“There was never so much as a glint,” the deck steward volunteered.
Instantly Tom thought of his experience of the previous night and there arose in his mind also certain passages from one of the letters he had turned over to Mr. Conne.
Acting on his benefactor’s very sensible advice, he had not allowed his mind to dwell upon those mysterious things which were altogether outside his humble sphere. But now he could not help recalling that this ship had been the Christopher Colon on which somebody or other had thought he might be able to sail. Well, in any event, the ship’s people had those things in hand, and after his disturbing experience of the night before, he would not dare speak to one of his superiors about what was in his mind. But he was greatly interested in this whispered news.
“The electric lights are turned off in the staterooms, anyway,” he said.
“Yes, but that bunch is always smoking—them engineers,” said the deck steward, “and a chap would naturally stick his head out of the port so as not to get the room full of smoke. All he’d have to do is drop his smoke in the ocean if anyone happened along. It’s been done more’n once.”
“Then you don’t think it was spies they suspected or—anything like that?”
The deck steward, who was an old hand, hunched his shoulders. “Maybe, and maybe not. You can’t drum it into some men that a cigarette is like a searchlight on the ocean.”
“Yet the destroyers signal at night—even here in the zone,” Tom said.
“Not much—only when it’s necessary. And the transports don’t answer. It’s just a little brown kind of light, too. They say the tin fish[1] can’t make it out at all.”