CARADOC WINS HIS FIGHT
CARADOC WINS HIS FIGHT
Trembling all over, Madden gained the barrel and stepped through a niche in its side. He stared through the brilliant, hot colors, but no rushing horde of monsters met his eyes.
"Which way?" he asked breathlessly.
Caradoc looked around at him in uncomprehending misery. There was just room for the two in the barrel. Smith seemed to put his mind to Madden's question with an effort.
"Which—what did you say?"
"Which way?"
"What do you mean?"
"The dragons, man, the dragons!"
"Dragons—right here!" Smith beat his broad chest, then waved his long arms about. "Everywhere—don't you smell it?"
The idea of smelling dragons confused the American. "Smell what?"
"The whiskey!" shivered Caradoc. "I came up here to get away from it."
"Oh—so you didn't see—I understand!"
"It's tantalizing—horrible!" he shivered again, as if the superheated air chilled him.
The American's own foolish fancies vanished in the face of his friend's real trouble. Caradoc had met a dragon more terrible than the Sargasso could conjure up, and its fangs were in his heart. His flight to the crow's nest had been an effort to escape its fury, but it had followed him there. Leonard put a hand on his friend's shoulder. He was at a loss what to say. Indeed there was nothing to say.
"Habit—queer thing, Leonard—I thought I was all right."
"Yes?"
"You see, in college I used to take an alcohol rub-down after my bouts, and a drink. And now, after my fight at noon—smelling this—you don't know how it brings it back, appetite, recollections, everything——" he waved his hands hopelessly again.
"Don't think of it. Put your mind on something else."
Caradoc gave a short mirthless laugh. "Stand in a fire—and consider the lilies?"
"We've got to consider how we'll ever get out of here, if we can't run this tug's engines..."
"We're stuck! We're stuck!" declared the Englishman miserably. "I don't see why I don't go down and be a hog again... we'll finally starve... Somehow I had a mind to die sober... God knows why I ever came on such a junket."
"Starve nothing. We'll get out somehow. We can fish and eat seaweed and distill our own water. I can make a still. And you'll get over that appetite. Bound to—can't last always."
Smith relapsed into silence, staring over the dying colors of the sea. Madden tried to think of simple remedies to abate a drunkard's appetite for alcohol. He had heard of apples, lemon juice, but both were as unobtainable as the gold cure itself.
"How long have you been like this?" he asked at last.
"Been bad two or three years. Drank some all my life. My governor taught it to me when I was a baby. Then when I got older if I went too far he kicked. Naturally I intended to stop in time, till I slipped in deep."
Leonard nodded understandingly. "It always gets a nervous high-strung fellow. The better stuff you are the harder it hits you."
Caradoc stared moodily seaward as he continued his recollections.
"The governor kept warning me. I don't believe he'd ever have kicked me out, but he died. Then they cashiered me—took my commission—and my family let me go, too... Well, I can't blame 'em."
"Your commission—in the army?"
"Navy."
"What were you?"
"Second lieutenant."
Madden looked at his friend curiously. Here was a queer pass for an English naval officer. This revelation explained a good deal about Smith, his autocratic manner, his many-sided education, his emotion at leaving England. It even explained why he had expected Malone to place him in charge of the dock.
"Is there any hope of getting back in?" asked Leonard sympathetically.
"Instauration! Never knew of such a thing in our navy. If I ever get out of here I'll go in trade somewhere."
"In South America?"
"I had British Honduras in mind, or Canada. I'd like to keep in the Empire."
A noise below interrupted the conversation. The two youths looked down. The deck plan of the tug lay flat and empty save for the inert form of Gaskin. The noise came from inside the cabin and arose to a shouting. It was a drunken ribald sound. A suspicion flashed on Leonard's mind.
"Those pigs below are wasting the stores," he declared.
"They ought to be stopped."
"I couldn't stop them without a fight. They were about to court martial me when they happened to think of something else."
Caradoc stared down in the direction of the noise, "I might talk them into sense if Greer isn't drunk and wanting to fight again."
"He said he never drank—I don't know."
Caradoc nodded, "I'll go down and send them forward," he asserted with conviction, and started to climb out of the barrel.
Madden looked at the Englishman with a certain apprehension, "Caradoc, if you go down there where they are drinking, won't you——"
"No, I'm not going to drink."
"It will be a temptation."
"I have myself in hand now. This talk has done me good. No, I'm all right." He swung out of the barrel and started down the ratlines.
Leonard watched him anxiously, not at all sure of the outcome of his mission, not at all sure that the hot smell of rum in the galley would not again overcome his resistance.
The sun was just dipping into the sea and its last light spread out of the west to the zenith like a huge red-gold fan. Purplish shadows had already begun to dim the tug and dock and ocean.
Fifteen or twenty degrees above the sunset shone a pale crescent moon in the burnished sky. The sight of the moon somehow cheered Madden. He recalled a childish superstition that it was good luck to see the new moon clear. At any rate, as the sky darkened, the clear new moon brought Leonard comfort and renewed hope.
With a grateful feeling of the providence of an Almighty that hung out moon and stars, the youth glanced around the darkening horizon and presently observed a tiny light far to the south. He stared at it quite surprised, and then he chanced to see a star just above it. It was the reflection of Sirius in Canis Major.
The beam of a star must lead any thoughtful soul into endless reveries. Beneath its calm and infinite light, all human troubles fade to the brief complaining of a child in the night. Death becomes a small, unfeared thing, and life itself, the trail of a finger writing an unknown message upon water.
Filled with such musings, the American noted with surprise that the light on the sea which he had fancied to be the reflection of Sirius was moving. It was not the reflection of a star.
It was a light moving in the gathering darkness.
What sort of light could it be? A Will o' the Wisp? A Jack o' Lantern, some phosphoric phenomenon rising in the exhalations of rotting seaweed?
Ten minutes before, his excited imagination would have conjured up hydras and dragons; now he scrutinized the mysterious illumination unexcitedly. It winked out occasionally, then presently reappeared. But it did not move in an aimless fashion, after the manner of gaseous or electrical phenomena. It pursued a straight line toward theVulcan. That was why Madden had not observed its movement sooner.
Although it had crept only a little way down from the horizon, the wondering boy could discern its progress plainly among the dark masses of seaweed that blotched the graying water. The light was moving toward theVulcanand at a high rate of speed.
As he watched it, the enigmatical light suddenly disappeared. The youth blinked his eyes, looked again. It was gone. Then he became a little uncertain whether or not he had ever observed any such phenomenon. He glanced down on the dark deck and could faintly discern the form of the cook.
"Gaskin!" he called sharply, "Gaskin!"
To his surprise the drunken fellow stirred and made some mumbling reply.
"Get up. I want to know whether or not you can see anything."
Came a sluggish stirring from below, and then Gaskin's voice, in which deference struggled with a bad headache, "Yes, sor, I can see hever'thing as usual, sor."
"I thought I saw a light to the south. Just take a look in that quarter, will you?"
The dopy cook scuffled to his feet and stumbled over to the rail, hung there, peering intently southward. At that moment, there burst out of the sea a brilliant illumination that fairly blinded Madden. Shocked into spasmodic action, the American jumped from barrel to ratlines.
He hardly knew how he got down, as much of a fall as a climb. Strange fearsome thoughts chased through his head. The men were right about something attacking theMinnie B. Now the same thing had attacked theVulcan. TheVulcanwould be sunk. He must rush the men out of the galley into the small boat. He must race back to the dock. The dock apparently was safe. What the startling apparition was, he had no time to speculate. When he touched the deck he sprinted for the cabin.
As he passed Gaskin the light vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared, and left the tug in inky darkness.
Madden heard the cook give a deferential cough and then say, "Yes, sor, Hi saw it, Mr. Madden, saw it quite plainly, sor."
A moment before Leonard reached the cabin door, someone flung the shutter open violently and shouted his name in the utmost alarm.
"Mister Madden! Mister Madden! Come quick, sir!"
The American lunged through the dark aperture straight into the fellow's arms. In the darkness he could not make out who it was.
"Don't be afraid! Did you see it? Where are the rest of the men?"
"In the galley, sir, with him!" stammered the sailor,
"Are they in a funk?" gasped Madden, feeling that he himself was in one.
"Oh, they are that, sir."
"Why don't they come on out? We must get 'em out!"
"They're with him, sir, 'fraid to touch 'im!"
"With who?"
"Mr. Caradoc, sir."
"Afraid to touch him—why, what's the matter?"
"'E's dead, sir."
A feeling as if ice water had been dashed over his body shivered through Leonard. The black cabin seemed to swing under his feet. His arms dropped down and he stood perfectly still staring into the blackness from whence came the sailor's voice.
"You—you don't mean he'sdead?" he asked in a shocking whisper.
"That I do, sir, dead as a lump o' seaweed."
Madden turned and walked with a queer light feeling toward the galley. He was in no hurry now. If that strange light sank them, drowned them, it made little difference. An idea came into his mind.
"Did—did you fellows kill him—murder, him?" he asked in a hard undertone.
The tenseness of his voice seemed to scare the sailor, "No, sir, no, sir, no, sir!" repeated the cockney over and over.
"For I'll shoot the man down like a dog! I'll hang him! I'll—I'll——"
"We—we didn't touch 'im!" cried the sailor in hoarse alarm. "'E done it 'isself, sir. Went clean crazy, kilt hisself—'orrible!" As the sailor gasped out "horrible" they entered the cook's galley where a dim light burned and a group of silent, sobering men stood in a knot over some object.
Madden shoved through to where two men stooped over a long body, dimly seen on the decking. The two men were Hogan and Deschaillon.
With his strange feeling still strong upon him, Madden knelt between the two. Caradoc lay limp and motionless, with a dark stain slowly spreading on the boards under his head.
"Tell me about this," commanded Leonard, thrusting a hand under the prostrate man's shirt and feeling for his heart. The request set loose a babble.
"'E did it 'isself, sor!" "Split hopen 'is own 'ead, right enough!" "W'ack, 'e took 'isself, w'ack!" "Aye, that 'e did, sor!" "It sounds queer, an' it looked queerer, but 'e did, sor!"
Madden made a sharp angry gesture for silence, "One at a time. Mulcher, what happened?"
"'E comes in, Mr. Madden," began the cockney more composedly, "an' says, 'Forward, men, lively now,' an' Galton 'e turns an' says, 'Ye may take that, ye—'"
Again came the irrepressible chorus, "Aye, that 'e did, sor!"
"If a man speaks before I address him, I'll brain him!" shouted Madden. "Hogan, what happened?"
"If you plaze, Misther Madden, Misther Smith came in and asked iv'rybody to stip forward and quit atin' up th' grub. Galton was mad innyway, an' had a glass o' whiskey in his hand. 'Quit atin'!' yills Galton. 'A officer niver wants nobody to ate but himself.' Then, 'Take thot!' he yills, and flings his whiskey straight into Smith's face.
"Av cour-rse, we ixpected to see him smash Galton to smithereens, him being dhrunk—Galton, I mane—but he stood still as a post, sir, and tur-rned white as a sheet. I filt sorry for th' gintilmin—him putting up sich a good foight this avening—so Oi thought if he didn't want to fight, I'd help him pass it off aisy. I had a glass o' liquor in me own hand. I offers it to him. Says I, 'Pay no attention to th' spalpeen at all, Misther Smith,' says I; 'he's a fool to be throwin' away good liquor loike that; and have this dhrink on me, and if he does it again Oi'll pitch him out o' the port.' With that I handed him me glass.
"Well, sir, he took it, an' I belave there was niver another face on earth loike his, whin he hild up that glass to th' lamp. His hand shook so some of the sthuff shpilled. His face was loike a corpse. He shtarted to dhrink. Put it to his lips. Thin of a suddint, loike it had shtung him, he yills out, 'God 'a' mercy!' flings down th' glass, which smashes all over th' floor, lowers his head an' plunges loike a football tackle, head fir-rst, roight into th' sharp edge o' that locker there where ye see th' blood an' hairs stickin'. Down he wint, loike he's hit wid an axe, wid his skull broke in siv'ral pieces no doubt. Mad as a hatter, sir, fr-rom th' hate. Though it's sich an onrasonable tale, sir, I won't raysint it if ye call me a liar to me teeth."
Madden had found the Englishman's heart still beating. He pressed his fingers in the long bloody wound on his head and the skull appeared sound enough under the long gash.
"Get him out on deck," he ordered sharply, in an effort to keep his voice from choking in his throat.
"Out on deck! He's not dead! Get him in fresh air!"
Hogan, Deschaillon, and two navvies caught him by the legs and arms. Madden lifted the bleeding head from which the blood still ran in a steady trickle. The crowd gave back and the five men with their grewsome burden passed through the galley's door into the dark passage.
Just then a sudden vibration went through the whole ship, as if theVulcanhad been struck by some enormous force. The men carrying Smith staggered. There burst out a blare of confusion, amazed cries, shouts of terror. There was a stampede in the narrow passage. Flying men bumped into the bearers of the sick man. They were shrieking, "We're struck! We're foundering! Th' sea sorpint's got us!"
"Launch the small boat and stand by till we get there!" bellowed Madden.
All the carriers dropped Smith's body and bolted in the panic. Madden braced himself against the rush of the crew and held up the senseless man lest he be trampled on in the blackness. The uproar in the passage was terrific as the men tried to squeeze through all together. Every moment Madden expected a rush of sea water down the passageway. Just then, he felt someone else lift at Caradoc.
"Go on," said Farnol Greer's voice. "Let's get him out, sir."
TOWED!
TOWED!
When the American pushed outside with his burden, a breeze swept the deck of theVulcanwith an unexpected coolness. The vibrations had almost ceased, but there was a slight hissing of water from somewhere, and a feeling of movement. The men were in a hubbub on the port side where the small boat lay tied.
Filled with the idea that the ship was about to founder, Madden stared about. To his vast astonishment, he discovered the tug was not sinking, but moving. TheVulcanwas under way. The noise he heard was the swift displacement of water. For some unaccountable reason, the vessel glided southward at a speed of eight or ten knots.
In the uproar forward, Madden heard the cries: "Th' dinghy's swamped!" "We carn't reach 'er!" "Cut 'er loose and jump!" "We couldn't right 'er in th' water!" "Cut 'er and jump! Quick! 'Eaven knows w'ot's got us!"
"Steady! Steady, men!" bawled Madden, laying Caradoc down on the deck and hurrying across to his panicky crew. "What's moving us?"
"We don't know, sir! Th' sea sorpint! Grabbed our cable and made off!"
"Can you see it?"
"Just make it out, sir, ahead!"
"Cut th' cable!" cried another voice; "that'll get us loose!"
"Yes, get an axe—Quick!"
A dim figure came running aft past Madden for the axe. The American shouted at him: "Come back! Don't touch that towing line! Let things alone!"
"Yes, but this'll drag us to the bottom!" chattered one of the men forward.
"We'll get in the dinghy when the ship goes down!"
"We might row to the dock from here!"
The men stood in a string along the rail, below them in the hissing water the dinghy tossing topsy turvy.
"What's towing us? I don't see it?" cried Madden.
Several arms pointed forward. Leonard peered through the gloom. The crescent moon and the stars filtered down a tinsel light. The faint shine merely made the darkness more evident Madden seemed to catch a glimmer of a bulk at the end of the anchor line some hundred yards distant. He listened but heard only the gurgle of theVulcan'swake and the creak of her plates.
When the sheer panic of surprise had worn away somewhat, the weirdness of the uncanny voyage came upon the crew with tenfold force. They stood gripping the rail, staring ahead with the feeling of condemned prisoners on their way to the gallows.
"We're 'eaded for the 'ole in th' sea!" muttered Mulcher.
"We'll go down tug an' hall," mumbled Galton unsteadily. "Fish bait, that's w'ot we are!"
"I've heard sea serpents can sting a man and numb him so he won't live or die," shivered Hogan, "like a spider stings a fly."
They spoke in half whispers under the influence of the unknown terror.
"If anything happens, I shall keel myself," declared Deschaillon, with nervous intensity, "but I shall see it first."
"That's w'ot went with the other two crews—killed theirselves," chattered Mulcher.
Another silence fell. The cool breeze came as a sort of mockery of their unknown peril. For the first time since the storm every man was thoroughly comfortable physically.
"Boys," planned Hogan, "whin th' thing comes aboard, we'll put up th' best foight we can!"
"It don't come aboard—it bites a 'ole in th' 'ull."
"Aye, like th'Minnie B."
Just then a figure approached the men unsteadily, and Madden saw that Caradoc had recovered consciousness and was able to walk. As the tall, gaunt figure approached, the crew eyed him as if he were some new danger, then he asked.
"What is this? Are we moving?"
"Yes we're off," replied Madden.
"Under our own power?" he inquired, turning around and staring at the smokeless funnel.
"No, we're being towed."
"Towed! Towed!" exclaimed Smith in a weak voice. "What's towing us?"
"We don't know, sor," replied a cockney.
There was a silence in which Caradoc stood tall and cadaverous as a ghost. "Am I dreaming this, Madden?" he muttered finally. "Did you say we were beingtowed?"
"That's right."
"What's towing us—not—not the dry dock—don't say the dry dock's towing us!"
"We don't know, sor," repeated the cockney.
"Where are we going?"
"To be killed, sor."
Caradoc moved slowly over to the rail and sat against it near Madden.
"A cool breeze," he murmured gratefully.
The American was lost amid the wildest speculations as to the mysterious agent that had theVulcanin tow. He was trying to think logically, but found it hard in that atmosphere of terror. The utter weirdness of the whole affair defied analysis. The towing of theVulcanby an unknown power was the very climax of the fantastic. No hypothesis he could form even remotely approached an explanation.
It could not be some sea monster surging steadily at the tow line of theVulcan. That theory was untenable. A monster might attack; it would never tow.
But any other, attempt to account for the strange predicament fell equally as flat. What human agency would operate so mysteriously in this hot, stagnant sea? Why should any group of men entrap the helpless crew of theVulcanwith such a display of mystery and power? It was useless. It was ridiculous. It was shooting a mosquito with a field gun.
All his thoughts ended in utter absurdity. He felt that he had run up against some vast power. The schoonerMinnie B, the tugVulcan, were but trifling units in the enigma of this deserted, weed-clogged sea. It must be some power whose operations were ocean-wide.
Why such a spot should be chosen?—Why a power that sank one ship out of hand and towed another mile after mile?—Why it operated only at night?—What lay at the heart of this brooding fabric of terror—he could not form the slightest conception. Outlawry, piracy, smugglery, were all goals too small for such operations.
His thoughts seemed to be physical things trying to clamber up the smooth polished side of an enormous steel plate. They made not the slightest progress. The more he thought, the more unaccountable all phases of the question became.
In absolute perplexity, he turned to the Englishman at his side. He could just make out the blur of Caradoc's face.
"Have you a theory about this, Smith?" he asked in a low voice.
The Englishman nodded in silence.
"What is it?"
"I—I got my head hurt awhile ago. I believe I'm delirious—dreaming."
Leonard thought this over without any feeling of amusement. "That doesn't explain why I see it too," he objected gravely. "Nothing wrong with my head—that I know of." He tried the time honored experiment of pinching himself.
"I shall assume that I am awake," he decided after he had felt his pinch. "I may not be, but I'm going to act as if I were."
Madden had an impression that Caradoc was smiling in the darkness. Just then Gaskin began laughing shrilly in a queer metallic voice.
"Quit that!" snapped half a dozen thick voices at once, as if his laughter had violently shocked their tense nerves.
Gaskin pointed a stumpy arm off the starboard bow, "Look! Look!" he gasped. "It's that rotten whiskey! Whiskey done it! Whiskey made me see that! Look w'ot whiskey done!"
Leonard had no idea that anything could be added to the nightmarish quality of the adventure, but there off the starboard arose a great bulk, blotting out the stars. It was not a ship; it was not a barge; there was not a light on it, but it seemed somehow dimly illuminated. It was as shapeless as death.
"The Flyin' Dutchman!" shuddered Galton.
"It burns a blue light!" corrected Hogan with chattering teeth.
"Th' ship o' the dead!" shivered Mulcher.
A sudden explanation flashed into Madden's head. "You fools are afraid of our own dry dock," he whispered briefly. "We've traveled in a circle and reached the dock again."
"Oh, no, sor, it ain't that! Tain't th' dry-dock, sor!" aspirated several fear-struck voices.
The crew held their breaths as if the apparition might vanish as suddenly as it appeared.
By this time the moon lay flat on the sea, throwing a faint shining streak across the dark Sargasso. This vague light was enough to show Madden, when he took a close look, that it was not the dock.
The thing he saw was an enormous mass without the severe angular shape of the great dock. Its outline rose crude and shapeless, as well as he could trace it among the canopy of stars, and gave not the slightest intimation as to what use it could be.
As they stared, the speed of theVulcanslackened sensibly. The faint rippling of water under the prow ceased. The breeze fell away into a dead blanket of heat. It was as if a sweatbox had been cooped over the crew.
"The thing's cut loose from us," said a weary voice.
Hogan laughed shortly: "Everybody out—fifteen minutes for refrishmints."
"Yonder goes that thing!" cried Galton. "Hi can see it!"
Indeed, by peering carefully, Madden could follow the slender outline of the mysterious craft that had towed theVulcanto this uncanny spot. It had now left the tug and was gliding away to the great misshapen fabric that sprawled on the sea.
Every eye strained to see the outcome of this strange maneuver, when suddenly from the gliding vessel there shot a dazzling light that spread over the bulky mass. Under the beating illumination every detail of the huge vessel stood out garishly. She was immense, with a broad flat prow like a railway ferryboat. She stood high in the water and seemed to have three promenade decks around her.
There was no mast, no rigging, no outside gearing. One squat funnel amidship told that she used steam for some purpose, and out of this funnel black masses of smoke rose slowly in the motionless air. She resembled no craft Madden had ever seen.
Notwithstanding her enormous size, everything about the vessel impressed Madden that she was built for secrecy. She was squat, considering her length and breadth. It was as if her designer were trying to make a craft invisible at sea. As near as Madden could determine in the strange light, she was painted a pale sky-blue. During the day, no doubt, she melted into the sky like a chameleon.
As the smaller craft approached its huge mate, its circle of light contracted until it finally concentrated into a dazzling white spot centered on the prow of the monster. This spot diminished to an intense point, like an electric arc between carbons. A sharp reflection of this point streaked the water between the tug and the mysterious vessels.
Then, under the unbelieving eyes of the crew, the little vessel ran completely into the larger one and was gone. The light vanished instantly. Utter blackness fell over the dazzled eyes of the watchers.
There were gasps, explosive curses of bewilderment, amazement. The little boat had disappeared into the larger. Impossible! Gaskin began his shrill laughter again. Then he gurgled in the darkness as if somebody's fingers had clamped his windpipe.
Madden's mind attacked more violently than ever the incomprehensible motives behind this inscrutable mystery. What was the key to this incredible affair? In the midst of his mental struggle, he felt a hand on his arm, Caradoc said in his ear,
"What do you say we get in the small boat and pay them a visit?"
"It's a big risk. I daresay we'll get our heads blown off."
"I had thought of that," agreed Caradoc.
"Come on," said the American, and the two moved across the deck to see if they could still use the dinghy, which had been trailing along all this time.
Nearly an hour later, the two boys in the dinghy approached the puzzling craft with muffled oars. As Madden and Caradoc drew near, the vast size of the strange ship grew more striking. The faint impression of light which they had first received grew stronger and Madden saw that the decks were illuminated by long bands of diffused light, although he could not guess its origin.
On the lowest deck, the American made out the small figure of a man marching back and forth with a gun.
At this sight, both boys stopped rowing, lifted the oars from tholes and began paddling noiselessly, canoe-fashion.
"That must be the accommodation ladder," whispered Madden, "where the guard is."
"Who are they afraid will board them?" queried Caradoc. "Mermaids?"
"It is a strange precaution to take in the Sargasso," agreed the American. "It is going to make our entrance difficult."
They ceased paddling now and drifted silently toward the monster.
"I wonder if they aren't smugglers," hazarded Caradoc,
"Must be up-to-date, to use submarines—a submarine would defy detection, wouldn't it?"
"And rich—nobody but millionaire smugglers could get together all this paraphernalia."
"I'll venture insurance is at the bottom of this fraud, Caradoc," hazarded Madden. "These swindlers insure a cargo, bring it to this place, reship it, sink the vessel, or repaint and rebuild it, then collect the insurance money—do you remember the log of theMinnie B?"
"No, I didn't read it."
"It stated her cargo had been reshipped—reshipped from the Sargasso. The entry may have been for the benefit of Davy Jones. Anyway, they are methodical scoundrels."
The lads fell silent as the hugeness of this nefarious business gradually dawned on them. For insurance swindlers and smugglers to work on such a large scale, very probably the organization branched over the whole civilized world. This vast shapeless vessel was a spider at the center of a great network of criminality.
"Say, the Camorras are mere infants in crime compared to these men," shuddered Leonard. "I suppose they murder the crews—drown 'em."
"They would have to get 'em out of the way somehow."
"Then Malone and all the tug's crew are..."
There was an expressive silence.
After a while Caradoc whispered, "Well, shall we try to get aboard?"
"Wouldn't do any good."
"It won't do any good to stay here."
"No, we can't hide on the tug always, and we can't run her engines.Youdon't know anything about marine engines, do you, Caradoc?"
"Very little. I couldn't run one."
For several minutes, the two adventurers sat in silence, watching the small erect figure of the guard pace and repace his short path. Presently Madden said:
"I've thought of one chance, Caradoc, to escape being starved or murdered."
"Yes, what's that?"
"It—it's almost too wild to propose, but it's all I can think of. As far as I know it's absolutely our last chance."
"Go on, go on," urged the Englishman impatiently. "I don't know of any way out whatever."
"If we could slip aboard there and—and—well, kidnap somebody who knows how to run our engines, bring him back to the tug, fire up and make a race to South America—but there's no sense to a scheme like that. Captain Kidd himself wouldn't be up to it."
A long silence followed this ultimatum, then Caradoc said, "Oh, it's possible, I suppose. The mathematical formula of possibility would work out about ten million chances to one that we lose."
"Yes, I know it's risky."
"And how do you hope to get in past that guard?"
"We'll have to climb up the ladder right under him, hang there until he is on his up-deck walk, then swing inside and when he turns around we could be simply strolling up the deck toward him. There must be a lot of fellows on such a big ship. Maybe he doesn't know them all."
"Why do you want to strolltowardhim?"
"Because if he saw us walking off in the other direction, he would know we had not passed him, and so we must have come up the ladder."
Caradoc shook his head in the darkness. "I'm going to try to jump on that guard when he turns his back, and down him."
"He'd give an alarm sure. We mustn't disturb him till we get ready to leave, then let him yell."
"What you are planning, Madden, is simply impossible. I like to be as conservative as possible."
"We can turn around and row back to theVulcan—and starve."
"Go ahead to the accommodation ladder. However, it's impossible."
As the two moved silently nearer a murmur of machinery in the vast fabric came to them. As their tiny boat swung in beside the high hull, they could hear this noise quite plainly, and they trusted to this rumble to screen their operations somewhat. They ceased paddling and allowed the dinghy to drift against the iron side of the vessel. They could no longer see the deck and the guard, owing to the swell in the high metal wall. But presently they came to the rope ladder which they anticipated hung below the guard's station.
Madden caught this and tied the dinghy to it with the crawly feeling of a man who expects to have a gun fired at him the next moment.
Caradoc came up and the two adventurers stood in the boat's prow, both holding to the ladder.
"I'll bet that scoundrel shoots down," whispered Leonard, "before we get halfway up."
"Don't talk so loud—are you ready to try it?"
"What are you going to do—jump on him?" breathed Leonard.
"No, your plan. If you see he is going to shoot you before you get inside, jump backwards and dive."
"And remember to go far enough out not to hit the dinghy."
"Good."
Madden stared up into the mysterious vessel, caught the ladder and swung himself silently onto the rungs. Caradoc mounted close behind him. They had mounted only two or three steps, when a sudden terrific report thundered above their heads.
It was so unexpected, so violent, that the two boys almost tumbled into the sea. The next instant they found themselves wrapped in an atmosphere of hot, stifling steam. They clung to the rungs in a veritable steam-bath that roared and plunged around them. When Madden collected his senses, he realized that it was merely a safety discharge from the boilers. The main steam pressure did not strike them, but they swung in the hot wet fringe of the exhaust. Had they been ten feet farther aft, they would surely have been boiled to death. As it was they were immersed in uncomfortably hot vapor.
They clung, rather unnerved by the uproar, enduring the heat for four or five minutes, when suddenly an idea occurred to Madden. He leaned down to Caradoc and shouted in his ear.
"How about going up now? Couldn't see us in this steam."
For reply, Caradoc shoved his friend upward, and so they scrambled aloft like two monkeys.
Fortunately for them, the night was windless and the white steam drifted straight up and as it rose, it spread out in an impenetrable fog. Cloaked in this vapor, the two adventurers scrambled up some thirty-five feet to the first deck. The steam was thick inside the rail. Covered by the noisy shriek of the exhaust, they jumped inside the promenade without being heard or seen, and a moment later, they dropped arm in arm, like two casual strollers, and moved up deck.
Two minutes later, when the roaring exhaust had ceased and the vapor had cleared away, the guard with the gun could never have guessed that the two men he saw slowly promenading the deck had drifted over the rail, out of the night, with the clouds of the noisy exhaust.
Neither of the lads so much as glanced at the sentinel as they strolled past him. Caradoc was saying in the low tones men use when conversing in the darkness:
"Do you suppose that fellow knows anything about engines?"
And Madden replied just as confidentially, as he sized the gun man up out of the tail of his eye, "No, I'm sure he doesn't. An engineer never has to stand guard."
"How are we ever going to spot an engineer?"
For the first time since starting, a little thrill of the joy of adventure crept into Madden's heart. He felt like a ferret venturing into a rat's den.
"Why you can tell an engineer easily," he murmured. "You've seen 'em, oily fellows, with black smudges."
"That describes a fireman, too."
"No, a fireman's not so oily and is more cindery—then we'll know one by his cap."
"Certainly," breathed Smith. "I hadn't thought of that."
Notwithstanding his danger, Madden could not help smiling as he moved along after the fashion of a careless stroller, when he was really keenly alert for a man with an engineer's cap.
The two youths were walking up a long deck, dimly lighted by small incandescent bulbs placed on the inner surface of the outside stanchions about thirty feet apart. Each bulb was carefully blinded from the ocean by a sheath, which confined its glowworm radiance exclusively to the promenade. On the inboard side were a long series of port holes, likewise hooded from observation. Some were aglow, others dark.
The deck, rails, cabin walls, ports, hoods, joists of the top-deck were newly washed and scrupulously clean. Fifty yards up-deck, where perspective and the sheer of the ship gave the promenade the appearance of a long, up-curved tunnel, the boys caught sight of a gang of men scrubbing down deck. A little beyond the scrubbing gang, some garments fluttered on a line drying in the night air.
As they drew nearer, Madden perceived they were muscular men, with faces bronzed by tropic sunshine. Some of their necks and cheeks were peeling, as if from sunburn. On the whole they had a healthy, hearty appearance that fitted in badly with Madden's theory of murderers and thieves. Instead of a piratical aspect, the promenade bore a strong resemblance to a deck scene on some crack transatlantic liner, except for the blinded lights and ports and the armed guard.
The wanderers passed the scrub gang without trouble and came to the drying laundry. The number of these shirts and trousers and under clothing suggested the hulk must contain a large number of men. If these menweresmugglers and insurance swindlers, they had systematized their life after rigid military discipline.
They moved through the laundry with fading hopes of kidnapping an engineer from such a formidable institution, when they were startled by a human laugh. It sounded in their ears and was as unexpected as a shriek in church. For an instant they thought they were apprehended. Then they understood the sound came from one of the lighted ports.
They moved softly among the shirts and trousers until they reached the suspected port. Inside they heard a very trivial conversation in English.
"I'm after that jack of yours, Captain Cleghorne," declared a thick voice with a laugh.
"I played low, remember that,"
A silence, then a burst of laughter.
"He ran that jick over your king!"
Leonard stood beside the port blind making a tantalizing effort to recall something. Where had he heard the name "Cleghorne?" He repeated it mentally several times.
"Cleghorne, Cleghorne——" of a sudden it came to him. He had never heard it, but had seen it framed in the license that hung in the chart room of the schooner,Minnie B.
With a heart thumping against his ribs at this strange and amazing coincidence, the American ducked his head carefully under the port hood and looked in.
For a moment his eyes were blinded by electric lights. Then he observed a group of men sitting around a table playing cards. They were in obviously comfortable spirits, nothing criminal or warlike. One was a long cadaverous figure that suggested to Madden, Cleghorne, the Yankee commander of theMinnie B.
When his eyes strayed across the table to Cleghorne's partner, Leonard's knees almost crumpled in surprise. He was looking at the old commander of the floating dock, Mate Malone.