“There’s so little else to do,” said Norah, laughing—“and such heaps of questions to ask!”
“Quite so,” agreed the captain. “Well, lest you should ask me any more just now, let’s have the music-box.” He opened the gramophone, and gave himself to melody.
Later, on their way to dress for dinner, they passed a tall, fair-haired sailor, busily cleaning paint. He looked up at the merry group, with a surly face.
“That’s a Swede, I know,” Wally said, when they were safely out of hearing. “I wonder if he’s one of the suspects.”
“If he is, he’ll be an awkward man to tackle,” Mr. Linton said. “You will have to be careful, boys; don’t run unnecessary risks in the way of going for him single-handed. That fellow is as strong as a bull.”
Jim and Wally passed over this sage advice in the airy way of boyhood.
“It really looks very likely,” said the former. “He’s probably pro-German; and it’s quite a reasonable thing to suppose that he may be in the pay of Germans in Australia, and has simply joined the ship in the hope of signalling our whereabouts to an enemy cruiser.”
“Yes—wouldn’t he get a nice bonus for us!” Wally added. “And a free trip for himself to Germany—to say nothing of the fact that he may be carrying information about the transports. Scissors!—don’t I hope we’ll get him!”
But the watch that night proved fruitless. Jim and his chum spent long comfortless hours in the little cabin near Norah’s, taking turns at the port-hole; further up, Mr. Dixon, very bored and cold, shared a similar vigil with an elderly quartermaster. But no queer flashes of light came from the port-hole between them; nor had the watch on deck anything to report. It was a disconsolate trio that met on deck next morning.
“Never mind,” Norah said, comforting. “He may have been too sleepy. He’ll be there to-night.”