“Keep cool, old fellow,” advised Jack, “this will all be straightened out.”
Then he turned to the English-speaking policeman.
“Of course we can send a message to the ship, and then you can speedily ascertain that we are telling the truth and set us free,” he said bravely, but with a sinking heart.
To his dismay the reply was a decided negative.
“You will be allowed to tell your story to the examining magistrate in the morning,” he said coldly. “And in the meantime, allow me to inform you that if it isn’t any more probable than the one you told me,—well——”
He shrugged his shoulders and twisted his sharp-pointed, little black mustache.
“But, great heavens, man, it’s the truth!” burst out Jack.
“No doubt, no doubt. All our prisoners tell us that,” was the reply.
Suddenly the little officer’s eyes fell on Raynor’s coat. It bulged conspicuously in one of the pockets. He stepped quickly to the American lad’s side and, with a cry of triumph, drew out a revolver.
It was the one Raynor had taken from the foot-pad; but its discovery made things look black for the boys. The officer’s eyes narrowed. He looked at them with a sneer.
“So,” he said, holding up the pistol, “you two honest, law-abiding lads carry pistols abroad at night! This discovery alone, _messieurs_, proves that your story is a concoction from beginning to end. If you really come off a ship, you are samples of the sort of sailors we don’t want here.”
Jack tried in vain to be heard, but a wave of the hand enjoining silence and a crisp command to the subordinate police silenced him.
The next moment, held as if they had been desperate characters, the two boys found themselves, under armed guard, being marched through the sleeping city of Antwerp to prison cells.
Here was a fine end to their evening of adventure. But protests, they knew, would be worse than silence, and so they submitted to being ignominiously marched along without uttering a word. Beside them strutted the little officer, vastly proud of his “important captures,” word of which he took care reached the newspapers that night.
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The boys passed a sleepless night in a none too clean cell. A sentry paced up and down in front of the bars, as if they stood committed for some heinous offense. To keep their spirits up, they tried to make light of the affair. But in that dreary place, with the stone-flagged floor and the steel grating, it was pretty hard to be lively.