ADRIFT
Cummings, like the rank coward that he was, had run for his cabin just
behind the pilot house when the inferno broke loose. He was cowering in
it with ashen cheeks when Miss Jarrold appeared in the doorway.
“Go away! Go away!” screamed Ralph, in an agony of fright. “The crew has
mutinied. They’ll kill us all. Oh, dear!”
“You coward!” said the girl, with flashing eyes, drawing her figure up
to its full height. “Have you got a pistol?”
“Yes, there’s one in the drawer there,” stuttered Ralph.
With cool, firm hands, the girl took out the weapon.
“What are you going to do?” mewed Ralph fearfully.
“Help my uncle. You know what danger is on his track. Those men must go
back to the furnaces.”
“Oh, we’ll all be killed,” repeated Ralph tremulously; “or, if we’re not
killed, we’ll be caught by a war ship. The air is full of messages about
us. Scout cruisers from Vera Cruz, and war craft from other places are
closing in all around us.”
The girl bit her lip and turned a trifle pale.
“What are they saying?” she demanded.
“I can’t tell. The messages are all in code, but I can catch the name of
this yacht all the time.”
The bulky figure of the captain suddenly appeared. The girl looked at
him inquiringly. There was an expression on his bluff face that she
could not fathom.
“Miss Jarrold, I have some unpleasant news for you,” he said.
“Well, Captain, what is it?” she demanded haughtily.
The big seaman shifted from foot to foot uneasily.
“Your uncle has shot a fireman up in the forecastle,” he said. “Oh,
don’t be alarmed; not dangerously, but the men are ugly. Your uncle,
too, has confessed to me that there’s a whole lot that is crooked about
this cruise and I don’t like it. The United States cruisers are after
us, he says.”
The girl bowed her head.
“So I believe. What of it? We have chartered this vessel and it is your
duty to obey orders.”
“I beg your pardon, Miss, that’s what I was coming to. It’s my duty to
my owners not to get their craft in a position where it can be
confiscated by the government. That is what will happen if we keep on
running away. The situation amounts to this. The men have got your uncle
captured and tied. They say they won’t work the ship as long as he is on
board unless he is made a prisoner.”
The girl tapped her foot impatiently.
“Is that all the authority you have over them? Why don’t you drive them
to their posts?”
“Because I don’t intend to, Miss. This cruise ain’t regular; and I want
this fellow here to send out a wireless message to the nearest
battleship telling her our bearings and saying that we’ll give up Mr.
Jarrold.”
“And if he refuses to accept?”
“We’ll have to provision a boat and turn him loose in it. It’s in the
regular steamer lane here and he won’t suffer much inconvenience.
Somebody’s bound to pick him up, and, anyhow, there are islands not far
off.”
The mate and the engineer appeared with Jarrold at this juncture. His
hands were bound and his expression of rage was more like that of a wild
beast than a man.
“I’ve already told Mr. Jarrold the men’s terms and mine, Miss,” said the
captain. “Mr. Jarrold, sir, which is it to be?”
Jarrold looked like a trapped wolf. He glared at his niece and at his
captors.
“You see, I can’t lose my ship just because you’ve done something that
seems to have stirred up the whole administration,” said the captain
diplomatically. “Personally, if you want to get away, I’d take to the
boat. I can cook up a story about you and the young lady escaping one
dark night, when we reach port.”
Jarrold raged silently. The girl, white-lipped, erect and defiant,
merely said: “Go on, please.”
“You see we can’t hope to get away. Every port we can touch at has a
wireless plant of some sort. By this time the whole coast of the two
Americas is on the lookout for us. And we can’t keep on going without
coal, and because of the crazy way we’ve been making steam, the bunkers
are pretty nigh empty.”
Jarrold nodded bitterly. The truth of the captain’s arguments appeared
to strike home on even his stubborn mind.
“You’ll pledge your word to do no talking?” he said.
“Not a word, sir, and I’ll answer for my officers, too.”
“But the sailors?”
“Oh, they’ll talk, but nobody believes a sailor’s yarns, anyhow. I don’t
know what you’ve been doing, but it’s clear that Uncle Sam wants you
mighty bad. However, that’s none of my business. My job is to save my
ship from confiscation or being blowed up. So is it to be surrender by
wireless or the boat?”
Jarrold glanced at his niece. She came to his side and stood there
proudly.
“Let it be the boat,” she said; and Jarrold nodded his head in silent
assent. He seemed crushed and broken by the way in which fate had turned
against him in the very hour of his triumph.