The men at the rails pulled and Cookie slowly left the water. As they lifted him, the pressure of the rope around his waist acted like a kind of artificial respiration. Water streamed from his open mouth as he made his ascent. At last, he was safely on deck, and then the two friends were pulled from the lake.
Instantly, they were wrapped in warm blankets. They were both glad that it was June, and not November, as they realized how cold they were, even though swathed in wool and bathed in sunlight. Somebody forced Sandy to swallow a little glass of burning liquid, and he guessed that it was rum from the heat of it in his stomach and the way his eyes began to water.
“Ugh,” Sandy said, “I’d sooner drink a gallon of lake water.”
“You nearly did,” a harsh voice said; and, opening his eyes, Sandy saw Captain West forcing his way through the knot of sailors who had surrounded him. For once the skipper had shaved, though his eyes were bloodshot.
“That was a foolhardy stunt, boy,” Captain West went on, growling and not noticing the rush of color into Sandy Steele’s face. “You could have drowned.”
“But what about Cookie, then? Did you want me to let him drown—sir?”
“Mind your tongue, boy. We’ve got lifeboats for that sort of thing. We’d have had him out of there in no time.”
“But what about the lake cold?” Jerry James put in hotly. “It might have killed him before you could get to him.”
Captain West sneered. “I can see you’ve been listening to Cookie’s sea stories. The Lakes aren’t that cold in June.”
“Oh, n-no?” Jerry James asked wryly, pulling his blankets closer about him. “Th-then why are m-my t-t-teeth ch-chattering?”
A ripple of laughter ran through the onlooking men and Captain West swung on Jerry with his eyes sparking fiercely, furious at getting an argument from any of his crew.
“You young whippersnapper!” he roared. “If I had a brig aboard this ship, I’d put you in it—just to teach you some respect for your betters. Here,” he snarled, whirling on the men, “get back to work, you lazy louts.” He glanced at his watch. “You’ll hear about it if we’re late for the locks. All this grandstanding over a ship’s cook!” He glared at Sandy and Jerry. “You two! Down below to the galley! And remember—jumping in after your bald-headed friend may have made extra work for yourselves. While Cookie’s in bed for the next day or two, I’m going to be expecting you to do his work!”
Then Captain West spun around and rolled forward to his bridge.
As Sandy Steele and his friend went down the ladder, hardly able to believe that any man could be so unfair, they felt the ship’s engines begin to throb again.
TheJames Kennedywas once more making for the Soo.
“Sandy, we’re sinking!”
Jerry James’s forehead was wrinkled with concern beneath his jet-black hair as he uttered those words. It was the first thing either youth had said since they had returned to the galley and gone to work preparing the evening meal.
An hour ago, they had been shivering beneath their blankets. Now, the exertion of working in that overheated room, where the hard aluminum fixtures only served to refract the heat, had forced them to strip to the waist. Even so, their bodies glistened with sweat.
“I said we’re sinking, Sandy,” Jerry repeated, somewhat nervously.
Sandy nonchalantly swung the oven door shut as though his friend had said nothing more upsetting than, “It’s raining outside.” Smiling, he took off his asbestos glove and laid it on the stove top.
“You know, Jerry, I believe you’re right.”
“But, Sandy, I’m not joking! I tell you, I can feel the ship going down.”
“Of course you can,” Sandy said easily. “Let’s go watch it.”
Then Sandy grinned—and Jerry James clapped his hands to his forehead in dismay and cried, “Of course; we’re in the locks!”
“Right the second time,” Sandy laughed. “And I’ll bet if we had been going uplake, you would have sworn that we were flying! Come on, let’s go topside.”
They clambered above and feasted their eyes on one of the strangest sights they had ever seen.
TheJames Kennedywas floating in what can only be described as a long, narrow tub—almost a quarter mile in length and with about ten or fifteen feet clearance on either side of the sixty-foot-wide ship. What amazed Sandy and Jerry was that there were at least four more of these enormous, man-made tubs, some as large, others smaller. All of them held vessels of about the same size as theKennedy. Some even held two of them.
The tubs were formed by huge water gates at either end. Behind their boat, Sandy and Jerry could see the water level of Lake Superior. What astonished them was that it seemed to be higher than they were!
And it was.
At that very moment, as the two friends glanced over the side, they could see that water was being pumped out of their tub. They were, as Jerry James had said, sinking! The level of the water in their tub was dropping so fast that more and more of the water gate behind them became visible. Now, they could see, it had actually become a dam, holding out the waters of Lake Superior that rose above them.
One of the strangest sensations was to turn and glance at another one of the locks—for that is what these tubs are called—to see a boat that was headed upstream rising higher and higher in the air. Its tub was filling with water, making it float higher and higher until it would reach the same level as Lake Superior, and then it would sail out.
“Boy, oh, boy,” Jerry said, rolling his eyes. “I’m getting the same dizzy feeling you get in a department store. You know, Sandy—when you’re on the down escalator and you pass somebody on the up escalator.”
Sandy nodded in silence. He was too intent upon what was happening to bother to talk.
He craned his neck over the side to see what was happening up forward. Sandy saw that theJames Kennedywas now well over ten feet below the level of Lake Superior. Suddenly, the water gates at the forward end of the lock swung open.
They sailed out!
Sandy shook his head in amazement, and then he heard a friendly voice beside him say, “Pretty tricky, hey?” Turning around, Sandy saw one of the seamen who had helped pull Cookie out of the water. He was short but well-built, with dark-red hair and warm brown eyes. Sandy knew that the other men called him Sam.
“Did you ever sail through the Soo before?” Sam asked.
He seemed pleased when Sandy shook his head, as though he was delighted to have someone he could explain things to. As he began to talk, Jerry joined them.
“First off, boys,” Sam said, “I want you to know that the men all feel that was a mighty brave thing you did this afternoon. Don’t feel too bad about what the skipper said, either. He has his good days and his bad ones, and I guess today was one of the bad ones.”
Sandy and Jerry both bobbed their heads politely, hiding the grins that sprang to their faces when they realized that they were both thinking it was about time for Captain West to have one of his good days!
“Now,” Sam said, with a note of pride in his voice, “I’ll bet you didn’t know that you’ve just passed through the biggest shipping highway in the world.”
“Oh, no,” Jerry argued. “You don’t mean that the Soo is bigger than the Panama Canal.”
“And the Suez, too?” Sandy asked.
“Bigger’n both, boys. Of course, I mean more ships pass through these locks. Look,” he said, turning to survey the scene that was rapidly falling behind them. “Just look at that.”
Sandy Steele and Jerry James did take a long look, and when they had finished, they were inclined to agree with Sam. In all, there must have been fifty of those peculiar long boats passing through the locks at one stage or another, their stubby smokestacks sending thin columns of smoke into the darkening sky.
“Boy, oh, boy,” Jerry said. “And to think I never knew there was such a place two weeks ago.”
“You weren’t the only one, Jerry,” Sam said, smiling. “There aren’t too many Americans who know what you mean when you say Sault Sainte Marie.”
“What does that mean, anyway?” Sandy asked.
“Simple. It’s French for Rapids of St. Mary. You see, where we’re sailing now, the St. Mary’s River dropped twenty feet in less than a mile. With all of Lake Superior pouring through here down into Huron, that made for mighty rapid rapids. The Indians used to carry their canoes around the rapids. So did the Frenchies. Of course, as soon as commerce started springing up between the Lakes cities, and as soon as they started tapping all that ore up north, they had to have a way into Lake Superior that was safe for the big boats. So they built the locks.”
Neither youth opened his mouth to speak. They were impressed. But Sam’s reference to the ore deposits had also recalled to their minds the fact that this was no ordinary summer’s voyage for them. During the hard work of the day, and the excitement of pulling poor Cookie out of the water, they had forgotten their resolve to inform Mr. Kennedy of the good news that Captain West was treacherously keeping from him.
But now that Sam had spoken of ore, they remembered it, and Sandy asked the seaman, “Where are we headed now, Sam?”
“Well, now we’re on Lake Huron. We’ll head downlake for Detroit.”
“I didn’t know Detroit was on the Lakes.”
“It isn’t. Not properly, anyway. It’s on the Detroit River, but that’s just the waterway where Huron narrows and empties into Lake Erie.”
“Oh. Will we lay over there?”
“Well—” Sam grinned—“if we don’t—then I’m going to have a mighty disappointed wife and kids.”
“Oh, you live there. Well, thanks, Sam. Come on, Jerry—we’d better be getting back to work.”
The two friends went below. As they entered the galley and began setting up dinner, Sandy said to Jerry, “Maybe Captain West will let us go ashore in Detroit, tomorrow. If he does, we can telephone Mr. Kennedy.”
Jerry pursed his lips. “You know, Sandy, I’ve been thinking. We don’t really know that the skipper is working for that rival firm. I mean, all we have to go on is the fact that you saw him writing a letter addressed to a Mr. Paul Chadwick. That could just be coincidence.”
“Pretty tall coincidence.”
“Well, yes. But then again, Captain West might just happen to know Mr. Chadwick. It might be a personal letter.”
“That’s worse! Don’t you remember what Mr. Kennedy said about Chadwick? He said he wasn’t the sort of man he’d like to sit down to dinner with. He said he was only selling out because it was good business to accept his offer. If Captain West’s a friend of Chadwick’s, then he’s no friend of Mr. Kennedy’s!”
Sandy Steele was becoming excited. As usual, he had to keep brushing back the cowlick that kept falling in his eyes as he talked.
“Be reasonable, Jerry. Don’t you remember how Mr. Briggs talked so insultingly of Mr. Kennedy when we first came aboard? ‘Ma Kennedy’ he called him. Then, when I was in Captain West’s cabin, he kept calling him ‘Old Man Kennedy.’ Doesn’t sound like much respect for their employer. And this afternoon, when we came on deck with Cookie, the skipper tried to pump me.”
Jerry’s eyes flew open.
“That’s right,” Sandy rushed on. “I didn’t have time to tell you before. But he pretended to be friendly, just so he could find out how much I knew about Dad’s discovery of the high-grade ore deposits.”
Sandy Steele’s lips tightened.
“No, Jerry,” he said grimly. “Captain West is not to be trusted.”
Then, to the horror of both youths, they heard an ugly, mocking voice saying, “You don’t say?”
Sandy Steele and Jerry James turned and looked straight into the leering face of Captain West’s mate.
He stood in the doorway of the galley. His slender, tall body swayed slightly, and from the glazed expression of his eyes, Sandy and Jerry could guess that he was drunk. There was a bottle bulging in his hip pocket, and Sandy recognized it as the one from which someone had poured that drink of rum for him abovedecks.
“So!” Mr. Briggs lisped in a drink-thickened voice. “So Ma Kennedy’s little chicks don’t trust their skipper, eh?”
“You’d better get some sleep, Mr. Briggs,” Sandy said evenly.
The mate flushed angrily.
“Don’t tell me what to do, you double-crossing little show-off!” he grated. “Here, stand aside there, and let a man pass.”
He stepped into the galley, grinning wickedly, plainly unaware of how he wavered on his feet and disgusted, rather than frightened, the two youths. He all but fell as he moved to the little table on which Cookie had served them their breakfasts that morning. He sat down at it and pulled out the nearly empty bottle of rum and stood it at his elbow.
“So you’re going to run and tell tales out of school, hey? Going to tattle on us, are you?” He brought his hand down on the table top with a crash. “Not if I can help it!”
The rum bottle jumped and nearly fell to the floor. But Mr. Briggs grabbed it just in time. He threw back his head and tilted the bottle to his lips. “Ahhhh!” he said. “Now, serve me my dinner!”
Neither Sandy nor Jerry moved.
“You hear me?” the mate yelled angrily. “I’m mate aboard this scow. Bring me my dinner!”
Reluctantly, Jerry moved to obey. Mr. Briggs watched him, scowling. Then he banged the bottle on the table and said, “Have a drink, Blackie. That’ll put some zip into those lazy legs of yours.”
“My name’s Jerry,” Jerry replied hotly. “And I don’t drink.”
“Don’t drink, hey? Regular sissy, aren’t you? Well, I’m mate aboard this scow, and when I tell a man to drink, he drinks!”
Mr. Briggs lurched to his feet. Still swaying, he seized the bottle by its neck and moved toward Jerry.
Sandy Steele moved quickly to head him off. He well knew Jerry’s split-second temper and he wanted to stop the mate before he did something he would regret.
“Please, sir,” he pleaded. “Don’t! He’s getting your dinner. Now, if you’ll just sit down—”
The mate shouldered Sandy roughly aside.
“Out of my way,” he mumbled. “Here, you,” he said to Jerry, swinging the bottle up in an arc, “take a drink like I ordered you to.”
As Mr. Briggs brought the bottle up with a speed that might have dug the mouth of it deep into Jerry’s throat, the youth raised his own arm to defend himself. The bottle struck him on the forearm. A jet of rum came streaming out. It fell on the open flame of the stove, and a sheet of blue flame leaped up into the air.
It came dangerously close to the reeling mate. Frightened, Mr. Briggs brought his right arm around as though to shield his face from the flames. But he had forgotten that he still held the bottle. His gesture emptied the remainder of the bottle onto the stove and another jet of flames leaped toward him. This time, the fire reached one of the roasts standing on the stove.
With a popping and sizzling, the roast came alight, and now the panicky Mr. Briggs lunged for the roasting pan to remove it from danger. But all he succeeded in doing was to overturn a pan of grease, into which, in terror, he dropped the flaming roast.
In an instant, Cookie’s beloved galley had become a roaring caldron of flames.
“Fire!” he shrieked, and charged blindly into the passageway, covering his face with his hands.
“Fire! Fire! All hands on deck! Captain, Captain—come quick! Those blasted boys of Kennedy’s have set the ship on fire!”
For a split second, Sandy and Jerry stood rooted in helpless anger.
It was bad enough that the drunken, clumsy mate had set the galley ablaze. But now he had shifted the blame to them! The injustice of it was an outrage, and for the space of that split second, the two youths were so stunned that they could not move.
Then they sprang into action.
And to Jerry James’s amazement, Sandy Steele turned and ran from the flaming room.
“Sandy!” Jerry called. “Sandy, come back!”
But Sandy Steele kept on running up the passageway, and Jerry could not believe what he saw. Then, when Sandy disappeared into the cabin where Cookie had been placed, Jerry understood. “Good old Sandy,” he said proudly, and then he whirled and dashed down the passageway in the other direction—hunting for a fire extinguisher.
Cookie was half out of his bunk when Sandy rushed through the opened door. The little man had heard Mr. Briggs’s shout, and he had immediately dragged himself from his pillows. He was going to help put out the fire!
But he was too weak to get very far, and he lay half in, half out of his bed, panting, when Sandy burst in on him.
“Quick, Cookie!” Sandy said. “The galley’s on fire.”
“I know, boy,” Cookie gasped. “I heard the mate.” His eyes were sad as he gazed at Sandy. “How could you do it, Sandy?”
“I didn’t!” Sandy gritted between clenched teeth, as he stooped to wrap blankets around Cookie, before coming erect in the fireman’s carry.
“But the mate said—”
“He did it, not us!” Sandy replied. “Come on, Cookie—there’s no time for explanations.”
Gently supporting the little man on his right shoulder, Sandy hurried from the room. He took him to the cabin farthest from the blaze. Once inside, he placed Cookie on the bunk. The weakened little man looked around him in astonishment.
“This is the mate’s quarters,” he burst out. “You can’t put me in here, boy.”
“Never mind that,” Sandy said grimly. “I’d put you in the captain’s quarters, if I thought it would be safer. I’m not taking any chances on your getting trapped by the fire, Cookie.”
“Is it really that bad?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll soon find out! Now, you just stay put while I go back and help fight the fire.”
Without another word, Sandy turned and raced back down the passageway.
A wild scene greeted Sandy’s eyes.
Thick, greasy clouds of smoke—from the roasts and the other cuts of meat that had caught fire—rolled from the galley. Through the smoke, he could see the red and yellow of the flames. Sometimes a sheet of fire would lance out through the smoke, and there would be a hissing and a crackling that would warn the smoke-grimed and panting fire fighters that another big can of lard had exploded and caught fire and was now making their task even harder.
All along the passageway lay thick lines of hose. They were crisscrossed and intertwined, and, sometimes, when they leaped under the pressure of the water coursing through them, they gave the passageway the look of a snake pit.
Crewmen wearing fire helmets dashed up and down, helter-skelter, some of them with fire extinguishers in their hands, others carrying fire axes. A bucket brigade had been formed among the spare crewmen, and Sandy saw the buckets passing from hand to hand with the precision of an assembly line in a factory. The empty buckets would be passed up the ladder to be refilled by a man who fastened them to a rope and then lowered them into the lake.
From what Sandy could see, most of the fire seemed to be centered in the middle of the galley, next to the stove. Luckily, Cookie had wisely insisted that his old grease-soaked wooden cabinets be replaced by nonflammable metal ones, otherwise the fire would have been uncontrollable. As it was, it was bad enough. Flames shot higher and higher from the meat-chopping table. Here, the thick slab of wood had become thoroughly soaked by the overturned grease. Beneath the terrible roaring sound it gave off as it burned, Sandy could hear the hissing and snapping of the grease.
Above all the sound and fury of the fire itself, and the excited babble of the men as they rushed here and there to prevent the flames from spreading to the mess hall, Sandy could hear the booming of Captain West’s voice.
“You, there!” he shouted at Jerry James. “You with the fire extinguisher—over here! Now, then, through the smoke here onto that table!”
With his head picturesquely swathed in an undershirt which he kept removing to soak with water, Captain West was a romantic figure as he rushed up and down the passageway directing the fire fighting.
“Water!” he would thunder. “More water!” Or else: “You ax men, get busy in the mess hall! Chop up those tables and benches and get the wood abovedecks!”
Seeing him, hearing him, Sandy wished that Captain West was as loyal as he was commanding.
But there was little time for Sandy to waste in admiration of the skipper. All of these things that he witnessed passed through his mind in one swift, crowding instant—and then he too leaped into action.
The moment that Sandy rushed up there had been a loud explosion in the galley, and one of the ax men was thrown back against the bulkhead by the force of it. He slumped to the deck, unconscious, and his ax slipped from his hand.
Quick as a flash, Sandy seized the ax and joined the men at work in the mess hall, while two others quickly jumped to obey the skipper’s orders to remove the stricken man to a safe place. With a thrilling surge of confidence in the strength of his lean-muscled body, Sandy Steele began to swing his ax. His first stroke went whistling through the air and the ax blade bit deep into the thick wood of a bench. With a wrench requiring all of his power, Sandy yanked it free. Once again, he drove the blade downward.
Swish! Crack!
The bench split in two. Quickly, shortening his grip on the ax handle like a batter dragging a hit, Sandy stroked twice, backward and forward, and the bench had become a neatly stacked pile of kindling. With a glance of admiration, one of the crewmen scuttled forward, seized the bundle of sticks in his arms and carried them topside.
Meanwhile, as the men with the axes steadily demolished the mess-hall furniture, getting it safely out of harm’s way, the fire in the galley seemed to rage higher and higher. The heat in the passageway was now intense. The naked torsos of the fire fighters gleamed in the reflected light of the flames, and rivulets of sweat marked their course down flesh blackened by the greasy smoke. As the roar of the flames grew louder and louder, the expression of concern on Captain West’s face grew deeper.
He was thinking of the coal bunkers directly beneath the galley. If the fire should ever get to them, that would be the end!
Anxiously, Captain West peered through the smoke. It stung his eyes and made them water. He had to wind a wet cloth around his mouth to keep from choking. But he saw what he wanted to see.
That chopping table was still blazing away like an enormous torch. In fact, it was a torch—for the grease had prepared it for burning as completely as any stick dipped in pitch. But Captain West had seen that the fiery table had been partially burned through at the point where it was fastened to the wall. If he could chop it the rest of the way, the table would fall down. Then it could be pulled out into the passageway with hooks and the hoses could play upon it with full force.
In that way, Captain West reasoned, he could attack the fire at its very heart. Immediately, the skipper called for one of the ax-bearing crewmen to attempt the job. There was no time to lose. Another five or ten minutes, and the coal would go up!
The crewman slipped quickly into a heavy raincoat to shield his body from the flames. He saturated a cloth with water, wound it around his lower face, and plunged into the smoke.
In an instant, he came reeling back—choking and sputtering.
“It’s too much, sir,” he gasped. “No man can go into that stuff and live.”
Before Captain West could reply, Sandy Steele had raced down the passageway from the mess hall.
“Let me have that raincoat,” he said to the astounded man. “I think I know a way to get that table out.”
Still choking, the man took off his coat. Captain West opened his mouth to protest, but then, seeing that Sandy was dead serious, he closed it again and let the determined youth take over.
“Jerry!” Sandy called to his chum. “Quick! You get one on, too. Then, you protect me with the fire extinguisher while I swing the ax.”
Jerry James nodded. Like his friend, he garbed himself in one of the heavy black slickers, covered his nose and mouth with a soaked cloth, and preceded him into the smoke. Jerry held his extinguisher like a soldier wielding a light machine gun, spraying the flames with a constant stream of thick, white chemicals.
Behind him moved Sandy Steele, grasping his ax.
The combination that worked so well on the playing fields of their home state of California was now going into action far, far from home, and in a far more serious cause. But it was working just as well!
Choking, sputtering, staggering, all but blinded, Sandy Steele charged to the reddish blur he could see a few feet ahead of him in the smoke. Waves of heat rolled against his body and he felt himself going weak. But he lowered his head and struck on.
Once, a tongue of flame seemed about to gather in volume and leap toward him from the roaring chopping-block. Just in time, a jet of thick white liquid streamed out toward it and smothered it before it could get started. Good old Jerry, Sandy thought.
At last, he had made it to within a few feet of the burning table!
It was as close as he dared go.
Without hesitation, Sandy Steele raised his ax and brought it down, hard.
Crash!
The table seemed to sway. Sandy raised his arms again, wondering if he would have the strength for another blow. He was thoroughly sick, now—nauseated by that sickening, grease-laden smoke. The effort of his first mighty stroke had all but sapped his strength. Yet, he could not falter now! He had to do it! One more stroke would slice through the remaining wood. Calling upon all his reserves, Sandy Steele rocked backward on his heels, rose on his toes and brought the ax down upon the wood.
It was a blow that rang out even above the roar of the flames! Even the weary men gathered in the passageway could hear it.
And it severed the table from the thick bolt that had held it to the bulkhead.
Sandy Steele jumped back just in time.
With a loud crash and a flashing of sparks and a shooting of flames, the table fell toward him.
The momentum of Sandy’s jump sent him staggering backward, off balance. That was how he emerged from the cloud of smoke that separated the excited, yelling crewmen from the fire inside the galley.
Behind Sandy, running low and gasping, but still clutching his fire extinguisher, came Jerry James.
If someone had not caught Sandy, he would have gone sprawling. As it was, he was having difficulty keeping his legs under him. They seemed to have gone all rubbery from his ordeal. But he clenched his teeth and stayed erect, watching as the crewmen began to drag the blazing table from the galley into the direct play of massed hoses and extinguishers. It sizzled and smoked and sent off clouds of steam as though it were a small volcano, but the fire was at last put out.
Then, one by one, all of the other burning articles within the galley were separated from the main body of the fire and doused. The hoses sent streams of lake water splashing against the now-smoldering and smoking bulkheads. The bucket brigade was disbanded, for it was no longer needed.
And then, as Sandy Steele felt the youthful vigor of his body swiftly returning, his eyes fell on an object that he dearly wished to preserve for the eyes of Captain West.
It was the rum bottle.
It lay beside the stove, almost at the exact point where it had fallen from the hand of Mr. Briggs.
Here was not only the cause of the fire. Here was proof of who really had started it!
Sandy slipped from the support of the friendly arms that had grasped him. He bent to pick up an asbestos glove dropped by one of the crewmen. He slipped it on his right hand and walked quickly forward to retrieve the bottle.
As he leaned over, he felt himself jostled aside. He nearly fell down again. A tall man stepped in front of him and swung the flat of an ax down on the bottle. He did it deliberately. He shattered the bottle into a hundred pieces.
“Why did you do that?” Sandy cried, unable to hide his anger.
The man in front of him turned with a wicked smile, and said, “You could have burned yourself on that, Little Lord Show-off—and you’re in enough hot water already.”
It was Mr. Briggs.
No one was less surprised than Sandy Steele when the order came for him and Jerry James to report to Captain West in his cabin.
It was by then close to midnight. Once the fire had been put out, there had remained the task of clearing away the debris and cleaning up. This had occupied the crew for a few more hours, and Sandy and Jerry had not been happy to hear the grumbles about burned suppers and lost sleep or to see the glances of hostility that were directed their way. Mr. Briggs, it seemed, had been as expert in spreading his falsehoods among the crew as he had been in taking them to Captain West.
Only Sam had remained friendly, and it had been Sam who had brought the order.
“Captain says you two are to report to him right away,” Sam said. He shook his head sadly. “Too bad, boys,” he went on. “If I can read storm signals right, I’d say you were in for it.”
“In for it!” Jerry burst out hotly. “Is that what we get for putting out the fire?”
“Hold it, Jerry,” Sandy said gently, calming his friend down. “That won’t do any good.” He looked at Sam. “I suppose Mr. Briggs is with him?”
Sam seemed surprised. “Now, how do you know that?”
Sandy’s answer was a grim tightening of his lips. On the subject of Mr. Briggs, he did not trust himself to speak. Sandy wondered how much longer he was going to be able to control his temper. It seemed to him that every time either he or Jerry did something they were supposed to do, even something they really needn’t have done, their only reward was some penalty or a leer from Mr. Briggs or an insult from the skipper. What had begun as a high school boy’s dream of a splendid way to spend the summer seemed to be turning into a nightmare. Sandy let out his breath in a deep sigh. He looked at Jerry and was startled to see the sulky expression on his friend’s normally cheerful countenance.
“I’m not going,” Jerry said sullenly.
“Wha-a-at?” Sam said, as though he couldn’t believe his ears. “What did you say, young fellow?”
Before Jerry could reply, Sandy had propelled him up the passageway and out of earshot. He didn’t want their friend Sam to get the notion that they were mutinous.
“Jerry,” he whispered fiercely, “you’ve got to stop talking like that!”
“I don’t care!” Jerry said stoutly. “We’ve been pushed around long enough, and now I’ve got to get it off my chest. Listen, Sandy—you know very well what’s going to happen when we get in there with the captain. He’s going to accuse us with a lot of lies that he’s heard from the mate. He’ll not only forget that we risked our lives to get at that table, but he’ll turn around and say we started the fire.”
“Shhh!” Sandy said, looking around anxiously.
Jerry lowered his voice, but he didn’t stop talking. “It’s true! Why, look what he said to you after you rescued poor old Cookie from drowning! He acted as though you’d jumped in just to make him late for the Soo Locks. Honestly, Sandy, I don’t know why you bother—”
“Because we’ve got to!” Sandy insisted, squeezing Jerry’s arm. “Don’t you realize that a captain aboard ship is a lot different from a teacher or a football coach? He’s got you in his power, Jerry. His word is law! Really. You can’t disobey him!”
“Oh, no?” Jerry said.
“If you do,” Sandy warned, “you’ll wind up in jail. I mean it, Jerry. Now is just the time when we’ve got to keep our heads.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. Then he went on: “Captain West must know by now that we’ve found out about him. You remember that Mr. Briggs was out in the passageway, eavesdropping, while we were talking about it. He’s certainly told the skipper. Now, with the fire, he’s got an excuse to do something that will keep us from warning Mr. Kennedy.”
Jerry’s eyes widened. “Such as what?” he asked. “Such as locking us up somewhere.”
There was a momentary silence, and then Jerry James groaned and said, “Boy, oh, boy, we reallyarein trouble, aren’t we?”
Sandy smiled in relief. He could tell by the tone of his friend’s voice that he had gotten over his resentment. With a reassuring squeeze of Jerry’s arm, Sandy continued, “We are. That’s why we’ve got to stay calm. So, whatever you do, Jerry, don’t say or do anything foolish when we get in there with Captain West.”
Jerry James’s jaw tightened and he clapped his friend on the arm. “Right,” he said, and then the two of them walked up the passageway and knocked on the door of Captain West’s cabin.
“Come in,” the skipper growled.
They entered.
“What took you so long?” Captain West snapped.
“We were delayed,” Sandy said.
“Oh,” the skipper mocked, glancing over at his mate, who sat on the bunk. “Did you hear that, Briggs? They were delayed, he says. Well,” he sneered, his voice turning ugly, “you’ll have plenty of time for delays where I’m putting you.”
The skipper peered at them with eager expectation, as though he hoped his remarks would goad them into losing their tempers. Observing this, Sandy was inwardly pleased. He realized that the skipper could not be too confident of himself, that he was not sure of how much the youths actually knew—no matter what Mr. Briggs had said to him.
“Well?” the skipper roared, crashing his fist down on his desk. “What have you to say to that?”
“Nothing, sir,” Sandy replied evenly.
A red flush began to spread over Captain West’s face. But it was supplanted by a cunning look.
“Playing doggo, eh?” he muttered. “Well, we’ll see.” He looked over at his mate with a grin, and said, “Now, you just tell that story of yours again, Mr. Briggs.”
The mate nodded.
“It was this way, sir,” he started, gazing up at the overhead with an expression of shocked innocence. “Just before suppertime, I happened to be passing the galley and saw these two.” He lowered his eyes and jabbed a dirty thumb in the direction of Sandy and Jerry. Then he raised his eyes again and said, “They were playing catch with a can of tomatoes.”
Jerry gasped in indignation, and Sandy quickly gave him a warning nudge.
“That’s what they were doing, sir—throwing it back and forth like a couple of schoolkids at a picnic. Then this black-haired fellow here, he let go a good one and it went right through the grandstander’s hands and hit the can of fat on the stove and knocked it over on the fire. And then, sir,” the mate concluded, a note of smugness in his voice, “then, sir, the fat was really in the fire.”
With a look of gloating, the captain swung his eyes on Sandy and Jerry—and that was when Sandy opened his mouth and said, “He’s a liar.”
Almost the moment that the words dropped from his lips, Sandy Steele wished he could have bitten his tongue in two. But he had finally had to give in to the resentment that had been smoldering inside him almost from the moment he had walked aboard theJames Kennedy. But, to say that, after all his good advice to Jerry! He glanced over at his friend, half expecting him to be disgusted with him.
He was grinning!
Then Sandy had to laugh, too—if not from the delight so plain on Jerry’s saucy face, then from the look of injury on the face of the mate. Mr. Briggs actually acted as though he had been unfairly accused! So, Sandy laughed—and when he did, Captain West arose from his chair with a roar of rage.
“Get out of here! You smooth-faced, insubordinate little firebugs! Get back to your quarters and stand by to face a court of inquiry on charges of arson and insubordination! That’ll teach you to laugh at me and call my mate a liar! Eh? How about that, eh? How will your friend, Old Man Kennedy, like that, eh, when he hears that his white-faced schoolboys are headed for some Buffalo jail? And you, Mr. Briggs, I’m ordering you to keep these two under lock and key until we get to Buffalo.” Then, puffing up his chest like a giant bullfrog, Captain West issued a final roar:
“GET OUT!”
Their heads held high, Sandy and Jerry marched back to their quarters.
And the door had hardly swung shut behind them, before the skipper whirled and pounced upon his mate with the low snarl of an enraged puma. With a cry and a whimper, the fawning mate who had opened his mouth for words of toadying praise, cringed back against the bulkhead.
“No, Skipper, don’t,” he whined, but Captain West ignored his pleas and seized him by the shirt collar and began to shake him.
“You lying, sniveling drunk!” the skipper growled. “Do you think you fooled me for a moment? I saw you smash that rum bottle in front of that Steele boy’s face tonight. I smelled your breath when you came reeling down the passageway, shrieking like the lily-livered ninny you are.” He shook Mr. Briggs again, fiercely. “Do you think I believed that cock-and-bull story of yours? Do you? Answer me!”
Terrified, the mate babbled, “N-no, sir.”
“But you still took me for a fool, is that it?” the skipper snarled, almost beside himself. Then, seeing Mr. Briggs burst into a fit of uncontrollable blubbering, he uttered a growl of disgust and flung him back on the bunk like a sack of wheat. He returned to his desk and sat down again.
“Briggs,” he said heavily, “if it wasn’t for the fact that I can make use of you, I’d have skinned you alive long ago. I pretended to believe you tonight only because I saw a chance to put those nosy brats of Kennedy’s in their place. I want them under lock and key until that deal is signed in Buffalo. And that’s the day after tomorrow.” The skipper drew another deep breath. “They belong to you, Briggs,” he said. “And you’ll answer for them with your hide.” His voice took on an ugly, menacing tone that raised bumps of fear all along the mate’s spine.