and the sight of the warped expression that only faintly resembled a
smile, should have made him behave as he did. An uncontrollable fury
filled him and he jumped to his feet with a headlong rush!
Caught off guard by Sandy’s sudden attack, the sailor made a clumsy move
to sidestep, but not before Sandy’s swing had caught him a terrific blow
in the ribs. All of Sandy’s six feet of wiry muscle went into the blow,
and the sailor reeled back, staggering.
Sandy followed him into the cockpit to take advantage of the surprise
attack, just in time to see Jones bring down the barrel of his rifle
sharply on Jerry’s head. Sandy whirled to face Jones as Jerry dropped to
the deck.
He started forward, cocking his fist to lash out before Jones could
raise his rifle again, but suddenly, with a sound like a bat striking a
ball, a blinding light seemed to explode in his face. This first
sensation was followed by a dull roaring sound and a spreading pool of
inky blackness. He felt his knees buckle....
Somewhere, from afar, he heard Jones speaking in bored tones.
“Bull,” he was saying, almost lazily, “you know how I dislike
unnecessary violence in any form. If you hadn’t shoved the boy, this
little scene would never—”
And that was the last Sandy was to hear for quite a while.
CHAPTER NINE
To the Freighter
When Sandy came to, the first thing he was aware of was a terrific
headache. This was accompanied by such severe dizziness that when he
tried to sit up he sank back immediately, holding his head. Gingerly, he
ran his hand over his skull as if to make sure that it was still all in
one piece. Then he lay still for a while, afraid to try moving anything
else, and looked at the ceiling above him.
Slowly, the dizziness ebbed away and the pain lurking behind his eyes
settled down to a more bearable level. When he felt it was safe to try,
he moved more cautiously than the first time, sat up and swung his long
legs over the edge of the bunk.
For a moment, he simply sat there with his elbows on his knees and his
head propped in his hands, and looked at the decking. He had to think
hard, as if he were remembering a dream that was fast fading away. Why
was he in this bunk below? How was Jerry handling the boat alone? He
frowned, pushed back his cowlick and raised his head.
As he did so, he caught sight of the brass flare gun clipped to its
bracket on the opposite bulkhead, and suddenly he remembered everything
that had happened. Of course! This was not his boat at all, and Jerry
wasn’t sailing it alone—or in any other way, for that matter!
Jerry lay on the opposite bunk below the flare gun, propped up on one
elbow and looking at him with a grin.
“I guess it isn’t funny,” he said, “but you sure took an awful long time
to wake up and figure out what had happened to you! I’ve been lying here
awake for five minutes now, just watching you come up from under!”
Ruefully rubbing a hand across his black crew-cut, he added, “I guess I
must have taken the same length of time doing it when I woke up, but
there wasn’t anybody here to time me!”
“I saw Jones hit you,” Sandy said, “and he sure wasn’t making any
special effort to be gentle. I guess that Bull, the big sailor, got me
from behind when I turned to go after Jones.”
Still rubbing his head, Jerry sat up in his bunk and faced his friend.
“Sandy,” he asked, “what made you take a swing at Bull like that? You
sure must have known that the two of us didn’t stand much of a chance in
a fight against three men with guns!”
“I don’t suppose I was really thinking at all,” Sandy answered. “I know
it was a pretty foolish thing to do, but there was just something about
Bull’s laugh.... Anyway, I’m sorry. It could have got us killed right
then and there, I guess. As it is, I think we’re lucky to have got away
with nothing more than a couple of headaches.”
“What do you mean, a couple?” Jerry said. “I’ve got two myself!”
Both boys laughed, but as their laughter died down, they became more
serious than they had been before.
“Look, we can sit here and make jokes about the situation until they get
us out to that freighter,” Sandy said, “but that isn’t going to help us
to figure out a way to escape and get to the police.”
“You’re perfectly right,” Jerry agreed. “We’d better scout around and
size things up while we’ve got a chance.”
“And we’d better do it fast,” Sandy added. “We don’t know how long we’ve
been knocked out, so we haven’t any idea how much time we have left
before we arrive at the freighter. And by then, it might very well be
too late to do anything for ourselves at all.”
Half rising from their bunks, for the cabin roof was too low to allow
them full standing headroom, they moved aft to the sliding doors that
separated them from the cockpit. Gently testing the doors, Sandy found
that they were locked, as he had assumed they would be. A crack of light
showed where the two halves of the door met, and he placed his eye to
it. With a frown, he turned around to look at Jerry.
“Boy, they’re not taking any chances this time,” he whispered. “Both of
the sailors are out there in the cockpit, and the one called Turk has
his pistol in his hand, and it’s pointed right at this door!”
Moving back to the bunks, Sandy and Jerry knelt to look through the
small windows above them. On both sides of the sloop, there was nothing
to see but water—not so much as a buoy or another boat in sight. Far off
to the starboard side, they made out a low smudge that was the shore.
“We must be almost there!” Sandy said.
“Do you think there’s any use trying the forward hatch?” asked Jerry.
“Or do you suppose that they have that one locked tight, too?”
“I don’t know if it matters much one way or the other,” Sandy sighed.
“Even if it is open, I wouldn’t care to stick my head out—not with Turk
sitting back there with his pistol ready! I think I’ve had enough of
rushing into pistols for one day!” Putting his hand to his head, he felt
the lump that was forming above his right ear.
Moving with the most extreme caution, so as to attract no attention from
their guards, they started to explore the cabin for whatever
possibilities it had to offer. Coming to the two tiny forward portholes,
barely large enough to put a hand through, Sandy paused to take a look
forward.
Before their bow, perhaps fifty yards away, was a boat sailing calmly
along as if the whole world were on a holiday. For one short instant,
Sandy thought that this might be their chance—perhaps a signal with the
flare gun might bring aid from the passing sailor! But his hopes were
shattered in no time as he realized that the sloop sailing ahead was his
own, sailed by Jones who was leading the way to the freighter that
waited, like doom, not far off.
Even in his hopelessness, Sandy could not help pausing to admire his
boat, graceful and trim, making good time beating into a steady breeze.
He thought for a moment of the preceding day when he had learned to take
the tiller and had first felt the happy pride of ownership and
accomplishment that comes to every boat owner. What a change in fortunes
this new day had brought! Now his boat was no longer his and, instead of
carrying him to pleasure, was leading him to what looked like certain
disaster!
As he watched, his boat suddenly put about on a new tack. He saw Jones
skillfully handling both the tiller and the sheets. The jib was swiftly
brought over to fill and, together with the mainsail, was trimmed and
drawing in no time. Whatever else you could say about Jones, Sandy
thought, the man sure knew how to handle a boat!
The new tack set by Jones was followed by their sailor-guards. With a
creak of tackle and rigging and a shifting of weight to the opposite
side, the little sloop came about. Still at his lookout post at the
forward port, Sandy saw the head of the boat swing about. As it did so,
he caught sight of their destination.
“Jerry! Look!” he whispered, motioning his friend to join him at the
other porthole. There, high in the water, perhaps a mile away, was the
dark shape of the freighter. Wisps of gray-white smoke curled from its
stack and drifted off in the breeze. It was an ordinary-looking freight
cargo ship, such as you would see in any port of the world. It had a
black hull, a white deckhouse and a black stack marked with green
stripes. All perfectly ordinary, perhaps, but to Sandy and Jerry it
looked sinister and piratical. They stared at it for a few minutes,
trying to judge their rate of progress from the lessening distance
between themselves and the black-hulled ship. Then Sandy tore himself
away from the porthole and grabbed Jerry’s arm.
“Jerry, we’ve got to start acting fast,” he said. “There’s hardly any
time left!”
“Act how?” Jerry said. “What can we do but sit here and wait like a
couple of chickens in a crate being taken to market? If you can think of
anything to do, I’m game, but I haven’t got an idea in my head.”
“I don’t think there’s anything we can do about the situation now,”
Sandy said, “but I have an idea that might work later on. It may not be
worth much, but anything’s worth trying.” He cast his eyes about the
small cabin.
“Did you by any chance come across a first-aid kit while you were
searching?” he asked.
“Yes, I did,” Jerry answered. “It’s in that locker next to the money.
But what do you want it for?”
“Bring it over and I’ll show you,” Sandy answered.
While Jerry went for the first-aid kit, Sandy took the brass flare
pistol from its bracket above the bunk. Then he sat down on the bunk and
rolled up his pants leg. “Here,” he said. “Give me some tape. I’m going
to strap this bulky thing to my leg if we have enough.”
“What for?” Jerry asked in surprise. “It’s not a real gun, you know. All
it does is fire a flare. Besides, there’s only one flare in here, and I
don’t know if that can do us very much good.”
“I don’t care about the flares,” Sandy answered. “It’s the gun itself
that I’m interested in. It fooled me when I saw it and it just might
possibly fool someone else who might not be familiar with these things.
I’m hoping that if we get a chance to pull it on someone after dark, we
can fool him long enough to get hold of a real gun that will help us
escape!”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Jerry admitted. “That is, if we’re still alive
by dark!”
“That’s about all I’m hoping for now,” Sandy answered. “I don’t know
whether we can do any good with this flare gun or not, but it’s pretty
clear that we can’t escape from _this_ boat. So I’m doing what I can to
let us be able to take advantage of any chance we get on board the
freighter. If we’re lucky enough to _get_ a chance.”
As he spoke, Sandy was fastening the bulky flare pistol to the inside of
his calf, making it as secure as he could with the tape from the
first-aid kit. Finished at last, he stood up as well as he could in the
low-ceilinged cabin, and tried to walk around.
“Does it show too much?” he asked Jerry, shaking his leg a little.
“It shows,” Jerry said, without much encouragement. “But maybe if you
move around carefully, and if they don’t take a sudden interest in your
legs, you might get away with it. Anyway, what can we lose by trying?”
Sandy looked down at the bulge which so obviously distorted the leg of
his blue jeans. He was afraid that he would never get away with it. He
remembered the bell-bottom pants that the Navy enlisted men wear and
that all sailors once wore, and he wondered if their original purpose
had been to carry concealed weapons. Whatever they were for, he sure
wished he were wearing a pair now!
“I guess this is about as good as we can get it,” Sandy said. “If one of
us only had a jacket on, we could probably hide the gun under an arm,
but these sweat shirts just don’t leave enough room.”
“No, I think the leg is a better place anyway,” Jerry said. “If they
search us for weapons, they’re apt to miss your leg, but they’d never
miss patting you under the arm. Anyway, we don’t have a jacket, and as
far as I can see there’s no place else to hide the thing.”
The boys took a last look around the cabin to see if there was anything
else to help them, but there was not even a small kitchen knife or a can
opener in the little galley. It seemed that Mr. Jones kept only
counterfeit money in that area. As they were carefully exploring every
possible nook and cranny in the cabin, they felt the sloop heel to the
other side as it once more came about to go on a new tack.
From the vantage point of the two forward ports they saw the reason for
this latest maneuver. They were coming up to the wind alongside the
freighter, preparing to stop. The high sides of the big ship loomed
above them like the walls of a fortress, but chipped and scarred with
streaks of rust. As the sloop swung completely into the wind, losing
headway, they caught sight of Jones making a line fast to the bow of
Sandy’s boat. Then, with a rattle of slides and a clumping of heavy
steps on the cabin roof overhead, the counterfeiters’ craft came to a
halt and was made fast alongside the freighter.
Whatever was to happen, it would happen now!
CHAPTER TEN
Aboard the Floating Prison
Moving away from the forward portholes, Sandy and Jerry sat on the edges
of the bunks and waited for their captors to come and get them. Both
boys made themselves look as if they were completely dejected—as if they
had already given up any hopes they might have had of escaping or of
being rescued.
In a few minutes the footsteps on the deck and cabin top stopped and the
little craft lay bobbing and wallowing in the sea swell that rose and
fell alongside the freighter.
Rope bumpers, large braided lengths of thick cordage, were lashed to the
sides of the sloop to keep it from being damaged by rubbing and banging
against the steel side of the big ship.
Although they were listening as closely as possible to everything that
went on, they could not make out the words they heard shouted from the
freighter’s deck far above. Nevertheless, the sense of them was made
clear by the answer that Turk bellowed back.
“Yeah! we got the stuff this time, all right! And we got a couple of
other pieces of cargo with us, too! Wait and we’ll show you!”
This was the moment, Sandy thought. He would have to be careful, he
warned himself, not to lose his temper as he had done last time, even if
he was roughed up and shoved around again. And above all, he must be
careful about the way he moved. One false step would surely outline the
telltale shape of the flare gun taped to his leg—and that would be the
end of the only “weapon” that he and Jerry had! Not only that, but it
might well be the end of the only chance they would have to get away
with whole skins!
A bolt grated in its slide on the companionway door and the hatch slid
open to reveal Turk, pistol in hand, grinning nastily at them.
“Okay, gents,” he said. “The first-class passage on the local ferry is
over. Just step up on deck, and we’ll transfer to the next vessel.”
As Sandy reached the companionway steps, Turk reached down and grabbed
him by the neck of his shirt. With a swift heave, he sent Sandy
sprawling on the cockpit deck. Keeping a tight control on his temper,
Sandy confined his thoughts to worrying about getting his leg tucked
under him in such a position that the flare pistol wouldn’t show.
But he need not have worried, for Turk was too busy enjoying himself
giving the same treatment to Jerry, who came flying out of the cabin to
land heavily on the deck alongside Sandy.
“These boys sure play a lot of rough games,” he murmured. “And I’m
afraid that this is only the beginning of a whole world’s series!”
“Take it easy,” Sandy whispered to his friend. “Let’s just go along with
them quietly. Maybe we can keep in one piece until we have a chance to
figure a way out.”
At Turk’s orders, they rose to their feet. Looking up to the freighter’s
deck high above them, they saw the other sailor, Bull, already on board,
at the top of a long rope ladder. He too had his pistol held ready, and
the expression on his face gave every indication that he would be only
too glad to use it if he were given even half an excuse to do so.
“Get up that ladder,” Turk ordered, “and don’t try nothing funny. We’ll
have you covered all the way.” He waved his pistol at Jerry to indicate
that he wanted him to go up the ladder first.
Sandy’s heart seemed to sink in his chest. The order of climbing was all
wrong—it couldn’t be wronger! Jerry first, himself next, and Turk last!
Surely Turk, if he was below him looking up as he climbed, couldn’t fail
to notice the flare pistol taped to Sandy’s leg!
Acting as if he misunderstood Turk’s wordless command, Sandy stepped
forward and grabbed the rope ladder, but the sailor’s big hand gripped
him by the shoulder hard and firmly pulled him back.
“You sure are eager, ain’t ya, kid? And you’re tricky, too. Now why did
you want to go up that ladder first? That ain’t no picnic or party up
there!” He screwed his big face into a frown of deep thought. Apparently
unable to reach a decision, he undid his thinking expression and snarled
at Sandy. “Just stop thinkin’ up tricks, see! You let me do the thinkin’
here! Now, you go on first, the way I told ya!” He pushed Jerry toward
the ladder.
Resigned to having his flare gun discovered, and almost resigned to
whatever would happen next, Sandy moved to the ladder to take his turn,
when once more the big hand of Turk pulled him back. “I told you I’d do
the thinkin’!” Turk said. “I don’t know what you got up your sleeve, but
whatever it is, you’d better forget it. I’m goin’ up next!”
At last, here was a turn of luck! Sandy could hardly keep from grinning
as Turk started to mount the rope ladder. The big sailor swung up
easily, keeping his eyes always turned downward to Sandy. Halfway up, he
stopped.
“Come on, now,” he said. “You won’t be able to play no tricks this way.
You’re too far back for any leg grabbing, and I got this gun aimed right
at the top of your head. Now come on up, and come slow!”
Sandy stepped from the deck of the sloop to the lower rungs of the rope
ladder and did as he was told, moving his “gun leg” as carefully as he
could without running the risk of attracting any attention to it. At
least, he thought with some satisfaction, he had gotten over the first
hurdle!
On the deck of the freighter, the boys were met by Jones, Bull, and a
mean-looking crew of some of the dirtiest men they had ever seen. The
freighter itself was none too clean, with paint scaling from the decks
and splotches of grease covering the cargo-handling winches and other
deck machinery. The white deckhouse, seen from close quarters, was a
dingy and spotted gray, and the portholes were streaked with dirt and
dried salt.
In the midst of a rat’s nest of coiled ropes, fraying cables and other
ship’s debris, Jones sat on an overturned crate as if it were an easy
chair. He seemed perfectly at ease and completely out of place at the
same time, his smart sports clothes and yachting cap making an odd
contrast to the mixed clothing of the freighter’s crew.
Despite his air of being a gentleman of leisure, Jones had his rifle
still with him, lying across his knees, and his long fingers played
restlessly with the safety catch and the trigger.
“Gentlemen,” he smiled. “Welcome aboard. I hope you will find our modest
accommodations suitable for your long journey. The Captain will arrive
in a moment, and I am sure that he will do whatever is in his power to
see to it that you are treated—appropriately.” Still smiling, he turned
to Bull and said, “Bull, see to it that our passengers aren’t carrying
any unnecessary luggage.”
Bull looked puzzled. “I don’t getcha,” he mumbled.
Jones rose with a swift movement, his smile turned at once to ice. “If
you weren’t such a stupid lout, perhaps you’d get me the first time I
speak to you! If you weren’t such a stupid lout, we wouldn’t have had
these boys here with us in the first place.”
He moved forward as if to strike the cowering Bull, but stopped and
regained control over himself. Once more, he put on his bland smile.
“Pardon my temper and my little jokes, Bull,” he said. “What I meant by
‘unnecessary luggage’ was concealed weapons. In other words, frisk
them.”
Bull shook his head and said, “Why’ntcha say so inna first place?” and
started toward Jerry and Sandy.
Once again Sandy tensed. If only his luck would hold and he could get
through without having Bull find the flare gun! Otherwise....
He watched as Bull patted Jerry, none too gently. He realized that, if
Jerry had been wearing a jacket under which to hide the flare gun, it
would surely have been discovered. Soon Bull was finished with Jerry,
and it was Sandy’s turn. Bull frisked him quickly and clumsily, patting
his chest and under his arms, even though it was obvious that he
couldn’t possibly have hidden anything there. Bull’s big hands continued
down to Sandy’s pockets, hesitated for a moment, and stopped right
there. He turned to face Jones.
“They’re clean,” he said.
Jones nodded, not paying too much attention to Bull or to the search. “I
didn’t think that they would have had the foresight to bring any
weapons. Still—there’s no sense taking any chances. In this business,
one can’t be too careful.”
Noticing that Jones was not looking directly at either Bull or
themselves as he said all this, Sandy followed his gaze to the upper
decks of the freighter, wondering what he _was_ looking for. A door
swung open and a man stepped out into the late afternoon sunshine. Jones
rose, waved to the man and called, “Captain! Come down! We have a little
surprise for you!”
Sandy had not known what to expect of the captain of such a ship as
this, but surely, the man who came down the ladder did not look in the
least like anything he might have imagined! He would not have been
really surprised by a bearded giant, or another tough, such as one of
the crew, or even, perhaps, by a turbaned oriental—but this captain was
surely a complete surprise!
He was a thin, wispy-looking old man—how old, Sandy could not begin to
guess—with a face like a wise preacher’s or perhaps a college
professor’s. He was dressed entirely in white, down to his old-fashioned
white high-buttoned shoes, and he carried a bamboo cane with a gold
head. To finish off this spotless outfit, so out of keeping with his
ship, the Captain wore a pith helmet, such as British officers wear in
the tropics!
The old man moved briskly down the steep ladder from the upper decks
and, with scarcely a glance at the boys, addressed himself to Jones.
“Who are these children?” he asked, his voice thin and reedy, but
carrying authority and as sharp as the crack of a whip.
As Jones explained the presence of the boys on board the freighter, the
Captain looked from them to Jones and back again. When Jones told him
how Bull and Turk had mistaken Sandy’s sloop for his own, the Captain
shifted his gaze to the two sailors, who almost winced under his cutting
stare of scorn. Then, when the tale was done, he devoted his attention
exclusively to Jones once more.
“What do you want to do about it?” he asked.
“I leave that entirely up to you,” Jones said. “I want no part of any
violence—if it can be avoided. Besides, you will have them on your
hands, and I’ll be ashore, so that it’s hardly my place to dictate the
conditions of their—er—disposal.”
Jones rose, leaning casually on his rifle as if it were a walking stick.
“Whatever you want to do is all right with me. Just get rid of them,
that’s all. And do it in a way that won’t attract any suspicions ashore.
I don’t want anyone poking around the island asking questions about
them.”
The Captain thought for a minute, then answered, “I don’t think we’ll
have anyone poking around the island. Not if we handle this thing right.
They must not, you see, simply disappear. If they just drop out of sight
without a trace, it will surely bring on a search, and someone may have
seen them near your place. No, that won’t do. On the contrary, they must
be found. But they must be found in such a condition that they can
answer no questions—ever. And it must look natural.”
“Perfect logic,” Jones said. “I agree completely. But how are you going
to manage it?”
“We will keep them aboard,” the Captain answered, “locked up below. I
will tow their sloop after us. When we are a satisfactory distance from
shore—say a thousand miles—we will put them into their boat and cut them
loose.”
“But,” Jones protested, “isn’t there a chance that they could make it in
to shore somewhere? Men have managed rougher trips than that in the
past.”