HE MAKES A DISCOVERY AND RECEIVES A SHOCK
Soon after dusk the soldiers were ordered to throw away their “smokes” and either go below or lie flat upon the decks. Officers patrolled the rail while others strolled among the boys and reminded the unruly and forgetful not to raise themselves, and soon the big ship, with its crowding khaki-clad cargo, was moving down the stream—on its way to “can the Kaiser.” Then even the patrol was discontinued.
A crowded ferryboat paused in its passage to give the great gray transport the right of way, and the throng of commuters upon its deck saw nothing as they looked up but one or two white-jacketed figures moving about.
Tom thought the ship was off, but after fifteen or twenty minutes the throb of the engines ceased and he heard the clank, clank of the anchor winches. A little distant from the ship tiny green, red and white lights appeared and disappeared and were answered by other colored lights from high up in the rigging of the Montauk. Other lights appeared in other directions and were answered by still others, changing rapidly. Tom thought that he could distinguish a dark outline below certain of these lights. The whole business seemed weird and mysterious.
In the morning he looked from the rail at a sight which astonished and thrilled him. No sign of land was there to be seen. Steaming abreast of the Montauk and perhaps a couple of hundred yards from her, was a great ship with soldiers crowding at her rail waving caps and shouting, their voices singularly crisp and clear across the waters. Beyond her and still abreast was another great ship, the surging army upon her decks reduced to a brown mass in the distance. And far off on either side of this flotilla of three, and before it and behind it, was a sprightly little destroyer, moving this way and that, like a dog jumping about his master.
Upon the nearest vessel a naval signaler was semaphoring to the Montauk—his movements jerky, clean-cut, perfect. Enviously Tom watched him, thinking of his own semaphore work at Temple Camp. He read the message easily; it was something about how many knots the ship could make in a steady run of six hundred miles. The Montauk answered that she could make twenty-eight knots and keep it up for nineteen hours. The other signaler seemed to be relaying this to the transport beyond, which in turn signaled the destroyer on that side. Then there was signaling between the Montauk and her own neighbor destroyer about sailing formation in the danger zone.
It was almost like A B C to Tom, but he remembered Mr. Conne’s good advice and resolved not to concern himself with matters outside his own little sphere of duty. But a few days later he made a discovery which turned his thoughts again to Adolf Schmitt’s cellar and to spies.
He had piled the captain’s breakfast dishes, made his weather memoranda from the barometer for posting in the main saloon, and was dusting the captain’s table, when he chanced to notice the framed picture of a ship on the cabin wall. He had seen it before, but now he noticed the tiny name, scarcely decipherable, upon its bow, Christopher Colon.
So that was the ship on which somebody or other known to the fugitive, Adolf Schmitt, had thought of sailing in order to carry certain information to Germany. As Tom gazed curiously at this picture he thought of a certain phrase in that strange letter, “Sure, I could tend to the other matter too—it’s the same idea as a periscope.”
Yet Mr. Conne’s sensible advice would probably have prevailed and Tom would have put these sinister things out of his thoughts, but meeting one of the steward’s boys upon the deck shortly afterward he said, “There’s a picture of a ship, the Christopher Colon——”