“Yes, but it’s what you might call the fortune of war,” responded Jack briefly.
So expeditiously was the work of culling out the reservists done that an hour after the Berwick’s officers had boarded the liner, the last of the prisoners was off and the ship’s papers had been inspected and O.K.’d. With mutual salutes, the two craft parted, the Berwick to lie “off and on,” looking for commerce carriers of a hostile nation, the St. Mark to resume her voyage to a Europe which was even then crowded with desperate, stranded American tourists unable to obtain money or passage home.
At dinner time Muller, the St. Mark’s regular operator, relieved Jack, and he was free for the evening. He elected to spend his leisure time reading up in a text-book, lately issued, an account of the workings of a new coherer that had recently been brought out.
But the fatigues of the day had made him drowsy and he soon dropped off to sleep in the chair he had placed on the upper deck in the shelter of a big ventilator. Despite the time of year there was a cool, almost a chilly breeze stirring, and most of the small number of first-class passengers were either in the smoking room or the saloon.
How long he slept Jack did not know, but he was awakened by the sound of voices proceeding from the other side of the ventilator, which masked him from the speakers’ view. One of the voices, which Jack recognized as belonging to Martin Johnson, grated harshly on his ears.
“If it hadn’t been for that cub of a wireless boy,” Johnson was saying, “that message would have been in the hands of Von Gottberg by this time.”
“And so you haven’t been able to send word about the British cruiser?” inquired the other speaker.
“No, and from the same cause. I shall have to see what I can do with the night operator. He may not be so absurdly scrupulous, unless that young whelp who was on day duty has been talking to him.”
“Did you say, Herr Professor, that you had met him before?” asked the last speaker’s companion.
“Yes, confound him, on the Kronprinzessin Emilie. I was—er—I was trying to organize an orderly retreat to the boats after the alarm had been spread that British cruisers were after us, when this young scoundrel attacked me brutally.”