“Jones,” he added, addressing the chief steward, “oblige me by slipping those handcuffs on the men.”
The click of the steel bracelets appeared to arouse Radwig to speech.
“You—you—young whelp,” he shouted, shaking his manacled fists at Jack. “Whatever may be my fate, I’ll remember you and see that you are attended to if it takes every penny and every resource I have.”
“Violence won’t do you any good,” commented the captain quietly, “and if I know anything of the English law you are apt to spend quite some time in Great Britain. Jones, march the prisoners to the smoking room and detain them there till the ship docks.”
Sullenly, the two prisoners shuffled out of the cabin and were marched past wondering passengers to their place of detention. Three hours later, when the ship docked, the boys saw them being taken ashore by British officials. A thorough ransacking of their cabin had failed to reveal any incriminating documents, although the valise which Radwig had hurled out of the porthole undoubtedly had contained such papers.
At Southampton they learned that the St. Mark was likely to be tied up for some time. Rumors of mines and torpedoes made the owners unwilling to risk her loss. The two lads, therefore, left the vessel, and proceeded to London, where their instructions were to visit agents of the line and learn if anything had been heard of Tom Jukes. They found the city thronged with marching soldiers and territorials, while everywhere proclamations calling on the men of England to enlist were posted. Otherwise, however, everything appeared to be going on as if there were no war.
Inquiry at the agents resulted in a meagre clue to the whereabouts of the lad of whom they were in search. He had wired for funds from Malines, a Belgian town, a few days before war was declared and the Germans invaded Belgium. Since then nothing had been heard of him.
The magnitude of their task appeared greater than ever to the two lads now that they had actually started the work. But Jack was not the sort of lad to give up at the first difficulty.
“We’ll go to Belgium,” he announced, but right here a stumbling block appeared.
There were no longer regular steamers running to Belgian ports, and the small and infrequent craft that did venture had been warned by the Admiralty that the North Sea was thickly sown with mines. It was a journey full of peril but, nothing daunted, Jack and Bill journeyed to Grimsby, a town on the east coast, where they were told they might be able to engage passage on a trawler, provided they could find a captain adventurous enough to take them across.