TOWED!
When the American pushed outside with his burden, a breeze swept the
deck of the _Vulcan_ with an unexpected coolness. The vibrations
had almost ceased, but there was a slight hissing of water from
somewhere, and a feeling of movement. The men were in a hubbub on the
port side where the small boat lay tied.
Filled with the idea that the ship was about to founder, Madden stared
about. To his vast astonishment, he discovered the tug was not sinking,
but moving. The _Vulcan_ was under way. The noise he heard was the
swift displacement of water. For some unaccountable reason, the vessel
glided southward at a speed of eight or ten knots.
In the uproar forward, Madden heard the cries: "Th' dinghy's swamped!"
"We carn't reach 'er!" "Cut 'er loose and jump!" "We couldn't right 'er
in th' water!" "Cut 'er and jump! Quick! 'Eaven knows w'ot's got us!"
"Steady! Steady, men!" bawled Madden, laying Caradoc down on the deck
and hurrying across to his panicky crew. "What's moving us?"
"We don't know, sir! Th' sea sorpint! Grabbed our cable and made off!"
"Can you see it?"
"Just make it out, sir, ahead!"
"Cut th' cable!" cried another voice; "that'll get us loose!"
"Yes, get an axe--Quick!"
A dim figure came running aft past Madden for the axe. The American
shouted at him: "Come back! Don't touch that towing line! Let things
alone!"
"Yes, but this'll drag us to the bottom!" chattered one of the men
forward.
"We'll get in the dinghy when the ship goes down!"
"We might row to the dock from here!"
The men stood in a string along the rail, below them in the hissing
water the dinghy tossing topsy turvy.
"What's towing us? I don't see it?" cried Madden.
Several arms pointed forward. Leonard peered through the gloom. The
crescent moon and the stars filtered down a tinsel light. The faint
shine merely made the darkness more evident Madden seemed to catch a
glimmer of a bulk at the end of the anchor line some hundred yards
distant. He listened but heard only the gurgle of the _Vulcan's_
wake and the creak of her plates.
When the sheer panic of surprise had worn away somewhat, the weirdness
of the uncanny voyage came upon the crew with tenfold force. They stood
gripping the rail, staring ahead with the feeling of condemned prisoners
on their way to the gallows.
"We're 'eaded for the 'ole in th' sea!" muttered Mulcher.
"We'll go down tug an' hall," mumbled Galton unsteadily. "Fish bait,
that's w'ot we are!"
"I've heard sea serpents can sting a man and numb him so he won't live
or die," shivered Hogan, "like a spider stings a fly."
They spoke in half whispers under the influence of the unknown terror.
"If anything happens, I shall keel myself," declared Deschaillon, with
nervous intensity, "but I shall see it first."
"That's w'ot went with the other two crews--killed theirselves,"
chattered Mulcher.
Another silence fell. The cool breeze came as a sort of mockery of their
unknown peril. For the first time since the storm every man was
thoroughly comfortable physically.
"Boys," planned Hogan, "whin th' thing comes aboard, we'll put up th'
best foight we can!"
"It don't come aboard--it bites a 'ole in th' 'ull."
"Aye, like th' _Minnie B_."
Just then a figure approached the men unsteadily, and Madden saw that
Caradoc had recovered consciousness and was able to walk. As the tall,
gaunt figure approached, the crew eyed him as if he were some new
danger, then he asked.
"What is this? Are we moving?"
"Yes we're off," replied Madden.
"Under our own power?" he inquired, turning around and staring at the
smokeless funnel.
"No, we're being towed."
"Towed! Towed!" exclaimed Smith in a weak voice. "What's towing us?"
"We don't know, sor," replied a cockney.
There was a silence in which Caradoc stood tall and cadaverous as a
ghost. "Am I dreaming this, Madden?" he muttered finally. "Did you say
we were being _towed_?"
"That's right."
"What's towing us--not--not the dry dock--don't say the dry dock's
towing us!"
"We don't know, sor," repeated the cockney.
"Where are we going?"
"To be killed, sor."
Caradoc moved slowly over to the rail and sat against it near Madden.
"A cool breeze," he murmured gratefully.
The American was lost amid the wildest speculations as to the mysterious
agent that had the _Vulcan_ in tow. He was trying to think
logically, but found it hard in that atmosphere of terror. The utter
weirdness of the whole affair defied analysis. The towing of the
_Vulcan_ by an unknown power was the very climax of the fantastic.
No hypothesis he could form even remotely approached an explanation.
It could not be some sea monster surging steadily at the tow line of
the _Vulcan_. That theory was untenable. A monster might attack;
it would never tow.
But any other, attempt to account for the strange predicament fell
equally as flat. What human agency would operate so mysteriously in this
hot, stagnant sea? Why should any group of men entrap the helpless crew
of the _Vulcan_ with such a display of mystery and power? It was
useless. It was ridiculous. It was shooting a mosquito with a field gun.
All his thoughts ended in utter absurdity. He felt that he had run up
against some vast power. The schooner _Minnie B_, the tug
_Vulcan_, were but trifling units in the enigma of this deserted,
weed-clogged sea. It must be some power whose operations were
ocean-wide.
Why such a spot should be chosen?--Why a power that sank one ship out of
hand and towed another mile after mile?--Why it operated only at
night?--What lay at the heart of this brooding fabric of terror--he
could not form the slightest conception. Outlawry, piracy, smugglery,
were all goals too small for such operations.
His thoughts seemed to be physical things trying to clamber up the
smooth polished side of an enormous steel plate. They made not the
slightest progress. The more he thought, the more unaccountable all
phases of the question became.
In absolute perplexity, he turned to the Englishman at his side. He
could just make out the blur of Caradoc's face.
"Have you a theory about this, Smith?" he asked in a low voice.
The Englishman nodded in silence.
"What is it?"
"I--I got my head hurt awhile ago. I believe I'm delirious--dreaming."
Leonard thought this over without any feeling of amusement. "That
doesn't explain why I see it too," he objected gravely. "Nothing wrong
with my head--that I know of." He tried the time honored experiment of
pinching himself.
"I shall assume that I am awake," he decided after he had felt his
pinch. "I may not be, but I'm going to act as if I were."
Madden had an impression that Caradoc was smiling in the darkness. Just
then Gaskin began laughing shrilly in a queer metallic voice.
"Quit that!" snapped half a dozen thick voices at once, as if his
laughter had violently shocked their tense nerves.
Gaskin pointed a stumpy arm off the starboard bow, "Look! Look!" he
gasped. "It's that rotten whiskey! Whiskey done it! Whiskey made me see
that! Look w'ot whiskey done!"
Leonard had no idea that anything could be added to the nightmarish
quality of the adventure, but there off the starboard arose a great
bulk, blotting out the stars. It was not a ship; it was not a barge;
there was not a light on it, but it seemed somehow dimly illuminated. It
was as shapeless as death.
"The Flyin' Dutchman!" shuddered Galton.
"It burns a blue light!" corrected Hogan with chattering teeth.
"Th' ship o' the dead!" shivered Mulcher.
A sudden explanation flashed into Madden's head. "You fools are afraid
of our own dry dock," he whispered briefly. "We've traveled in a circle
and reached the dock again."
"Oh, no, sor, it ain't that! Tain't th' dry-dock, sor!" aspirated
several fear-struck voices.
The crew held their breaths as if the apparition might vanish as
suddenly as it appeared.
By this time the moon lay flat on the sea, throwing a faint shining
streak across the dark Sargasso. This vague light was enough to show
Madden, when he took a close look, that it was not the dock.
The thing he saw was an enormous mass without the severe angular shape
of the great dock. Its outline rose crude and shapeless, as well as he
could trace it among the canopy of stars, and gave not the slightest
intimation as to what use it could be.
As they stared, the speed of the _Vulcan_ slackened sensibly. The
faint rippling of water under the prow ceased. The breeze fell away into
a dead blanket of heat. It was as if a sweatbox had been cooped over the
crew.
"The thing's cut loose from us," said a weary voice.
Hogan laughed shortly: "Everybody out--fifteen minutes for
refrishmints."
"Yonder goes that thing!" cried Galton. "Hi can see it!"
Indeed, by peering carefully, Madden could follow the slender outline of
the mysterious craft that had towed the _Vulcan_ to this uncanny
spot. It had now left the tug and was gliding away to the great
misshapen fabric that sprawled on the sea.
Every eye strained to see the outcome of this strange maneuver, when
suddenly from the gliding vessel there shot a dazzling light that spread
over the bulky mass. Under the beating illumination every detail of the
huge vessel stood out garishly. She was immense, with a broad flat prow
like a railway ferryboat. She stood high in the water and seemed to have
three promenade decks around her.
There was no mast, no rigging, no outside gearing. One squat funnel
amidship told that she used steam for some purpose, and out of this
funnel black masses of smoke rose slowly in the motionless air. She
resembled no craft Madden had ever seen.
Notwithstanding her enormous size, everything about the vessel impressed
Madden that she was built for secrecy. She was squat, considering her
length and breadth. It was as if her designer were trying to make a
craft invisible at sea. As near as Madden could determine in the strange
light, she was painted a pale sky-blue. During the day, no doubt, she
melted into the sky like a chameleon.
As the smaller craft approached its huge mate, its circle of light
contracted until it finally concentrated into a dazzling white spot
centered on the prow of the monster. This spot diminished to an intense
point, like an electric arc between carbons. A sharp reflection of this
point streaked the water between the tug and the mysterious vessels.
Then, under the unbelieving eyes of the crew, the little vessel ran
completely into the larger one and was gone. The light vanished
instantly. Utter blackness fell over the dazzled eyes of the watchers.
There were gasps, explosive curses of bewilderment, amazement. The
little boat had disappeared into the larger. Impossible! Gaskin began
his shrill laughter again. Then he gurgled in the darkness as if
somebody's fingers had clamped his windpipe.
Madden's mind attacked more violently than ever the incomprehensible
motives behind this inscrutable mystery. What was the key to this
incredible affair? In the midst of his mental struggle, he felt a hand
on his arm, Caradoc said in his ear,
"What do you say we get in the small boat and pay them a visit?"
"It's a big risk. I daresay we'll get our heads blown off."
"I had thought of that," agreed Caradoc.
"Come on," said the American, and the two moved across the deck to see
if they could still use the dinghy, which had been trailing along all
this time.
Nearly an hour later, the two boys in the dinghy approached the puzzling
craft with muffled oars. As Madden and Caradoc drew near, the vast size
of the strange ship grew more striking. The faint impression of light
which they had first received grew stronger and Madden saw that the
decks were illuminated by long bands of diffused light, although he
could not guess its origin.
On the lowest deck, the American made out the small figure of a man
marching back and forth with a gun.
At this sight, both boys stopped rowing, lifted the oars from tholes and
began paddling noiselessly, canoe-fashion.
"That must be the accommodation ladder," whispered Madden, "where the
guard is."
"Who are they afraid will board them?" queried Caradoc. "Mermaids?"
"It is a strange precaution to take in the Sargasso," agreed the
American. "It is going to make our entrance difficult."
They ceased paddling now and drifted silently toward the monster.
"I wonder if they aren't smugglers," hazarded Caradoc,
"Must be up-to-date, to use submarines--a submarine would defy
detection, wouldn't it?"
"And rich--nobody but millionaire smugglers could get together all this
paraphernalia."
"I'll venture insurance is at the bottom of this fraud, Caradoc,"
hazarded Madden. "These swindlers insure a cargo, bring it to this
place, reship it, sink the vessel, or repaint and rebuild it, then
collect the insurance money--do you remember the log of the _Minnie
B_?"
"No, I didn't read it."
"It stated her cargo had been reshipped--reshipped from the Sargasso.
The entry may have been for the benefit of Davy Jones. Anyway, they are
methodical scoundrels."
The lads fell silent as the hugeness of this nefarious business
gradually dawned on them. For insurance swindlers and smugglers to work
on such a large scale, very probably the organization branched over the
whole civilized world. This vast shapeless vessel was a spider at the
center of a great network of criminality.
"Say, the Camorras are mere infants in crime compared to these men,"
shuddered Leonard. "I suppose they murder the crews--drown 'em."
"They would have to get 'em out of the way somehow."
"Then Malone and all the tug's crew are..."
There was an expressive silence.
After a while Caradoc whispered, "Well, shall we try to get aboard?"
"Wouldn't do any good."
"It won't do any good to stay here."
"No, we can't hide on the tug always, and we can't run her engines.
_You_ don't know anything about marine engines, do you, Caradoc?"
"Very little. I couldn't run one."
For several minutes, the two adventurers sat in silence, watching the
small erect figure of the guard pace and repace his short path.
Presently Madden said:
"I've thought of one chance, Caradoc, to escape being starved or
murdered."
"Yes, what's that?"
"It--it's almost too wild to propose, but it's all I can think of. As
far as I know it's absolutely our last chance."
"Go on, go on," urged the Englishman impatiently. "I don't know of any
way out whatever."
"If we could slip aboard there and--and--well, kidnap somebody who knows
how to run our engines, bring him back to the tug, fire up and make a
race to South America--but there's no sense to a scheme like that.
Captain Kidd himself wouldn't be up to it."
A long silence followed this ultimatum, then Caradoc said, "Oh, it's
possible, I suppose. The mathematical formula of possibility would work
out about ten million chances to one that we lose."
"Yes, I know it's risky."
"And how do you hope to get in past that guard?"
"We'll have to climb up the ladder right under him, hang there until he
is on his up-deck walk, then swing inside and when he turns around we
could be simply strolling up the deck toward him. There must be a lot of
fellows on such a big ship. Maybe he doesn't know them all."
"Why do you want to stroll _toward_ him?"
"Because if he saw us walking off in the other direction, he would know
we had not passed him, and so we must have come up the ladder."
Caradoc shook his head in the darkness. "I'm going to try to jump on
that guard when he turns his back, and down him."
"He'd give an alarm sure. We mustn't disturb him till we get ready to
leave, then let him yell."
"What you are planning, Madden, is simply impossible. I like to be as
conservative as possible."
"We can turn around and row back to the _Vulcan_--and starve."
"Go ahead to the accommodation ladder. However, it's impossible."
As the two moved silently nearer a murmur of machinery in the vast
fabric came to them. As their tiny boat swung in beside the high hull,
they could hear this noise quite plainly, and they trusted to this
rumble to screen their operations somewhat. They ceased paddling and
allowed the dinghy to drift against the iron side of the vessel. They
could no longer see the deck and the guard, owing to the swell in the
high metal wall. But presently they came to the rope ladder which they
anticipated hung below the guard's station.
Madden caught this and tied the dinghy to it with the crawly feeling of
a man who expects to have a gun fired at him the next moment.
Caradoc came up and the two adventurers stood in the boat's prow, both
holding to the ladder.
"I'll bet that scoundrel shoots down," whispered Leonard, "before we get
halfway up."
"Don't talk so loud--are you ready to try it?"
"What are you going to do--jump on him?" breathed Leonard.
"No, your plan. If you see he is going to shoot you before you get
inside, jump backwards and dive."
"And remember to go far enough out not to hit the dinghy."
"Good."
Madden stared up into the mysterious vessel, caught the ladder and swung
himself silently onto the rungs. Caradoc mounted close behind him. They
had mounted only two or three steps, when a sudden terrific report
thundered above their heads.
It was so unexpected, so violent, that the two boys almost tumbled into
the sea. The next instant they found themselves wrapped in an atmosphere
of hot, stifling steam. They clung to the rungs in a veritable
steam-bath that roared and plunged around them. When Madden collected
his senses, he realized that it was merely a safety discharge from the
boilers. The main steam pressure did not strike them, but they swung in
the hot wet fringe of the exhaust. Had they been ten feet farther aft,
they would surely have been boiled to death. As it was they were
immersed in uncomfortably hot vapor.
They clung, rather unnerved by the uproar, enduring the heat for four or
five minutes, when suddenly an idea occurred to Madden. He leaned down
to Caradoc and shouted in his ear.
"How about going up now? Couldn't see us in this steam."
For reply, Caradoc shoved his friend upward, and so they scrambled aloft
like two monkeys.
Fortunately for them, the night was windless and the white steam drifted
straight up and as it rose, it spread out in an impenetrable fog.
Cloaked in this vapor, the two adventurers scrambled up some thirty-five
feet to the first deck. The steam was thick inside the rail. Covered by
the noisy shriek of the exhaust, they jumped inside the promenade
without being heard or seen, and a moment later, they dropped arm in
arm, like two casual strollers, and moved up deck.
Two minutes later, when the roaring exhaust had ceased and the vapor had
cleared away, the guard with the gun could never have guessed that the
two men he saw slowly promenading the deck had drifted over the rail,
out of the night, with the clouds of the noisy exhaust.
Neither of the lads so much as glanced at the sentinel as they strolled
past him. Caradoc was saying in the low tones men use when conversing in
the darkness:
"Do you suppose that fellow knows anything about engines?"
And Madden replied just as confidentially, as he sized the gun man up
out of the tail of his eye, "No, I'm sure he doesn't. An engineer never
has to stand guard."
"How are we ever going to spot an engineer?"
For the first time since starting, a little thrill of the joy of
adventure crept into Madden's heart. He felt like a ferret venturing
into a rat's den.
"Why you can tell an engineer easily," he murmured. "You've seen 'em,
oily fellows, with black smudges."
"That describes a fireman, too."
"No, a fireman's not so oily and is more cindery--then we'll know one by
his cap."
"Certainly," breathed Smith. "I hadn't thought of that."
Notwithstanding his danger, Madden could not help smiling as he moved
along after the fashion of a careless stroller, when he was really
keenly alert for a man with an engineer's cap.
The two youths were walking up a long deck, dimly lighted by small
incandescent bulbs placed on the inner surface of the outside stanchions
about thirty feet apart. Each bulb was carefully blinded from the ocean
by a sheath, which confined its glowworm radiance exclusively to the
promenade. On the inboard side were a long series of port holes,
likewise hooded from observation. Some were aglow, others dark.
The deck, rails, cabin walls, ports, hoods, joists of the top-deck were
newly washed and scrupulously clean. Fifty yards up-deck, where
perspective and the sheer of the ship gave the promenade the appearance
of a long, up-curved tunnel, the boys caught sight of a gang of men
scrubbing down deck. A little beyond the scrubbing gang, some garments
fluttered on a line drying in the night air.
As they drew nearer, Madden perceived they were muscular men, with faces
bronzed by tropic sunshine. Some of their necks and cheeks were peeling,
as if from sunburn. On the whole they had a healthy, hearty appearance
that fitted in badly with Madden's theory of murderers and thieves.
Instead of a piratical aspect, the promenade bore a strong resemblance
to a deck scene on some crack transatlantic liner, except for the
blinded lights and ports and the armed guard.
The wanderers passed the scrub gang without trouble and came to the
drying laundry. The number of these shirts and trousers and under
clothing suggested the hulk must contain a large number of men. If these
men _were_ smugglers and insurance swindlers, they had systematized
their life after rigid military discipline.
They moved through the laundry with fading hopes of kidnapping an
engineer from such a formidable institution, when they were startled by
a human laugh. It sounded in their ears and was as unexpected as a
shriek in church. For an instant they thought they were apprehended.
Then they understood the sound came from one of the lighted ports.
They moved softly among the shirts and trousers until they reached the
suspected port. Inside they heard a very trivial conversation in
English.
"I'm after that jack of yours, Captain Cleghorne," declared a thick
voice with a laugh.
"I played low, remember that,"
A silence, then a burst of laughter.
"He ran that jick over your king!"
Leonard stood beside the port blind making a tantalizing effort to
recall something. Where had he heard the name "Cleghorne?" He repeated
it mentally several times.
"Cleghorne, Cleghorne----" of a sudden it came to him. He had never
heard it, but had seen it framed in the license that hung in the chart
room of the schooner, _Minnie B_.
With a heart thumping against his ribs at this strange and amazing
coincidence, the American ducked his head carefully under the port hood
and looked in.
For a moment his eyes were blinded by electric lights. Then he observed
a group of men sitting around a table playing cards. They were in
obviously comfortable spirits, nothing criminal or warlike. One was a
long cadaverous figure that suggested to Madden, Cleghorne, the Yankee
commander of the _Minnie B_.
When his eyes strayed across the table to Cleghorne's partner, Leonard's
knees almost crumpled in surprise. He was looking at the old commander
of the floating dock, Mate Malone.