He had been so busy with his thoughts that he had not heard the officers’ talk for several moments when he was suddenly aroused by the sound of his own name. It was the lieutenant who spoke it and Nelson caught only the tag end of the sentence:
“——Troy. Have him report to me in the morning.”
“I will,” said the other. “I’m glad for his sake. He’s been wanting badly to get across. I told you about his father, didn’t I?”
“Yes. Too bad. Thinks he’s still living, you said. Not much chance, I’d say. Still——”
Nelson’s heart thumped wildly. It had come at last! He wondered where they were sending him and would have given a good deal to have been able to ask just then. But it wouldn’t do. He must wait until morning. He was going across; the ensign had said as much; and that was the main thing! It didn’t matter a bit what the ship was so long as it sailed for France or England. He felt sorry for the others then: Lanky, whose one ambition was to serve a fourteen-inch gun; Ensign Stowell, too, and Billy, and all the rest. They would still be kicking their heels aboard the Wanderer back home while he, Nelson, was in the thick of it. Then he wondered if he had heard aright. Perhaps, after all, he had been mistaken. He listened as the officers paced back toward him, but now they were talking of other things. After awhile he went below and laid down in his bunk and was alternately happy and depressed until he finally fell into what was to prove his last sleep aboard the Wanderer.
CHAPTER VII
THE U. S. S. “GYANDOTTE”
“What’s the land over there?” asked Nelson, nodding westward toward the low, faint line of shore.
“North Carolina,” replied the tall youth whose sleeve bore the crossed quills of a yeoman. “That’s Cape Hatteras, further along.”
Nelson craned his neck. The shore-line stretched out as though to meet them, a distant angle of sand-reefs, slightly more distinct than the land abeam.