, 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 d