in a puzzled way, “Alvarez, that’s the sailor who was going to kill Captain Briggs. I punched him.�
“Yes; and in revenge the man, with fiendish ingenuity, connected the current from your wireless key with a bomb that he placed under the wireless table. It was lucky he placed the infernal machine under the table, otherwise you might have been killed. As it is, you have got off with a flesh wound inflicted by a bit of flying metal.�
Jack lay in the hospital three days more. Then he appeared in a Rotterdam court and gave his account of the affair. The confession of Alvarez clinched the matter and the murderous Spaniard received a heavy sentence. A week later Jack found himself a passenger, “an idler,� he called it, on board the United States liner New Hampshire, bound for New York.