TWO LADS WITH THE "RIGHT RING."
It seemed to Herc that he had been asleep but a short time when he
awakened with a start and an uneasy feeling that he could not account
for.
Gradually, however, as the semi-stupor that followed the opening of
his eyes wore off and he became sensible of his surroundings, he was
aware that something unusual seemed to be occurring on the ship. Shouts
and the trampling of running feet were borne in to him, and his first
sleepy impression was that it was morning.
Suddenly, however, he became aware that the shouts formed a certain
definite cry.
What was it?
Herc straightened up as well as he could in his bunk and listened.
A thrill of horror shot through him, as, like a flash, he sensed the
nature of the shouts that had aroused him.
"Fire! Fire! Fire!"
The terrifying cry echoed from bow to stern of the ship and Herc now
recognized a fact which he had not in first sleepy stupor realized,
and that was that their cabin was hazy with smoke, which was becoming
momentarily thicker. The heat, also, was growing rapidly insupportable.
With one bound, the boy was on the floor, and shaking Ned by the
shoulder.
"Ned, Ned, wake up!" he roared at the top of his voice.
"Aye, aye, sir!" came in a sleepy voice from Ned, who was dreaming that
he was still back in the training school and that reveille had blown.
A minute later, however, Herc's shaking aroused him to his senses,
and a few rapidly spoken words apprised him of the seriousness of the
situation.
"Tumble into your clothes quick!" gasped Herc, as breathing in the
smoke-filled room became every moment more difficult.
Ned needed no second telling. In a few seconds, thanks to their
training, both boys were in their uniforms, and, grabbing up their
suitcases, dashed out onto the decks.
The scene outside was one that might have turned cooler heads than
theirs. The storm was still raging, and a white swirl enveloped the
laboring ship, but the whiteness of the snow was tinged a fiery red
with the reflections of towering flames that were by this time pouring
from the engine-room hatch of the _Rhode Island_, and illuminating the
night with their devouring splendor. Fire originating in a pile of oily
waste against a wooden bulkhead had started the blaze.
Men and women in all stages of dress and undress rushed confusedly
about the decks, praying, screaming, blaspheming and fighting.
In the emergency that had so suddenly arisen, the crew and officers
of the ship seemed powerless to do anything. Instead of attempting to
quiet the panic, they rushed about, apparently as maddened as the rest
of the persons on the ship, by the dire peril that confronted them.
"The boats! The boats!" someone suddenly shouted, and a mad rush for
the upper decks, on which the boats were swung, followed. Women were
flung aside by cowardly men frenzied with terror.
"Here, I can't stand this!" shouted Ned, as, followed by Herc, he
plunged toward the foot of the narrow stairway up which the frenzied
passengers were fighting their way.
"Women and children first! Women and children first!" the Dreadnought
Boy kept shouting, as he elbowed his way to the foot of the steps,
closely trailed by Herc.
The roar of the flames was by this time deafening, drowning all other
sounds. To add to the confusion, there now came pouring up from the
lower regions of the ship a black and sooty crew--the firemen of the
vessel. Maddened by fear and brutal by nature, the grimy stokers had
little difficulty in shoving the weaker passengers aside and making
their way to the foot of the stairway up which Ned and Herc were
helping the women and children and keeping back the cowardly male
passengers as best they could. They were not over gentle in doing this
latter. It was no time for halfway measures.
Above them, the captain of the ship and two of his officers who had
partially collected their wits, were directing the crew to lower the
boats. The women and children were being placed in them as rapidly as
possible as Ned and Herc passed them up.
"Can you hold them back?" the captain had shouted down to the boys a
few minutes before, as he peered down at the struggling mass on the
lower deck.
"We'll stick it out as long as we can," Ned had assured him, as he
whirled a terrified male passenger about and sent him spinning backward
whining pitifully that he "didn't want to die."
Suddenly Herc was confronted by a huge form, brandishing a steel
spanner in a knotty fist.
It was one of the panic-stricken firemen.
"Let me by, kid!" bellowed this formidable antagonist.
"You can see for yourself that there are several women to go yet,"
responded Herc calmly, although he felt anything but easy in his mind
as the muscular giant glared at him with terror and vindictiveness
mingling in his gaze. "Women first, that's the rule."
"What in blazes do I care about the women?" roared the fireman, behind
whom were now ranged several of his companions. "Let me by, or----"
He flourished the spanner with a suggestive motion anything but
agreeable to Herc.
The red-headed boy gazed over in the direction in which he had last
seen Ned.
There was no hope for help from that quarter, as a glance showed
him. Ned was holding back an excited man with long whiskers and of
prosperous appearance, who was shouting as if he were a phonograph:
"A thousand dollars for a seat in the boats! A thousand--two thousand
dollars for a seat in the boats!"
Suddenly, so suddenly that Herc had not time to guard against it, the
stokers made a concerted rush for him.
"Ned! Ned!" shouted the boy, as he felt himself borne down by
overwhelming numbers and trampled underfoot.
Ned heard the cry, and in two leaps was in the midst of the scuffle,
dealing and receiving blows right and left.
"Do you call yourselves men?" he shouted indignantly, as the stokers
fought their way forward in a grim phalanx which there was no resisting.
"It's deuce take the hindmost, and every man for himself now!" shouted
a voice in the crowd, and the cowardly mob elbowed forward through the
few women that still remained on the stairway and its approaches.
Ned and Herc, who had by this time struggled to his feet, fought
desperately to stem the tide. So effective were their blows that for a
time they actually succeeded in checking the advance.
"Oh, for a gun!" breathed Ned.
"A cannon!" amended Herc.
Above them they heard a cheer, signifying that the first boat had
struck the water.
"Stick it out, Herc!" panted Ned, as he struggled with a grimy giant,
who, thanks to his ignorance of wrestling and tackles, was easily
hurled backward by his lighter opponent. But the fight was too uneven
to be of long duration.
Step by step, fighting every inch of the way, the two boys were borne
backward by the opposing mob. Ned's foot caught in the lower step of
the stairway and he was toppled over backward.
A mighty onrush of the fugitives immediately followed, and Herc shared
Ned's fate.
The thought that they had failed flashed bitterly through each
Dreadnought Boy's mind as they were trampled and crushed by hurrying
feet of the terrified firemen, whose van was followed by the badly
scared male passengers. The screams of the women who were being
ruthlessly thrust aside tingled maddeningly in the boys' ears as they
strove to regain their feet.
Suddenly, above all the noise of the fugitives and the crackling of
the flames as they ate through the bulkheads about the engine-room
hatchway, the boys heard a sharp command.
It rang out as incisively as the report of a rifle, in a voice that
seemed used to implicit obedience:
"I'll shoot the next man up that stairway!"
The rush came to halt for a brief second, and in that time the boys
scrambled to their feet.
They soon perceived the cause of the interruption.
Not far from them, garbed in his shirt and trousers, just as he had
rushed from his cabin on awaking, stood the man who had occupied the
neighboring cabin to theirs.
The flames illumined the grim compression of his lips beneath his gray
mustache. His eyes were narrowed to a determined angle.
In his hand he held a blue-steel navy revolver on which the glare of
the conflagration played glisteningly.
"Come on, boys!" roared the stoker who had threatened Herc with the
spanner. "It's just a bluff!"
[Illustration: "That's to show you I _mean business_!"]
At his words, the spell that had fallen on the frightened crowd for a
second seemed to be broken, and the rush recommenced. The boys, with
horrified eyes, saw the giant stoker snatch up a woman with a child
in her arms and hurl her brutally back into the crowd, where she
disappeared, lost in the vortex of struggling humanity.
"Crack!"
There was a spit of vicious blue flame from the revolver, followed by a
yell of pain from the giant stoker.
The boys saw the spanner fall from his upraised hand and tumble with
a clatter at his feet. His wrist, shot through by the gray-mustached
man's unerring aim, hung limp at his side.
Like frightened sheep suddenly checked in a stampede, the white-faced
crowd came to a halt and faced about at the new peril.
"That's to show you _I mean business_!" grated out the marksman, in a
voice as cold as chilled steel. "Now let the women go first, and then
the men may follow."
Under that menacing weapon, of whose efficiency they had just received
so convincing a proof, the men sullenly stood aside and passed up the
half-dozen women or so who had not had an opportunity to take advantage
of the boys' plucky stand.
From the bridge above, the captain of the _Rhode Island_ hailed them.
"Six boats are away! Let the rest come!"
"Steady, steady!" came the sharp, commanding voice of the man with the
pistol once more, as the score of men left began to scramble up the
stairway. "One at a time! Take it easy!"
Under his authoritative voice the rush changed like magic to an orderly
retreat, and in a few minutes a seventh boat was loaded with frightened
passengers and lowered onto the heaving sea.
"Well, I guess we can go now, Herc," remarked Ned, turning to his
companion.
"Yes, it's getting as warm here as it is in the smoke house at home in
July," agreed Herc, as he carefully picked up his suitcase, which was
somewhat battered by the recent knocking about it had gone through.
After Ned had likewise recovered his piece of baggage, the two boys
began the ascent of the stairway. For the moment they had quite
forgotten the presence of the gray-mustached man, of whom, as we know,
Herc stood in some awe on account of the inscription he had espied on
the former's suitcase.
Now, however, the stranger was at the boys' sides. They saluted
instinctively.
"I was a witness of your plucky conduct," he exclaimed warmly, "and I
am glad to see that I was not to be disappointed in the estimate I had
formed of both your characters. I shall keep a sharp lookout over your
future careers as seamen in the navy."
It was a moment when ordinary barriers seemed to be let down, and Herc,
in a hesitating tone, asked, as they gained the boat deck:
"Are you in the navy, too, sir, may we ask?"
"You may, my boy," was the hearty response. "I am Captain Dunham of the
_Manhattan_."
"You're all right, sir," sputtered Herc, in his enthusiasm entirely
forgetting the respect due to an officer.
The next minute, with cheeks even more crimson than the flames and his
exertions had painted them, the farmer boy plunged forward into the
confusion of the boat deck, much embarrassed at his impulsive breach of
discipline.