To Ned, Bob, and Jerry, as well as to other soldiers who had taken part in the Great War, the word “fuse” referred to but one thing, and that was the explosion which usually followed the lighting of it. The lads were familiar with many kind of fuses, from the ordinary time one, the most common form of which is the fizzing string attached to a firecracker, to the complicated fuses in the big shells. These may be set to explode the shell at any height, or at any time desired.

And when Ned, sniffing the air suspiciously, spoke of a fuse, his two companions understood at once what he meant. But Jerry perhaps because he did not want to cause an alarm, or it may have been because he really 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[53] of the substitute tobacco ones the Germans had to use. Cigar! My word, old top! I’m glad I don’t smoke if they have 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’t want to meet us, for he turned away like a shot.”

“He had something under his arm,” went on Ned. “Fellows, I don’t want to be an alarmist, but after all that has passed, and smelling what I believe to be powder smoke, don’t you think we ought to tell the captain?”

“And get laughed at?” asked Jerry. “Not much. We got ourselves into a conspicuous position once by having something to do with this man, and I’m not going to risk it again. He, too, seems to have had enough of us, for it was evident that he didn’t want to meet us. Let well enough alone, 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 there was a commotion in that part of the ship given over to hospital needs, and loud cries indicated that something unusual was going on.

[54]

“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 they often 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 of the 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 had become delirious and were fighting their nurses. And as it happened, there was only one doctor on duty just then, and he was having his hands full.

Of course the two patients did not know what they were doing, their pain and suffering having affected their brains temporarily, and the aid of Ned, Bob and Jerry in subduing them was greatly appreciated by the nurses. In fact, the help was absolutely necessary, for one of the nurses was in[55] danger of bodily harm from the unreasoning strength of the patient, a big raw-boned Kentucky mountaineer, who had been sorely wounded in the head, and who was scarcely on the road to recovery.

But, being directed by the nurses and by the one doctor, the Motor Boys soon managed to subdue without the use of undue force the two half-insane patients, who were soon strapped to their cots.

“Thank you very much, boys!” exclaimed the head surgeon, when he had come in and had been told of what had happened. “You helped out a whole lot. I shall see that you are officially thanked.”

“Oh, this wasn’t anything,” declared Jerry. “We just heard the row and came 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 shall never forget it! I went through a good part of the war, and I didn’t want to have to wear a wound stripe on the way home,” and she nodded to the three chums.

“This bids fair to be an eventful voyage,” remarked Jerry, when he and his friends were up on the main deck again. “We started off with a bad omen—putting back to port; Bob has to fight[56] for his life; and now we rescue 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 ship captain, or our captain, which would be the proper procedure, and tell him what we saw? What evidence have we?”

“Well, we saw that pepper-hash individual with something black under his arm,” declared Ned.

“Might have been a box of cigarettes he was taking to some of the wounded men,” interposed Jerry.

“He ran back when he saw us,” persisted Ned.

“Yes, because of the encounter we had before,” agreed Jerry. “That doesn’t prove anything.”

“Well, I’m sure I smelled powder smoke—the same as when a bomb fuse is lighted,” 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 with that information he’d only laugh at us.

“Besides,” went on Jerry, “you’ve got to have motives for suspecting any one, even le cochon.[57] And you can be pretty sure he didn’t get on board this troopship unless he was well vouched for. They aren’t taking any chances.”

“Well, maybe I’m imagining a whole lot,” admitted Ned. “Only I would like to know who that fellow is, what his game is, and why he seems to have 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 German spy.”

“No,” assented Ned slowly, “I don’t suppose we can do that. But I’m going to keep my eyes open.”

“There wasn’t a sign of anything wrong when we came back through the passage 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 odor of iodoform is very lingering.”

“Well, maybe it was that,” agreed Ned. “But I’m going to keep my eyes open.”

“Yes, we can all do that,” came from Jerry. “And now let’s get in line for the semi-occasional feed. It’s about due, I think.”

[58]

“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 it was while making their way about the crowded boat deck that they heard some one hail them with:

“Well, if there aren’t the three musketeers!”

Turning quickly, Ned, Bob, and Jerry beheld a youth whom they had learned 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 jolly circle. “That’s what I was just going to ask you. I didn’t know you were on board.”

“Nor we you,” declared Jerry. “There’s such a bunch on this craft that we may meet a lot more friends we knew in the fighting days. Where have you been keeping yourself, Hen?”

“Oh, moving around here and there. I ran into a bunch of the old gang that helped clean up that machine-gun nest—you know, Jerry—the place where you got whiffed.”

“Oh, I remember that all right. And so some of those fellows are on board? Lead me to ’em!”

The rest of the day was most pleasantly spent—that[59] is, as pleasantly as possible under the circumstances—and Ned, Bob, and Jerry were glad that they had found old friends whose presence would help while away what might, otherwise, be a tedious voyage.

It was in the middle of the night that Jerry was awakened by a dull explosion and a concussion that sent a tremor through the whole ship. Dim lights that were burning near the sleeping quarters went out suddenly, and Jerry, straining his eyes to pierce the darkness and at the same time sitting up and feeling about him, heard the voice of Ned crying:

“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 whole bottom isn’t blown out of the ship we’re lucky!”

And then followed a scene of confusion and almost panic.