He could not remember just how it was down there, but he knew that in the staterooms where the glass ports were locked (and that was the case with all of the crews’ quarters below) air was admitted by a slightly opened panel transom over the door.
What should he do? Go and tell an officer about his discovery? If it were a discovery that would be all very well. But after all, this was only a—a kind of a deduction. And they might laugh at him. He had always stood in awe of the officers and since last night he was mortally afraid of them. If he told any of the soldiers or even the steward they would only jolly him. He did not know exactly what he had better do.
He made up his mind that he would go down through the passageway where those under engineers and electricians slept and see how it looked down there. He had been through there many times, but he thought that perhaps he would notice some thing now which would help to prove his theory and then perhaps they would listen to the captain’s mess boy if he could muster the courage to speak.
He had just left the rail when he saw, some distance to starboard as it seemed, and well forward of the ship, an infinitesimal bluish brown spark. How he happened to notice it he did not know. “Once a scout, always a scout,” perhaps. In any event, it was only by fixing his eyes intently upon it that he could keep it in sight. And even so, he lost it after a few seconds. He tried to find it again, but quite in vain. It had been about as conspicuous as a snowflake would have been in a glass of milk.
“Huh, if there’s anyone on this ship can see that, he must be a peach. Maybe up in the rigging you can see it better, though. If it’s on the destroyer, she’s quite a ways ahead of us——”
He squinted his eyes and, seeing a number of imaginary lights, decided that perhaps the other had been imaginary too. He crossed the saloon, went down the companionway and through the second class cabin dining-room where the soldiers hailed him pleasantly, and, passing the stokers’ washroom, tiptoed along the dim, narrow passageway.