“Well, well! I am afraid the young lady will have to content herself in Paris for some weeks yet, as we are bound for other ports now. Make yourselves at home,” and with a salute the officer left them to the welcome meal which had immediately been furnished them after their ducking.
If the Kentuckians had had nothing to do but enjoy life on that submarine, no doubt they could have done it. They were treated most courteously by officers and men. The food was plentiful and wholesome, the life was interesting and conversation with the sailors most instructive, but Jim was eager to strike that blow against Prussia and it was extremely irksome to him to have to keep up the farce of being a book agent. Kent was more and more uneasy about Judy, realizing, from the sample of Germans he now came in contact with, that ruthlessness was the keynote of their character. They were fighting to win, and win they would or die in the attempt; by fair means or foul, they meant to conquer the whole world who did not side with them.
“Gee, if I don’t believe they can do it,” sighed Jim, as he and his friend were having one of their rare tete-a-tetes. “They have such belief in their powers.”
“Yes, they seem much more stable, somehow, than the French. Did you ever imagine anything like the clockwork precision with which this monster is run?”
“When do you reckon we will get off of her? We have been on a week now and I see no signs of landing us. I am always asking that human question mark, Captain von Husser, what he is going to do with us, and he just smiles until his moustache ends stick into his eyes, and looks wise. I feel like Hansel and Gretel and think maybe they are fattening us to eat later on. I am getting terribly flabby and fat,” and Jim felt his muscles and patted his stomach with disapproval.
“I’d certainly like to know where we are. You notice they never tell us a thing, and since we are allowed only in the cabin and on a certain part of the deck, we never have a chance at the chart. I wish they would let us bunk alone and not have that fat head in with us. This is the first time they have let us talk together since we got hauled in, and I bet some one is to blame for this.”
Kent had hardly spoken before a flushed lieutenant came hurriedly up and with ill-concealed perturbation entered into conversation with them.
“Gee whiz!” thought Kent. “I wish Jim Castleman and I knew some kind of a language that these butchers did not know. But the trouble is they are so terribly well educated they know all we know and three times as much besides.” Suddenly there flashed into his mind a childish habit the Browns used to have of speaking in a gibberish called Tutno. “I wonder if Jim knows it! I’ve a great mind to try him.” Putting his hand on his friend’s arm, he said quite solemnly: “Jug i mum, sank a nun tut, yack o u, tut a lul kuk, Tutno.”
“Sus u rur e!” exclaimed Jim, delightedly.
The lieutenant looked quite startled, wigwagged to a brother officer who was passing and spoke hurriedly to him in German. As German was worse than Greek to Kent and Jim (they had studied some Greek at school but knew no German) they did not know for sure what they were saying, but from the evident excitement of the two officers they gathered they had quite upset the calculations of their under-sea hosts.