A German Agent
"I've been thinking," said Bill, on the fifth evening after the three
friends had left New York on their journey to Europe.
"Aye," said Larry in his slow way. "Thinking of what, Bill?"
"Wonder," said Bill, "what a man would want out here in the middle of
the ocean to be slinking along the deck at night as if he was afraid of
meeting people."
Jim and Larry looked at him in some astonishment, a little puzzled to
know what he meant.
"A man slinking along at night out here?--Where?--on this vessel?"
asked Jim.
"Yep," came the abrupt answer. "What 'ud he want to do? Who'd he be
afraid of meeting?"
"Meeting?" said Larry. "Is this one of the crew? Course he must be,
though, 'cos there ain't anyone else aboard the ship; we ain't carryin'
passengers. What do a man want to be slinkin' along at night-time for,
Jim? It was at night-time, wasn't it, Bill?"
"Yep," again came the curt answer.
"And what else did he do?" asked Jim, beginning to get interested.
"Tell us all about it."
"I was on watch," said Bill, "and Tom had sent me down from the
fo'c'sle to the waist to get him a drink of water. The ship was
rolling about fairly well, and so I had to hang on to a stanchion as
I was crossing. I was just by the donkey engine when I saw a man on
the far side passing me. He was hanging on too, going along almost on
all-fours."
"Yes, yes," said Jim, "looks as though he was afraid of falling, same
as you were. Perhaps he's a new hand, same as us, only----"
"Not that," said Bill sharply. "Someone shouted an order just then from
the bridge, which was above us; the man squeezed himself in close to
the donkey engine, and I could see him turn his face to look up at the
bridge. He lay there two or three minutes and then slunk off. At the
far end he disappeared, and I went on my errand. I did not think much
of it then, but I have been thinking since. It was queer."
It was so queer that, after discussing the matter, the three decided
to set a watch to see whether they could gather further information,
and that night once more as Jim and Bill, who lay together in the
waist, were about to return to their bunks, inclined to pooh-pooh the
importance of the whole incident, a man's figure appeared, dimly seen
under the light shed by the thin crescent of the moon, a man who slunk
across the deck, sheltering behind the engine, the mast, and the
hatchway. Then he was gone, only to reappear a little later, and then
disappear once more just after an order had been called from the bridge
and the man on watch on the forecastle had responded to the hail.
"It's mighty queer," said Larry when the three were closeted together
in the cabin in which they were quartered.
It should be explained that the bunks usually handed over to the crew
had, on this particular ship and on this particular voyage, been
vacated for a special reason, and the space thus left free was filled
with war material of an important nature. The ship herself, in pre-war
days one of the ocean greyhounds which conveyed passengers between the
United States and England, provided ample accommodation elsewhere for
the crew as well as a 'tween-decks space for cargo--in this case, as
has been hinted, of unusual value.
"Mighty queer," repeated Larry, as he thrust the stump end of a cigar
into the corner of his mouth, American-wise, and chewed it savagely.
"You're sure you're right, you young chaps. This feller, who is
he?--one of the officers, crew, or what?"
Bill shook his head.
"Oh!" gulped Larry, drawing at his cigar and then regarding it severely
when he found it had gone out.
"Couldn't say. Might be anything," said Jim reflectively. "It was too
dark to be sure, but----"
"Yep, but----" Larry flicked the ash off the end of his smoke. "Yep,"
he repeated encouragingly, "but----"
"But he went for'ard."
"Oh, he went for'ard!" said Larry.
"For'ard!" ejaculated Bill; "but that's where----" and then he stopped
in the midst of his sentence.
"That's where things of importance are carried," said Larry
significantly, "things that if they was lost might hamper the troops in
France, things what Uncle Sam's been hard at work makin' so as to down
the Kaiser; now if----"
All three looked in succession at one another, their suspicions clearly
written on their faces.
"If," said Bill at last, "he wanted--this fellow we've caught a sight
of--to break up the ship to sink the cargo--well, isn't he the sort of
man that would slink about and not want to be seen, and disappear when
there was a hail from the bridge? Should he look sideways at everyone
and want to keep himself to himself? As to whether he's one of the crew
or not, who knows?"
Finally they came to the conclusion that no one could guess, and that
positive evidence was required before they could proceed further with
the matter.
"Only," said Jim in his quiet reflective way, "it's up to us to give a
hint to the old man. Supposing now we set a watch and the fellow eludes
us and really does a mischief, who'd be blamed? Who'd blame themselves
most? You would Larry--you and I and Bill."
"But supposing it's a mare's nest, what about it?" asked Larry, pulling
hard at his cigar. "The old man would point at us, the officers would
smile, the men would smirk and have a few things to say that wasn't
altogether complimentary. I'm a quiet sort of chap I am, Jim, but when
fellers gets sarcastic it gets my goat up. I can stand fun--lots of
it--skylarkin' don't come amiss to me nor to Bill either, and I dare
say you can enjoy a little of it; but downright contempt, nasty sort
of sarcasm, that gets me every time, and I find myself fingering my
gun, that is, I should if I carried one, which I don't now, seeing it's
against the rules of shipboard."
In the end they approached Tom, the huge sailor who had befriended them
in getting their berths on board the ship, and with his approval took
the first opportunity of having a clandestine meeting with the Skipper.
"You've done quite rightly," the latter told them. "This may be a
mare's nest, as Larry here says. In that case it doesn't go any
further, not another man aboard the ship will know; though, as a matter
of precaution, I shall tell my officers. They have all sailed with me
for years and I can vouch for their honesty and patriotism, they are
either British or American to the backbone--and that's something in
these days."
"Guess it is," Larry ejaculated. "Well then?"
"Forewarned is forearmed," the Skipper said. "I'll not interfere
further. You three, with Tom here, will take the matter into your own
hands. One of you had best feign illness--serious illness I mean; and
the other two can be put on duty night and day to watch him. Tom can be
the sympathetic friend. We'll give it out that it's pneumonia or some
other ailment which will account for two of the men--two friends that
is--attending to him. After that you will make your own plans. Carry
on, as they say in the army."
And "carry on" Bill and Jim and Larry did, with Tom's connivance.
"And you've give it out that it's pneumonia?" asked Larry in subdued
tones that very evening, as Bill stood at the door of his cabin
with a jug of milk in his hand, while Jim stood at the foot of his
resting-place. "Every soul aboard knows as Larry, new hand--what we'd
call a 'tenderfoot' way west--is down with a go of bronchitis and a
cough what 'ud make his worst enemy sorry for him. Listen to it!"
The impertinent fellow coughed and coughed and coughed till Jim really
felt anxious about him, while Bill, seeing the fun of the thing,
laughed so heartily that the milk spilt from the jug, and Jim brought
him up with an "about-turn".
"That's the sort of thing you'd do at the door of a sick-room?" he
asked severely. "Here's Larry coughing his heart out, and you laughing
in that heartless way. Put the milk down and go!"
If any one of the crew had been in the neighbourhood they would have
seen the youthful Bill slinking away with his tail between his legs;
for he recognized how injudicious his behaviour had been, though indeed
Larry was to blame, since he was the cause of it. But a few hours'
experience of this new plan caused all to settle down, and their
hilarity to give place to essential seriousness. Indeed that night all
realized that their quest meant much, not only to themselves and their
shipmates, but to the British army, which was looking for the delivery
of the goods which they were carrying.
However, they had yet to prove that their suspicions were well founded.
It might, as Larry had said and repeated more than once with a sheepish
grin, be "but a mare's nest", in which case all three friends, and the
burly Tom in addition, felt--though they took care not to tell one
another--that the position would be a little trying.
"You can take it from me," said Larry, when he had given up coughing
violently, and he and Bill and Jim sat with their heads close together
discussing the matter, "you can put it right like this: ef there's
a chap aboard what's slinking about, he's either crazy or he's got
something to slink for. What's a man want to slink about in the
darkness for--eh?"
"Stealing," suggested Jim.
"Ho! stealing!" growled Larry; "as ef there was any one of us aboard
worth robbing! No, that don't appeal to me; it's something wus."
"Worse," Bill also thought it. He stood for a while silent and
thoughtful and then crept out of the cabin. Yet though he watched from
the waist of the ship for an hour, and Jim, who relieved him, sat there
for a similar period, nothing occurred to arouse their suspicions.
A little later, Larry, with a blanket wrapped round him, groped his
way along the deck and lay down at the doorway which led into the
forecastle.
"If the feller's on the roam, he's got to roam over me," he thought, as
he made himself comfortable. "Of course it may be as he wants to get
down one of the hatchways. Ef so, Tom, watching back there, will spot
him."
Yet the night passed without incident, and on the following day the
three friends continued with their plan, though now doubting more than
ever the justice of their suspicions. As to the imposition they were
practising, it was never suspected by any of the crew of the steamer.
"That there young Larry's ill," said a stoker, as he pushed his head
up from the engine companion and wiped the sweat from his brow with
a dirty rag, which had been clean that morning, and which he removed
from his neck, as is the habit of the fraternity, "he's just the look
of a man what 'ud go down. Pneumonia, eh?" he remarked, as he casually
plugged tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. "Huh! shouldn't wonder!" he
nodded wisely. "Thin, delicate sort of a chap what 'ud break up easy.
That sort doesn't make old bones. Perhaps dead afore morning! You
never know! So long, sonny!"
The beaming face, the smoking clay pipe, the black head of tousled hair
disappeared; the stoker dived down into the bowels of the ship, and the
man to whom he had addressed his somewhat lugubrious remarks heard the
rattle of his stoking shovel a few moments later. If the stoker himself
could have seen Larry his exclamations might well have been varied.
"Never felt better in all my life," said the invalid, as he sat in
the corner of the cabin, smoking a cigar, which, as was his wont, was
tucked into the corner of his mouth alongside his teeth, and caused a
bulge in one cheek. "Never! Only I'm puzzled about this matter, and
don't I want to catch this fellow?--that is," he added, "ef there is
a feller, ef young Bill didn't imagine him. He's young is Bill, and
there's no saying ef he's grown out of all his youthful imaginings yit."
Whereat Bill flared up, and became even more determined to discover the
culprit.
"For I'm sure," he told himself, as he walked up and down the deck,
"that I saw someone--someone who was slinking about--a suspicious
someone. Well, we shall see. We are more than half-way across to
England now, and in a couple of nights we shall make the north coast
of Ireland. If anything is going to happen, it's got to happen pretty
soon. We shall see!"
It was in fact precisely two nights later, when the ship had drawn
within twenty miles of the Irish coast, and was making a direct run
for her English port, that Bill, creeping along the deck, sighted a
flitting figure.
"Come along," he whispered, running back to the cabin and beckoning
Larry and Jim. "I've seen someone--he's down in the waist. Don't wait
for anything, and be as quiet as you know how. I reckon we'll discover
who he is this time."
They followed instantly, and, sneaking down the ladder, hid themselves
beside the windlass, with a mast towering quite close to them, and
there, breathless with their haste, their hearts thumping with
excitement and expectation, they waited, peering this way and that,
seeing nothing for the moment. A little later Bill stretched out a hand
and touched Larry on the shoulder.
"There!" he whispered. "There!" and, swinging round, Larry, too, caught
a faint impression of a head and shoulders against the star-lit sky. He
waited while Jim drew closer and also saw the figure.
Then all three crept along the deck, one behind another, as a man on
the far side of it drew away from them.
"Bound for the fo'c'sle," Larry said hoarsely. "It's locked ain't it?"
"Locked," answered Jim laconically. "But he'll have a key. Listen to
it!"
There came to their ears the faint click of an instrument being used
in the lock of the forecastle door--a gentle, grinding sound, and then
silence.
"Come on," whispered Bill; "perhaps he's gone in. Got your flash lamps?"
All three had, and, making their way swiftly along the deck, they
soon reached the bulkhead behind which lay the forecastle. The door,
previously shut fast and locked, stood ajar. Bill pushed it open
without hesitation, Larry pressed up beside him, and Jim peered over
their shoulders. Then Bill switched on the beam of his electric torch.
The light flooded the forecastle, fell upon that material so valuable
to our fighting forces which the vessel was carrying at full speed
to Britain _en route_ for the battle-fields, swept over a space of
empty deck, hugged other material, and glancing from it went on to the
depths beyond, almost to the bows of the vessel. There it was brought
up, as it were, abruptly by the figure of a man, half-bent, facing
the doorway, a man at whose feet stood a square iron box, in the lid
of which was a metal plunger, a man who stared at them with wide-open
eyes, startled yet full of hate, which blinked in the electric beams.
"It's--it's Heinrich!" roared Larry, darting forward and slipping a
hand on his empty holster pocket. "It's the German that shot Charlie
back there in the camp by the copper-mine. It's the same ugly phiz as
was in the picture found in his lodgings. It's----"
With a hasty movement the man banged a fist on the metal plunger. A
brilliant flash of light followed the movement, and then a hissing,
sizzling noise, while smoke filled the forecastle. Steps were heard,
and the door above banged as the rascal, too much concerned for his
own safety to think of any further need for caution, clambered up the
companion and emerged on the deck, then came a blinding flash, and Jim,
seizing Bill and Larry, dragged them through the doorway.
"Back!" he shouted. "Lie down on your faces! Hi there, on the bridge!"
he bellowed. "Look out for yourselves! we've come upon our man, but
it's too late; he's fired his detonator, his bomb's on the point of
bursting."
Before a return hail could come, almost before the three could fling
themselves upon the deck, so as to escape the effects of the impending
explosion, the deck above the forecastle soared into the air, there
came a shattering, tearing roar of breaking woodwork, a deafening
detonation, while bolts and masses of wood and iron thudded upon the
decks around or splashed into the water--water made clearly visible
by the flare which burst from the fore part of the vessel. As for the
latter, she trembled in every timber and plate, her decks shook and
rolled, she heaved and thrust her bows upward; then they came down with
a souse, and for a moment it looked as though she were going under.
But not yet! She lay with her stern high in the air and her forecastle
slowly submerging; and as she lay there helpless, changed in one
moment from a controllable dependable unit of efficiency to a shattered
wreck, of a sudden a beam broke the blackness all about her--an
electric beam projected from some surface vessel. This beam flooded the
ship, flooded the water all about her, and threw a streak of brilliant
light from a point perhaps half a mile from her.
Somewhere in that streak there appeared a tiny object, a tiny boat in
which a single man rowed furiously--doubtless he was the German.