barred zone with the nerves of those aboard keyed up to a tense pitch and sleep was a stranger to their eyes for perhaps two whole nights of terror and anxiety.
The boys meant to stand watch until the steamer left her dock, some time toward the middle of the night. They wished to discover whether Adolph Tuessig really came aboard and if they were fated to have him as a fellow passenger on their voyage across.
"In one sense it would be a good thing for us," Tom remarked, as they stood by the rail and watched the bustling scenes going on below, where the dock was crowded by a jostling throng of stevedores, porters hurrying baggage aboard, passengers still arriving, friends leaving sorrowfully, some of them weeping as though heartbroken.
"Tell me what you mean," demanded his companion.
"Well, if Tuessig had picked on this vessel on which to cross, we might count it as a sort of insurance that nothing unusual was going to happen to us. If he is, as we strongly suspect, a secret agent of the German Government, he would be apt to know just what special steamers the subs were ordered to try to catch napping. Perhaps this one isn't loaded with the munitions they aim to sink whenever they can."
