“Well, there’s something wrong, all right,” said Charlie Anderson, smiling at his apparently contradictory statement.  “And we’ll find out what it is, too!  But I guess you’re right, Blake.  We’ve got to go slow.  I’m going below to see if our stuff is safe.”

“Oh, I don’t imagine anything can have happened to it—­so soon,” said Blake.  “At the same time, we will be careful.  Now we must remember that we may be altogether wrong in thinking this Frenchman is working against us in the interests of our rivals, Sim and Schloss.  In fact, I don’t believe that firm cares much about the contract we have, though they have tried to cut in under us on other matters.  So we must meet Lieutenant Secor halfway if he makes any advances.  It isn’t fair to misjudge him.”

“I suppose so,” agreed Joe.  “Yet we must be on our guard against him.  I’m not going to give him any information about what we are going across to do.”

“That’s right,” assented Blake.  “Don’t talk too much to anybody—­especially strangers.  We’ll be decent to this chap, but he is no longer a guest of our nation, and we don’t have to go out of our way to be polite.  Just be decent, that’s all—­and on the watch.”

“I’m with you,” said Joe, as Macaroni came back to say that all was well in their cabin where they had left most of their personal possessions.  The cameras and the reels of unexposed film were in the hold with their heavy baggage, but they had kept with them a small camera and some film for use in emergencies.

“For we might sight a submarine,” Joe had said.  “And if I get a chance, I’m going to film a torpedo.”

By this time the vessel was down in the Narrows, with the frowning forts on either side, and as they passed these harbor defenses Lieutenant Secor crossed the deck and nodded to the boys.

“I did not know we were to be traveling companions,” he said, with a smile.

“Nor did we,” added Blake.  “You are going back to France, then?”

The lieutenant shrugged his shoulders in characteristic fashion.

“Who knows?” he asked.  “I am in the service of my beloved country.  I go where I am sent.  I am under orders, Messieurs, and until I report in Paris I know not what duty I am to perform.  But I am charmed to see you again, and rest assured I shall not repeat my lamentable blunder.”

“No, I’ll take good care you don’t run into me,” muttered Macaroni.

“And you, my friends of the movies—­you camera men, as you call yourselves—­you are going to France also?”

“We don’t know where we are going, any more than you do,” said Blake.

“Ah, then you are in the duty, too?  You are under orders?”

“In a way, yes,” said Blake.  “We are, if you will excuse me for saying so, on a sort of mission——­”

“Ah, I understand, monsieur!  A thousand pardons.  It is a secret mission, is it not?  Tut!  Tut!  I must not ask!  You, too, are soldiers in a way.  I must not talk about it.  Forget that I have asked you.  I am as silent as the graveyard.  What is that delightful slang you have—­remember it no more?  Ah, I have blundered!  Forget it!  Now I have it!  I shall forget it!” and, with a gay laugh, he smiled at the boys, and then, nodding, strolled about the deck.