The passengers were no longer under guard. They walked the decks as they pleased. The communal brethren, who had found it so easy to capture the ship, were now at their wits’ ends. Once or twice their leader passed hastily between the bridge and the engine-room. The confident, sneering egotism no longer marked the demeanor of the man. Nervously twisting his blond beard, he moved as one without definite purpose. His elaborate enterprise was in a bad way. The war against society had suffered an unexpected reverse.
O’Shea and Johnny Kent watched him gloatingly. The advantage was all theirs. They were waiting for the right moment to strike, and to strike hard. They saw Vonderholtz halt to speak to Miss Jenness, who stood apart and alone. He argued with fierygestures. She protested earnestly, her face sad and tragic. It was as though they had come to the parting of the ways.
At length theAlsatianceased to forge ahead. The water conquered her. The long, black hull rode low, sagging wearily to starboard. The bulkheads still held firm, but it seemed inevitable that she must shortly plunge to the bottom.
Vonderholtz and his men were between the devil and the deep sea in more ways than one. They dared signal no passing vessel and ask assistance, for the gallows awaited them ashore. Many of them were for abandoning the liner at once. It was useless, they argued, to wait until she foundered under their feet. TheAlsatianhad become untenable.
Refusing to acknowledge that ruin had overtaken his splendid conspiracy, Vonderholtz stormed like a madman at the cowards who would take to the boats. He swore he would stand by the ship until she went down. Were they to abandon the two millions in gold? It was impossible to save it in the boats. Castaways could not explain the possession of a fortune in treasure.
The mutineers, who had openly broken away from their leader, replied that they would quit the ship and take chances of being picked up or of making a landing at the Azores. Let the crew and passengers drown in the ship, and good riddance to them.
The dissension increased, the bravest of the rascals resolutely standing by Vonderholtz. Those who were for deserting the liner began to crowd to theboats and swing them out, ready for lowering. Discipline had vanished.
Captain Michael O’Shea said a word to Johnny Kent, who pulled his revolver from the breast of his shirt. Twenty of the passengers were ready for the order. Some had armed themselves with pieces of steel piping unscrewed from the frames of the state-room berths. Others flourished clubs of scantling saved from the wreckage of the fire. They were men unused to violence—lawyers, merchants, even a clergyman—but they were ready to risk their lives to win freedom from their shameful plight.
The compact little band swept out on deck like a cyclone. O’Shea and Johnny Kent opened fire, shooting to kill. The enemy was taken in flank and in rear. Those who were busied with the boats tumbled into them. Before the rush of the passengers could be checked they had cleared a path forward and gained the stairway to the bridge-deck. Scattering shots wounded one or two, but shelter was found behind the wheel-house and chart-room.
O’Shea ran to the captain’s quarters and entered with fear in his heart. The room was empty, but there was blood on the floor and signs of a struggle.
“They did away with him,” O’Shea cried, his voice choked. “He died like a brave sailor. Now for the officers.”
Snatching an axe from the rack in the wheel-house, he jumped for the row of cabins. The first door was locked and he smashed it in with mightyblows. The chief officer of theAlsatianwas discovered within, irons on his wrists, a nasty wound slanting across his forehead.
“Take me out of this and give me a gun,” sobbed the stalwart Englishman.
“How about the rest of ye?” shouted O’Shea.
“They shot the old man and clubbed Hayden, second officer, to death. The others are alive.”
“Lay your hands on the rail yonder and hold steady,” O’Shea commanded him. “I will shear the links of those bracelets with the axe.”
This done they broke into the other rooms and released the surviving junior officers who had been surprised while asleep. Raging and cursing, they caught up axes and iron belaying-pins and joined O’Shea in the sally to release the seamen locked up in the forecastle and the stewards penned below. Recognizing the grave danger, Vonderholtz tried to rally his armed men and hold the boat-deck against attack. But his force was divided and disorganized and part of it was in the boats. His power had crumbled in a moment. He was on the defensive, fighting for life.
Now the crew of theAlsatiancame swarming against him, even the stewards no longer obsequious slaves of the tray and napkin but yelping like wolves. Heedless of bullets, the large force led by O’Shea, Johnny Kent, and the chief officer of theAlsatiancharged with irresistible ferocity. They penned forty of the Communal Brotherhood between the rail and the deck-house amidships, and fairly hammeredand jammed them through the nearest doorway and made them prisoners.
Vonderholtz comprehended that the ship was lost to him and that it was every man for himself and flight into the boats. He somehow got clear of the whirling conflict, found room to turn, and stood with his back to a derrick-mast while he let drive with his pistol and put a bullet through O’Shea’s arm.
Roaring vengeance, Johnny Kent would have killed the blond leader in his tracks, but just then Miss Jenness ran swiftly to Vonderholtz, caught hold of his hand, and urged him frantically toward the nearest boat. Johnny Kent forbore to shoot. He could not hit his target without driving a bullet through the girl. Nor did any man hinder them, as Vonderholtz and Miss Jenness, dark, tragic, incomprehensible, moved quickly to the edge of the ship and leaped into the crowded boat that had just swung clear. It descended from the overhanging davits and plopped into the smooth sea. As the falls were unhooked at the bow and stern, the men on the thwarts set the long oars in the thole-pins and clumsily pushed away from the side of the liner.
It would have been easy to shoot Vonderholtz from the deck above, but he crouched in the stern-sheets with the girl clinging close at his side, so that she seemed to be trying to shield him. No one was willing to risk killing the woman in order to deal retribution to the chief criminal.
“Blaze away at the other boats! Kill all youcan!” shouted the chief officer of theAlsatian. “Shoot into the thick of them before they pull out of range!”
“Let them go,” gravely counselled O’Shea, who was trying to bandage his bleeding arm. “God Almighty will hand out justice to them. Those boats will not live through the first squall, for they are overcrowded and there are few seamen amongst them.”
The lawful crew of theAlsatiangathered together and watched the boats drift to leeward. There was no more shooting by either side. It was as if a truce had been declared. Johnny Kent made a trumpet of his hands and shouted in tremendous tones to the boat in which Vonderholtz had escaped:
“We tricked you and we whipped you, you cowardly dogs. The ship will float and she’ll be towed to port. The laugh is on you, and you can put that in your pipe and smoke it, my gay chemical professor.”
Cries of rage arose from the boats, but there was no returning to the liner, no possible way of scaling her towering sides. Her own crew held possession of her as securely as if they were in a fortress. The wind freshened briskly and the boats drifted farther and farther away to leeward. The men who filled them must face the dreadful perils and sufferings of castaways in mid-ocean. At length the boats became no more than white specks, and then they vanished beyond the misty horizon.
“If Vonderholtz could have had his way he would have destroyed the ship with every soul in her before he abandoned her,” said O’Shea.
“He had me on the list,” piped up Jenkins P. Chase, who strutted importantly, for he had knocked down a foeman and clubbed him into submission. “Now, about that young woman, Miss Jenness. Hanged if she wasn’t a fine-looking proposition. There’s a romance for you, eh?”
“’Tis my guess that she loved him but could not stand for his violent doctrines,” said O’Shea. “And she was afraid to oppose him for fear she would lose him entirely. And maybe he persuaded her to make this voyage with him and he would take her away to live with him somewhere and be happy. ’Twas an evil day for her when she met him, wherever it was, but she was ready to die for him. The love of women!”
Four days later an unlovely little British cargo tramp, wandering across from South America with an empty hold, sighted theAlsatianhelpless and flying signals of distress. The humble skipper of this beggarly craft could not believe his eyes. His wildest, most fantastic dreams of salvage were about to come true. As he steamed alongside the chief officer of the liner shouted:
“Tow us to New York and settle with the owners.”
“Will I?” bawled the bewhiskered skipper, dancing a jig. “I’ll hang onto my end of the bloomin’ hawser as long as this hooker of mine will float. Are you stove up inside? Broke a shaft?”
“No. Engine-room full of water. We opened the sea-cocks on purpose.”
“You’re drunk or crazy,” cried the skipper; “but I will tow you to hades for the price that will be awarded for this job.”
It was a plucky undertaking for the under-engined, under-manned tramp, but theAlsatiansent extra hands aboard, and the two vessels crept slowly in toward the Atlantic coast, swung to the northward, and after a tedious voyage came in sight of Sandy Hook. The wild and tragic experience through which she had passed seemed incredible to those on board. So many days overdue was this crack liner of the International service that tugs had been sent to search for her. The newspapers reported her as missing and probably lost.
“You and Johnny Kent will be grand-stand heroes,” said Jenkins P. Chase to Captain Michael O’Shea. “You have done a tremendously big thing, you know. By jingo, nothing is too good for you. Of course, the company will treat you handsomely and come down with the cash. But don’t forget my proposition. It still holds good. Come to my office and fill out a blank check and I’ll sign it like a shot. That murderous scoundrel, Vonderholtz, intended to throw me overboard. I saw it in his eyes.”
“About that check, Mr. Chase,” said O’Shea with a friendly smile, “forget it. You are a great little man, and we forgive you for being so rich, but ’twas not the kind of a job that seafarin’ men take money for from a shipmate. Johnny and mehad to find a way out. It was a matter of professional pride, as ye might say.”
The rubicund engineer beamed his indorsement of this sentiment and added cheerily:
“What the company chooses to give us will be our lawful due, which we earned in savin’ property and treasure. And if my share amounts enough to buy me a tidy little farm in the grand old State o’ Maine, I won’t envy you and your millions one darned solitary mite, Mr. Jenkins P. Chase. And I won’t feel like joining any Communal Brotherhood to take ’em away from you.”