His companion did not offer any comment upon this, but looked at Tom rather curiously.
After about ten minutes of silence, Tom observed: "I like mysteries; I'm glad we don't know where we're going. It makes it like a book, kind of. I hope the captain won't tell me."
"You can trust him for that," said Archer; "don't worry!"
If mystery was what Tom craved, he soon had enough to satisfy him. Indeed, no author of twenty-five-cent thrillers could possibly produce such an atmosphere of mystery as he found when he and young Archer reached the pier in New York.
The steamship company, aided and abetted by Uncle Sam, had enshrouded the whole prosy business of loading and sailing with a delightful covering of romance, and Tom realized, as he approached the sacred precincts, that the departure of a vessel to-day is quite as much fraught with perilous and adventurous possibilities as was the sailing of a Spanish galleon in the good old days of yore.
A high board fence protected the pier from public gaze, and as Tom read the glaring recruiting posters which decorated it he felt that, even if his part in the war fell short of actual military service, he was at last about to do something worth while—something which would involve the risk of his life.
A little door in the big fence stood open and by it sat a man on a stool. Two other men stood near him and all three eyed the boys shrewdly.
"This is the first barbed-wire entanglement," said Archer, as they approached. "You keep your mouth shut, but if you have to answer any questions, tell 'em the truth. These guys are spotters."
"What?" said Tom, a little uneasy.