The thought of the vast fortune stowed within the tall, steel sides of the liner had attracted them, although what they expected to see of it was difficult to imagine. But just as a crowd will gather outside a prison where some notorious malefactor is confined, feasting their eyes on its gray walls without hope of seeing the lawbreaker himself, so the throngs on the _Kronprinzessin Emilie's_ pier indulged their curiosity by staring at the colossal casket that held such an enormous fortune.
Among those who had to win their way through the crowd almost by main force, were two tanned, broad-shouldered youths carrying suitcases and handbags.
"My, what a mob, Jack!" exclaimed one of them, elbowing himself between a stout man who was gazing fixedly at the vessel's side--and showed no disposition to move--and an equally corpulent woman whose mouth was wide open and whose eyes bulged as if she almost expected to see the ship gold-plated instead of black.
"Yes, gold's a great magnet even if it is stowed away inside the specie room of a steamer," replied Jack Ready. "We ought to feel like millionaires ourselves, Bill, sailing on such a ship."
"A sort of vacation _de luxe_," laughed Bill Raynor. "What a chance for the buccaneers of the old days if they could only come to life again. Then there would be real adventure in sailing on the _Kronprinzessin_."
"I guess we've had about all the adventure we want for a time, Bill," replied Jack, as they finally gained the gang-plank and two white-coated, gilt-buttoned stewards grabbed their hand baggage. "The Pacific and New Guinea provided what you might call 'an ample sufficiency' for me in that line."
"We earned this holiday, that's one thing sure," agreed Bill, "and the best part of it is that the sale of those pearls gave us enough funds for a holiday abroad without putting too much of a crimp in our bank accounts."
He referred to the pearls the boys' native chums in the Pamatou Islands in the South Pacific had presented them with, after their narrow escape from death in the sea-cave and the subsequent wreck on a coral reef, during the memorable Pacific voyage and adventures, which were described in detail in the volume of this series which immediately preceded the present book. This volume was called, "The Ocean Wireless Boys on the Pacific."