And all the rest of that night Tom Slade, whose hand had extinguished the guiding light, perhaps, to some lurking submarine; who had had to “think quick and all by himself,” and had decided for his Uncle Sam against his brother Bill, sat there upon the leather settee, feeling guilty and ashamed. He knew that he had done right, but his generous heart could not feel the black, shameless treason of his brother because his own smaller treason stood in the way. He could not see the full guilt of that wretched brother because he felt mean and contemptible himself. Truly, the soldier had hit the nail on the head when he said, “You’re all right, Whitey!”
And now, suspected, shamed, sworn at and denounced, even now, as his generous nature groped for some extenuation for this traitor whose scheme he had discovered and exposed, he found it comforting to lay the whole blame and responsibility upon the missing Adolf Schmitt.
“Anyway, he tempted you,” he said, though he knew his brother would neither listen nor respond. “Maybe you think I don’t know that. He’s worse than anybody—he is.”
You’re all right, Whitey!
CHAPTER XVI
HE SEES A LITTLE AND HEARS MUCH
Toward morning, he fell asleep, and when he awoke the vibration of the engines had ceased, and he heard outside the door of his prison a most uproarious clatter which almost drowned the regular footfalls of the soldier.
He had heard linotype machines in operation—which are not exactly what you would call quiet; he had listened to the outlandish voice of a suction-dredge and the tumultuous clamor of a threshing machine. But this earsplitting clatter was like nothing he had ever heard before.