"Is it necessary with me?" "It is necessary with any friend of Mr. Jocelyn Thew," he told her didactically. "What a suspicious person you are!" she exclaimed, a little scornfully. "You are just like all your countrymen. You get hold of an idea and nothing can shake it. Mr. Jocelyn Thew, I dare say, possesses a past. I know for a fact that he has been engaged in all sorts of adventures during his life. But--at your instigation, I suppose--they have already searched his person, his stateroom, and every article of luggage he has. After that, why not leave him alone?" "Because he is an extremely clever person." "Then you are not satisfied yet?" "Not yet." "Am I, may I ask, under suspicion?" she enquired, with faint sarcasm. "I should not like to say," he replied glibly, "that you were altogether free from it." She laughed heartily. "I should not worry about the army if I were you," she advised. "I am quite sure that secret-service work is the natural outlet for your talents." "I shouldn't be surprised," he confided, "if headquarters didn't insist upon my taking it up permanently. It will depend a little, of course, upon what success I have during this voyage." She laughed in his face and turned away. "I will tell you what I find so interesting about you, Mr. Crawshay," she said. "You must be either very much cleverer than you seem, or very much more foolish. You keep me continually guessing as to which it is." CHAPTER XIII Towards six o'clock that evening, without any apparent change in the situation, Captain Jones descended from the bridge and signalled to Crawshay, whom he passed on the deck, to follow him into his room. The great ship was still going at full speed through a sea which was as smooth as glass. "Getting out of it, aren't we?" Crawshay enquired. The captain nodded. His hair and beard were soaked with moisture, and there were beads of wet all over his face. Otherwise he seemed little the worse for his long vigil. In his eyes, however, was a new anxiety. "Another five miles," he confided, "should see us in clear weather." "Steamer's still following us, isn't she?" "Sticking to us like a leech," was the terse reply. "She is not out of any American port. She must have just picked us up. She isn't any ordinary cargo steamer, either, or she couldn't make the speed." "I've worked it out by your chart," Crawshay declared, "and it might very well be the Blucher. I don't think I made the altered course wide enough, and she might very well have been hanging about a bit when she struck the fog and heard our engines."