CHAPTER VII
A MIDNIGHT BLAST
To Ned, Bob, and Jerry, as well as to other soldiers who had takenpart in the Great War, the word “fuse” referred to but one thing, andthat was the explosion which usually followed the lighting of it. Thelads were familiar with many kind of fuses, from the ordinary timeone, the most common form of which is the fizzing string attached to afirecracker, to the complicated fuses in the big shells. These may beset to explode the shell at any height, or at any time desired.
And when Ned, sniffing the air suspiciously, spoke of a fuse, his twocompanions understood at once what he meant. But Jerry perhaps becausehe did not want to cause an alarm, or it may have been because hereally believed what he said, exclaimed:
“Fuse, my eye! That’s cigar smoke you smell!”
“Then all I have to say is that it’s a pretty poor specimen of cigar,”retorted Ned. “Must be one of the substitute tobacco ones the Germanshad to use. Cigar! My word, old top! I’m glad I don’t smoke if theyhave to inhale that sort of stuff.”
“It does smell funny,” agreed Bob. “And did you see who that was?”
“Our peppery friend, _le cochon_,” remarked Jerry. “He evidently didn’twant to meet us, for he turned away like a shot.”
“He had something under his arm,” went on Ned. “Fellows, I don’t wantto be an alarmist, but after all that has passed, and smelling whatI believe to be powder smoke, don’t you think we ought to tell thecaptain?”
“And get laughed at?” asked Jerry. “Not much. We got ourselves into aconspicuous position once by having something to do with this man, andI’m not going to risk it again. He, too, seems to have had enough ofus, for it was evident that he didn’t want to meet us. Let well enoughalone, I say.”
“Yes,” insisted Ned, “but suppose he’s been up to some trick here?Suppose he may have planted----”
Ned did not finish what he had started to say. For at that moment therewas a commotion in that part of the ship given over to hospital needs,and loud cries indicated that something unusual was going on.
“What’s that?” asked Bob, looking at his two chums.
“Sounds as if some of the patients were making a row,” remarked Jerry.“It may be Meldon, the fellow who attacked you in a nightmare, Bob.Perhaps he’s having another spasm, poor fellow.”
“Maybe we’d better go back there and see if we can give any help,”suggested Ned. “Sometimes when they get to raving that way, as theyoften do, they’re stronger than usual and the women nurses can’t handle’em. Let’s go and see if we can help.”
“It may be a good idea,” agreed Jerry.
Forgetting, or putting aside, rather, for the time being, the memory ofthe strange man they had met, and the odd manner in which he had acted,the three chums turned back to the hospital which they had just left.
And it was fortunate that they did. For two of the wounded men hadbecome delirious and were fighting their nurses. And as it happened,there was only one doctor on duty just then, and he was having hishands full.
Of course the two patients did not know what they were doing, theirpain and suffering having affected their brains temporarily, and theaid of Ned, Bob and Jerry in subduing them was greatly appreciated bythe nurses. In fact, the help was absolutely necessary, for one of thenurses was in danger of bodily harm from the unreasoning strength ofthe patient, a big raw-boned Kentucky mountaineer, who had been sorelywounded in the head, and who was scarcely on the road to recovery.
But, being directed by the nurses and by the one doctor, the MotorBoys soon managed to subdue without the use of undue force the twohalf-insane patients, who were soon strapped to their cots.
“Thank you very much, boys!” exclaimed the head surgeon, when he hadcome in and had been told of what had happened. “You helped out a wholelot. I shall see that you are officially thanked.”
“Oh, this wasn’t anything,” declared Jerry. “We just heard the row andcame to do what we could.”
“Well, I, for one, am mighty glad of it,” exclaimed the panting nurse,who had been in danger from the attack of the crazed soldier. “I shallnever forget it! I went through a good part of the war, and I didn’twant to have to wear a wound stripe on the way home,” and she nodded tothe three chums.
“This bids fair to be an eventful voyage,” remarked Jerry, when he andhis friends were up on the main deck again. “We started off with a badomen--putting back to port; Bob has to fight for his life; and now werescue some of the nurses. I wonder what’s next on the program?”
“Don’t you think we’d better report what we saw down in the passage?”asked Ned, “and that we smelled what might have been a burning fuse?”
“Well, let’s first think it over a bit,” suggested Jerry. “I’d hate,like all get-out, to give a false alarm. Suppose we go to the shipcaptain, or our captain, which would be the proper procedure, and tellhim what we saw? What evidence have we?”
“Well, we saw that pepper-hash individual with something black underhis arm,” declared Ned.
“Might have been a box of cigarettes he was taking to some of thewounded men,” interposed Jerry.
“He ran back when he saw us,” persisted Ned.
“Yes, because of the encounter we had before,” agreed Jerry. “Thatdoesn’t prove anything.”
“Well, I’m sure I smelled powder smoke--the same as when a bomb fuse islighted,” declared Ned.
“You may have, and, again, you may have merely got a whiff of a bad,cheap cigar. That’s no evidence, so far. If we went to the captain withthat information he’d only laugh at us.
“Besides,” went on Jerry, “you’ve got to have motives for suspectingany one, even _le cochon_. And you can be pretty sure he didn’t get onboard this troopship unless he was well vouched for. They aren’t takingany chances.”
“Well, maybe I’m imagining a whole lot,” admitted Ned. “Only I wouldlike to know who that fellow is, what his game is, and why he seems tohave such a grudge against our Professor Snodgrass.”
“Yes, I’d like the answer to those questions myself,” admitted Jerry.“But to get at them I don’t just feel like going to the _Sherman’s_captain and telling him we suspect the pepper-pot of being a Germanspy.”
“No,” assented Ned slowly, “I don’t suppose we can do that. But I’mgoing to keep my eyes open.”
“There wasn’t a sign of anything wrong when we came back through thepassage where we met that duck,” remarked Bob.
“No. But it still smelled mighty queer,” stated Ned.
“It always will so near the hospital rooms,” suggested Jerry. “The odorof iodoform is very lingering.”
“Well, maybe it was that,” agreed Ned. “But I’m going to keep my eyesopen.”
“Yes, we can all do that,” came from Jerry. “And now let’s get in linefor the semi-occasional feed. It’s about due, I think.”
“You’re falling in with me, I see,” laughed Bob.
During the afternoon the three chums moved about on board the _Sherman_as much as the crowded condition of the transport would permit. And itwas while making their way about the crowded boat deck that they heardsome one hail them with:
“Well, if there aren’t the three musketeers!”
Turning quickly, Ned, Bob, and Jerry beheld a youth whom they hadlearned to know and like in the trenches.
“Well, if it isn’t old Hen Wilson!” cried Jerry.
“Old scout Hen!” added Ned.
“Where’d you blow in from?” demanded Bob.
“Been here all the while,” was the answer, as the four met in a jollycircle. “That’s what I was just going to ask you. I didn’t know youwere on board.”
“Nor we you,” declared Jerry. “There’s such a bunch on this craft thatwe may meet a lot more friends we knew in the fighting days. Where haveyou been keeping yourself, Hen?”
“Oh, moving around here and there. I ran into a bunch of the old gangthat helped clean up that machine-gun nest--you kn
ow, Jerry--the placewhere you got whiffed.”
“Oh, I remember that all right. And so some of those fellows are onboard? Lead me to ’em!”
The rest of the day was most pleasantly spent--that is, as pleasantlyas possible under the circumstances--and Ned, Bob, and Jerry were gladthat they had found old friends whose presence would help while awaywhat might, otherwise, be a tedious voyage.
It was in the middle of the night that Jerry was awakened by a dullexplosion and a concussion that sent a tremor through the whole ship.Dim lights that were burning near the sleeping quarters went outsuddenly, and Jerry, straining his eyes to pierce the darkness and atthe same time sitting up and feeling about him, heard the voice of Nedcrying:
“What is it? What’s the matter?”
At the same moment Bob broke in with:
“We hit something sure, that time, or something hit us! If the wholebottom isn’t blown out of the ship we’re lucky!”
And then followed a scene of confusion and almost panic.