“It must be in the blood,” admitted Jack. “Like father, like son, and after all you’ve got the soldier’s instinct handed down to you.”
“But tell me, Jack, if you’ve guessed it by now, why should the Greeks want to send all this ammunition over there, when the chances are before long they’ll be in the swim, too, and with the Allies as side partners?”
“Oh! it isn’t the Greeks as a people who do this underhand business,” the other explained. “You’ll always find some men ready to take risks when they see a big profit in the gun-running game. You know, Germany hasn’t been able to get as much ammunition across Roumania and Bulgaria as the Turks need; and so some of the German secret agents in Greece have organized a regular fleet of these big powerboats to carry cargoes through the lines of the Allies.”
“If they’re held up it would be a bad job for the skippers I reckon, Jack?”
“No question about it. They might be stood against a wall and shot.”
“But if the captain had this big game up his sleeve,” questioned Amos, who always wanted an explanation, “why should he bother taking a couple of American boys aboard, and perhaps spoil his other work?”
“The big sum we offered tempted him in the first place, I suppose,” explained Jack. “Then, with a crew of seven men, not counting himself, he took it for granted they could do what they liked with us.”
“You mean chuck us ashore on some measly little island in this Ægean Sea, to be marooned, goodness knows for how long?” suggested Amos.
“Perhaps that was the plan, and the island ahead of us the place selected for carrying out the plot. But Amos, for all we know he may have figured on taking us as prisoners ashore on the Peninsula, and handing us over to the Turks as English boys.”
“The dickens you say!” grumbled Amos, shaking his head, upset by the thought. “If I felt sure he had that idea passing through his head, I’d say we ought to do something to foil his plans, and right away in the bargain.”