TOM GETS A JOB
The momentous step which Tom had resolved to take did not appear to
agitate his stolid nature in the least. Nor did he give any sign of
feeling disappointment or resentment. His whole simple faith was in
young Archer now, and he trusted him implicitly.
He sat in the train, sometimes looking straight ahead and sometimes out
at the beautiful Hudson where he had spent so many happy hours in the
troop's cabin launch, the _Good Turn_.
After a while he said abruptly, "If a feller does what's right and does
a good turn and he gets misjudged, then after that he's got a right to
do as he pleases."
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.
"Secret Service men--they can tell if your great-grandfather was
German."
"He wasn't," said Tom.
"Hello, you old spiff-head!" said Archer to the gate-keeper, at the same
time laying down his satchel with an air of having done the same thing
before. The two Secret Service men opened it and rummaged among its
contents, one of them helping himself to an apple.
"You bloomin' grafter!" said Archibald.
"That's all right, Archie," said the other man, likewise helping
himself. "It's good to see your smiling phiz back again. Who's your
friend?"
"He's goin' in to see the steward," said Archer, "I told him I'd get a
feller for the butcher----"
"All the passes are taken up," said the gate-man, as he took Archer's
pass. "Everybody's on board, and there's nobody needed."
"Oh, is that so?" said Archer derisively. "Just because everybody's on
board it don't prove nobody's needed. I didn't say there was any
vacancies."
"He'll only come back out again," said the gate-keeper.
"Oh, will he?" said Archer ironically.
"Let him in," laughed one of the Secret Service men, and as he spoke he
pulled Tom's pockets inside out in a very perfunctory way and slapped
his clothing here and there. It was evident that young Archer was a
favorite. As for Tom, he felt very important.
"Didn't I tell you I was lucky?" Archer said, as he and Tom together
lugged the big valise down the pier. "Spiffy's a good sketch--but
they're getting more careful all the time. Next sailing, maybe, when
we're taking troops over, President Wilson couldn't get by with it....
You heard what he said about all the passes being taken? That means all
hands are on board. It don't mean we'll sail to-day--or maybe not
to-morrow even. We'll sneak out at night, maybe."
Tom had never been in close proximity to an ocean steamer even in peace
times, and the scene which now confronted him was full of interest.
Along the side of the pier rose the great black bulk of the mighty ship,
beneath the shadow of which people seemed like pygmies and the great
piles of freight like houses of toy blocks.
The gangways leading up to the decks were very steep and up and down
them hurried men in uniforms. Near a pile of heavy, iron-bound wooden
cases several soldiers in khaki strolled back and forth. Tom wondered
what was in those cases. Hanging from a mammoth crane was part of the
framework of a great aeroplane. Several Red Cross ambulances and a big
pile of stretchers stood near by, and he peered into one of the
ambulances, fascinated. Tremendous spools, fifteen or more feet in
diameter, wound with barbed wire, stood on the pier; there were fifty of
them, as it seemed to Tom, and they must have carried miles of barbed
wire. There were a lot of heavy, canvas-covered wagons with the letters
_U.S.A._ on them, and these were packed with poles and rolls of
khaki-colored canvas, which Tom thought might be tents. There were
automobiles bearing the same initials, and shovels by the thousand,
piled loose, all similarly marked.
There was no doubt that Uncle Sam was getting his sleeves rolled up,
ready for business.
At the foot of one of the gangways Archer had to open his bag again to
gratify the curiosity of another man who seemed to know what he was
about and who, upon Archer's statement of Tom's errand, slapped Tom here
and there in the vicinity of his pockets and said, "All right, Tommy,"
which greatly increased Tom's veneration for the sagacity of Secret
Service men.
"He just meant he knew you wasn't German," said Archer.
He led the way along the deck, down a companionway and through a passage
where there were names on the doors, such as _Surgeon, Chief Steward,
Chief Engineer, First Mate_, etc. They entered the chief steward's
cabin, where a man in uniform sat at a desk with other men standing all
about, apparently awaiting orders. When his turn came, Archer said:
"Do you remember, Mr. Cressy, you said you wished you had more
youngsters like me in the steward's department? I got you one here. He's
a friend of mine. He's just like me--only different."
"Well, thank goodness for _that_," said the chief steward, sitting back
and contemplating Archibald with a rather rueful look. "_Did_ I say
that?"
"Yes, sir, you did. So I brought him; Tom Slade, his name is, and he
wants a job. He'd like to be chief engineer, but if he can't be
that----"
"Maybe he'd be willing to be butcher's assistant," concluded the
steward. "Archer," he added, as he reached for one of several speaking
tubes near his desk, "if I thought you'd sink, I'd have you thrown
overboard.--How'd you enjoy your visit home?"
A brief talk with some unseen person, to which Tom listened with chill
misgivings, and the steward directed his young subordinate to take Tom
to the purser's office and, if he got through all right there, to the
ship's butcher. He gave Tom a slip of paper to hand to the purser.
The purser's cabin was up on the main deck, and it was the scene of much
going and coming, and signing and handing back and forth of papers. A
young man sat on a stool before a high desk with a huge open book before
him.
"He's the third purser," whispered Archer; "don't you be afraid of
_him_."
It was to the third purser that Tom told the history of his life--so far
as he knew it; where he was born and when, who his parents were, where
they had been born, when and where they had died; whether Tom had ever
worked on a ship, whether he had any relatives born in or living in
Germany or Austria, whether he had ever been employed by a German, and
so on and so on.
All this went down in the big book, in which Tom had a page all to
himself, and the last question left a chill upon him as he followed his
young companion from the cabin--_Whom to notify in case of accident_.
"Accident," he thought. "That means torpedoing."
But against this was the glad news that for the round trip of presumably
a month, he would receive one hundred and sixty dollars, forty dollars
payable on arrival in a "foreign port," the balance "on return to an
American port."
There would be no call upon this stupendous sum, save what he chose to
spend in the mysterious, unknown foreign port, and as Tom reflected on
this he felt like the regular story-book hero who goes away under a
cloud of suspicion and comes back loaded with wealth and glory.