For a moment he knelt there in surprise. Then hurriedly he lifted out can after can until there lay revealed upon the shelf a long, dark object. The ticking was louder now.
He touched the object gingerly, and found that it was held fast in place by a wire which ran from a screw in the shelf to another screw in the bulkhead above it, and was thus effectually prevented from moving with the rolling of the ship. Some excelsior lay upon the shelf, which had evidently been stuffed between the ticking object and the back row of cans.
Something--Tom did not know just what, but some sudden presentiment--prompted him to step quickly through the passage in order to make sure that he had entered the right room. Then he discovered his mistake.
The room he had entered was the store-room from which no supplies were to be taken on the present trip.
He turned back and knelt again, the cans he had removed standing all about him. One of them, which in his haste he had laid upon its side, began to roll with the jarring of the vessel, and Tom shuddered with a kind of panic fright at the sudden noise it made, and with trembling hands he set the innocent can upright.
His next impulse was to run upstairs and report what he had discovered. He did not dare to touch the thing again.
Then he realized that something--something terrible--might happen while he was gone. Something might happen in five minutes--the next minute--the next second!
Still kneeling, for strangely he could not bring himself to move, he watched the thing in a sort of fascination.
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick--it went, on its steady, grim journey toward----
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick--it went; heedless, cheerful, like a clock on a mantelpiece.
And still Tom Slade remained just where he was, stark-still and trembling.
Then, of a sudden, Tom Slade, ship's boy, disappeared, and there in his place was Tom Slade, scout; calm, undismayed--the same Tom Slade who had looked about him, calm and resourceful, when he was lost in the great woods, and who had kept his nerve when menaced by a savage beast.
He cautiously removed the encircling wire, lifted the object out with both hands, finding it surprisingly heavy, and laid it carefully upon the stationary table where cans were usually assorted and opened.