THE BOW GUN
“This isn’t so bad,” remarked Jerry Hopkins.
“Not half,” added Bob Baker. “That is,” he qualified, “when you think
how the professor and Judd here and I were situated a few hours ago.”
“Right snug and comfortable, I calls it!” stated the sailor.
As for Professor Snodgrass, attired in a warm but ill-fitting suit
which had belonged to some member of the _Altaire’s_ force, he bent
over his notes at the table in the cabin of the derelict, where the
four refugees were gathered. Night had fallen, signal lamps had
been hoisted to the wireless mastheads, and now, having finished
their supper, Jerry and his companions were below, “right snug and
comfortable,” as the old salt put it.
They had found lanterns and lighted them to give a cheerful glow to
the cabin. The electric service was, of course, out of commission with
the engines stopped, but provision had been made for auxiliary oil
lighting, and it was no worse than conditions had been on all ships
before the electric light was discovered.
“Do you think we ought to stand watch and watch all night?” asked Bob,
looking at Jerry. “We might sight the _Sherman_ or some other vessel,
you know.”
“I don’t see what good it would do,” replied the tall lad. “If we did
sight the _Sherman_ we couldn’t move toward her, and unless her engines
have been put in commission she couldn’t reach us. We could only drift
along and look at one another. And I don’t believe we’ll sight the
_Sherman_.”
“Do you mean she’s sunk?” asked Bob in a low voice, as he thought of
Ned still, in all probability, left on board.
“No, not exactly that,” Jerry answered. “She has too many watertight
compartments to sink unless she was blown all apart, and I don’t
believe that has happened. But I think we must have gotten into two
widely separated ocean currents. One is carrying us one way and the
other is taking the _Sherman_ along.”
“That’s about the way of it,” chimed in Judd.
“But what about seeing some other vessel?” asked Bob. “I mean one that
isn’t disabled and that could take us off.”
“Well, of course, we might see one if we took turns standing watch
through the night,” admitted Jerry. “But we have our distress signal
lamps set, and any vessel sighting them will put for us at once.”
“Well, all right, if you think that there’s no use worrying,” Bob
agreed. “I didn’t fancy standing a night trick myself, but if it had to
be done----”
“I don’t think it’s necessary, boys,” said Judd. “As Jerry Hopkins
says, if any vessel sees our lights she’ll be bound to come close and
investigate.”
The experience through which the sailor had passed with Bob and the
professor made him seem like an old friend, and Jerry and Bob were glad
to have him call them by name, as though he had known them many years.
In fact the nearness to a tragic end, which at one period confronted
them all, seemed to squeeze a long time into a very few moments.
“Well then all we’ve got to do,” suggested Bob, “is to stay here, sleep
and eat----”
“You haven’t forgotten the eats, Chunky!” laughed Jerry, and it was the
first real merriment that had enlivened them since the accident.
“I’m glad you’ve got plenty in the kitchen,” said Bob, joining in the
laugh at his own failing. “But what I meant was that we can’t really do
anything, can we, to better ourselves any?”
“I don’t know,” replied Jerry, looking at the sailor. “I did think of
hoisting some sort of sail, and now that you’re here maybe we can do
that. Then we ought to rig up some sort of sea anchor to keep us head
on to the waves in case of a blow. Outside of that I don’t know that we
can do anything except to keep our distress signals flying.”
“Some sort of sail would be good,” agreed Judd; “and a sea anchor can
be easy rigged up now that we have the life raft towing astern. There’s
one trouble, though, about setting sail, provided we can do it.”
“What’s the trouble?” asked Bob.
“Well, if we get any steerageway on the craft at all, we may not be
able to handle her.”
“Why not?” demanded Bob. “Her rudder is still in place. I noticed it
when we were making fast the life raft.”
“Yes, her rudder is in place,” agreed the old salt, “and it only weighs
several tons. It’s made to turn by steam, and with the engines dead
there isn’t any steam. I doubt if we could manage to steer by hand.”
“There must be some provision for that,” asserted Jerry. “The steam
steering gear might go out of commission at any time--in fact, I’ve
often read of that happening on vessels. And when it does happen don’t
they have to steer by hand?”
“Yes,” admitted the sailor, “I suppose they do. We’ll have a look in
the morning and see what we can do. Just now I think we’d better all
take it easy.”
“Sure!” agreed Jerry. “We’ve had a hard time. I only hope poor old Ned
is as well off as we are just now.”
“I fancy he’s better off in case he’s still on the transport, as he
must be,” said Bob.
“He will be if he doesn’t fall too much under the influence of that
nincompoop, Dr. Hallet!” suddenly exclaimed Professor Snodgrass.
Jerry and Bob started, looked at one another, and then at the little
scientist who was busy making notes about the queer crab and other
creatures he had found in the seaweed.
“Who is this Dr. Hallet?” asked Jerry. “You spoke of him once before.
Is he the little man I had the trouble with in the restaurant, and who
tried to blow up the _Sherman_?”
“Blow up the troopship!” cried the professor. “Why, I never heard of
that!”
“Didn’t you know that her engines were disabled by an explosion?” asked
Bob.
The professor shook his head.
“I didn’t pay much attention to what was going on,” he said. “I had a
lot of notes to transcribe in my books, having made them only hastily
on scraps of paper. All I recall is that we stopped for something or
other, and I supposed we were waiting for passengers, or for some
reason like that.”
“Waiting for passengers in the middle of the ocean,” murmured Bob.
Jerry signaled his chum to refrain from making comments, and then the
tall lad fired a volley of questions at the professor.
“Who is this Dr. Hallet?” Jerry asked. “Why is he such an enemy of
yours? and why was he kept under guard in his cabin? Afterward the
guard was withdrawn and we saw you in there, though perhaps you didn’t
see us. And what does it all mean, anyhow? Why will Ned be likely to
get into trouble if he is left under the influence of this man? Don’t
you think you’d better explain?”
The professor appeared to be considering this. And it seemed to require
as much mental effort on his part as though he were deciding the most
abstruse of abstract questions.
“Yes,” he finally admitted, “I think I had better explain matters to
you. I didn’t think you were so interested. And as for you having
trouble with this--this--well, I won’t say what I think of him--but as
for you having had trouble with Dr. Hallet, Jerry, I know nothing of
that. I only know I’ve had plenty of trouble.”
“He’s a long time getting down to facts,” thought Bob. “I wonder what
it all means?”
“To begin at the beginning,” resumed the professor, after apparently
casting his mind back into the past, “the trouble between Dr. Hallet
and me started when we were rivals in the pursuit of----”
The silence that pervaded the cabin, save for the low voice of the
little bald-headed scientist, was suddenly broken by a dull rumbling
sound, and a slight vibration seemed to go through the whole length of
the derelict. To the boys, used to water navigation as they were, the
sound and the feeling meant but one thing.
“We’ve bumped into something or something has bumped into us!” cried
Bob.
“Or else we’ve rubbed up against the dock,” added Jerry.
“No dock out here in mid-ocean!” exclaimed the sailor. “But we sure
have struck something. Not hard though, that’s one good thing.
Otherwise we’d have a hole stove in us.”
“We’d better see what it is,” said Jerry, preparing to go up on deck.
The others agreed with him, even Professor Snodgrass putting away his
papers and following the two boys and the old sailor.
As they mounted to the deck the bumping sounds kept up, and the tremors
and vibrations continued to be felt throughout the _Altaire_.
“It’s just as if we were among a lot of ice cakes,” said Bob. “I hope
we don’t ram an iceberg.”
“Hardly that in this latitude,” said Jerry. “Though some years they are
found farther south than others.”
As they emerged on the deck, coming as they did from the lighted cabin,
at first they could observe nothing. But gradually their eyes became
accustomed to the darkness and they could see to move about.
“It’s on both sides!” exclaimed Bob.
“And it isn’t ice, either!” added Judd. “I know the smell of ice, and
you can always feel a chill in the air. It isn’t a big berg, that’s
sure, and small cakes wouldn’t last long in these warm waters.”
“But what is it?” asked Bob.
Jerry ran below and brought up a lantern which had on a powerful
reflector. It was a light set on the wall in the cabin and designed to
throw the rays in one spot. It was a sort of oil-power searchlight.
Holding this, Jerry advanced to the rail and directed the rays of light
over the side and down to the water. What he saw caused him to utter a
cry of surprise and fear, in which the others joined.
“Whales!” shouted Jerry. “We’re in the midst of a school of whales!”
“You’re right!” agreed the sailor. “We’ve run right into them, or
they’ve surrounded us, and it’s the bumping of their big heads against
the sides that made the sounds.”
“Is there any danger?” asked Bob.
“There may be, if they take a notion to ram us all at once,” the sailor
said. “Of course there isn’t the same danger to a ship like this that
there would be to a small boat. But if they start to ram, and loosen
some of the side plates below the water line so that we begin to
leak--well, there’s no way of pumping the sea out.”
“Whales?” exclaimed Professor Snodgrass. “How interesting! I wish Dr.
Hallet were here now!”
He did not specify whether it was so that the doctor might view the
natural phenomenon or so that the professor’s rival might be annoyed
and distressed by the visit of the sea monsters.
“What had we better do?” asked Bob.
“Do? Why don’t do anything!” said Jerry. “If we let ’em alone they may
swim off, just as they swam up.”
As he spoke there came a more violent concussion to the vessel, and she
seemed to heel over slightly.
“That was an old residenter who rammed us!” exclaimed Bob. “A few more
blows like that, and we’ll start to leaking. If we only had a hand
grenade or two or a bomb gun! Look, they’re clustering thicker than
ever right in front of us!”
Indeed, by the rays of the lamp the sea was observed to be churned to
foam by the milling of the huge creatures.
Again came a fearful blow on the ship’s quarter, and then Jerry cried:
“The bow gun! The bow gun! We can train that on ’em and shoot! That’s
the way to get rid of the whales! Use the bow gun!”