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 heard or seen, and a moment later, they dropped arm in arm, like two casual strollers, and moved up deck.

Two minutes later, when the roaring exhaust had ceased and the vapor had cleared away, the guard with the gun could never have guessed that the two men he saw slowly promenading the deck had drifted over the rail, out of the night, with the clouds of the noisy exhaust.

Neither of the lads so much as glanced at the sentinel as they strolled past him. Caradoc was saying in the low tones men use when conversing in the darkness:

“Do you suppose that fellow knows anything about engines?”

And Madden replied just as confidentially, as he sized the gun man up out of the tail of his eye, “No, I'm sure he doesn't. An engineer never has to stand guard.”

“How are we ever going to spot an engineer?”

For the first time since starting, a little thrill of the joy of adventure crept into Madden's heart. He felt like a ferret venturing into a rat's den.