"I don't see what the fellow can do or say in the matter," objected Smith. "Hamerton in the log says he was transferred to a tramp steamer. That ends the business. Whatever happened to Hamerton and Detroit occurred some time after the incident."
"All the same I'll have a shot at it. I'll write, and pack up the torpedo book at the same time."
"All right!" drawled Smith. "Please yourself."
And with that he refilled his pipe and resumed work.
CHAPTER X
In the Prison Cell
Immediately after the ending of the trial the two prisoners were separated. Hamerton was escorted through the streets of the Oberland, past the old Frisian church, and lodged in a massive stone building almost adjacent to the north-east angle of the barracks.
During and long previous to the British occupation of Heligoland this building had been used is a fish store. It stood on solidly constructed arched pillars, the entrance being by means of a flight of stone steps protected by a wrought-iron railing. Latterly the space under the vaulted arches had been enclosed by galvanized-iron fencing and utilized as a store for engineering tools and plant. The building above was subdivided into eight narrow rooms, each lighted by a rectangular window about three feet in height and eighteen inches in width. Each of these windows was heavily barred.
Surrounding this massive structure was a wall twelve feet in height, surmounted by revolving rods studded with steel spikes, and pierced by a narrow gateway sufficiently wide to admit the passage of a handcart. This wall abutted on the barracks, and the space between the house and the wall, paved with stone flags, served as an exercising ground for the prisoners who were confined within. These were mostly men serving long sentences for insubordination and other serious offences against military and naval discipline.
Just inside the outer gateway was a small guardhouse in which were quartered the soldiers detained to act as warders. Here Hamerton was handed over to the jailers, and compelled to have a bath and don a suit of blue-and-yellow cloth that made him look like a football player. All his personal belongings—and they were few in number owing to his hurried departure from the yacht—were taken from him, with the exception of his watch. This done, he was escorted up the exterior staircase of the main prison and placed under lock and key in the room at the north-eastern angle of the building.