had started it!
Sandy slipped from the support of the friendly arms that had grasped
him. He bent to pick up an asbestos glove dropped by one of the crewmen.
He slipped it on his right hand and walked quickly forward to retrieve
the bottle.
As he leaned over, he felt himself jostled aside. He nearly fell down
again. A tall man stepped in front of him and swung the flat of an ax
down on the bottle. He did it deliberately. He shattered the bottle into
a hundred pieces.
“Why did you do that?” Sandy cried, unable to hide his anger.
The man in front of him turned with a wicked smile, and said, “You could
have burned yourself on that, Little Lord Show-off—and you’re in enough
hot water already.”
It was Mr. Briggs.
CHAPTER NINE
Charged with Arson
No one was less surprised than Sandy Steele when the order came for him
and Jerry James to report to Captain West in his cabin.
It was by then close to midnight. Once the fire had been put out, there
had remained the task of clearing away the debris and cleaning up. This
had occupied the crew for a few more hours, and Sandy and Jerry had not
been happy to hear the grumbles about burned suppers and lost sleep or
to see the glances of hostility that were directed their way. Mr.
Briggs, it seemed, had been as expert in spreading his falsehoods among
the crew as he had been in taking them to Captain West.
Only Sam had remained friendly, and it had been Sam who had brought the
order.
“Captain says you two are to report to him right away,” Sam said. He
shook his head sadly. “Too bad, boys,” he went on. “If I can read storm
signals right, I’d say you were in for it.”
“In for it!” Jerry burst out hotly. “Is that what we get for putting out
the fire?”
“Hold it, Jerry,” Sandy said gently, calming his friend down. “That
won’t do any good.” He looked at Sam. “I suppose Mr. Briggs is with
him?”
Sam seemed surprised. “Now, how do you know that?”
Sandy’s answer was a grim tightening of his lips. On the subject of Mr.
Briggs, he did not trust himself to speak. Sandy wondered how much
longer he was going to be able to control his temper. It seemed to him
that every time either he or Jerry did something they were supposed to
do, even something they really needn’t have done, their only reward was
some penalty or a leer from Mr. Briggs or an insult from the skipper.
What had begun as a high school boy’s dream of a splendid way to spend
the summer seemed to be turning into a nightmare. Sandy let out his
breath in a deep sigh. He looked at Jerry and was startled to see the
sulky expression on his friend’s normally cheerful countenance.
“I’m not going,” Jerry said sullenly.
“Wha-a-at?” Sam said, as though he couldn’t believe his ears. “What did
you say, young fellow?”
Before Jerry could reply, Sandy had propelled him up the passageway and
out of earshot. He didn’t want their friend Sam to get the notion that
they were mutinous.
“Jerry,” he whispered fiercely, “you’ve got to stop talking like that!”
“I don’t care!” Jerry said stoutly. “We’ve been pushed around long
enough, and now I’ve got to get it off my chest. Listen, Sandy—you know
very well what’s going to happen when we get in there with the captain.
He’s going to accuse us with a lot of lies that he’s heard from the
mate. He’ll not only forget that we risked our lives to get at that
table, but he’ll turn around and say we started the fire.”
“Shhh!” Sandy said, looking around anxiously.
Jerry lowered his voice, but he didn’t stop talking. “It’s true! Why,
look what he said to you after you rescued poor old Cookie from
drowning! He acted as though you’d jumped in just to make him late for
the Soo Locks. Honestly, Sandy, I don’t know why you bother—”
“Because we’ve got to!” Sandy insisted, squeezing Jerry’s arm. “Don’t
you realize that a captain aboard ship is a lot different from a teacher
or a football coach? He’s got you in his power, Jerry. His word is law!
Really. You can’t disobey him!”
“Oh, no?” Jerry said.
“If you do,” Sandy warned, “you’ll wind up in jail. I mean it, Jerry.
Now is just the time when we’ve got to keep our heads.” He dropped his
voice to a whisper. Then he went on: “Captain West must know by now that
we’ve found out about him. You remember that Mr. Briggs was out in the
passageway, eavesdropping, while we were talking about it. He’s
certainly told the skipper. Now, with the fire, he’s got an excuse to do
something that will keep us from warning Mr. Kennedy.”
Jerry’s eyes widened. “Such as what?” he asked. “Such as locking us up
somewhere.”
There was a momentary silence, and then Jerry James groaned and said,
“Boy, oh, boy, we really _are_ in trouble, aren’t we?”
Sandy smiled in relief. He could tell by the tone of his friend’s voice
that he had gotten over his resentment. With a reassuring squeeze of
Jerry’s arm, Sandy continued, “We are. That’s why we’ve got to stay
calm. So, whatever you do, Jerry, don’t say or do anything foolish when
we get in there with Captain West.”
Jerry James’s jaw tightened and he clapped his friend on the arm.
“Right,” he said, and then the two of them walked up the passageway and
knocked on the door of Captain West’s cabin.
“Come in,” the skipper growled.
They entered.
“What took you so long?” Captain West snapped.
“We were delayed,” Sandy said.
“Oh,” the skipper mocked, glancing over at his mate, who sat on the
bunk. “Did you hear that, Briggs? They were delayed, he says. Well,” he
sneered, his voice turning ugly, “you’ll have plenty of time for delays
where I’m putting you.”
The skipper peered at them with eager expectation, as though he hoped
his remarks would goad them into losing their tempers. Observing this,
Sandy was inwardly pleased. He realized that the skipper could not be
too confident of himself, that he was not sure of how much the youths
actually knew—no matter what Mr. Briggs had said to him.
“Well?” the skipper roared, crashing his fist down on his desk. “What
have you to say to that?”
“Nothing, sir,” Sandy replied evenly.
A red flush began to spread over Captain West’s face. But it was
supplanted by a cunning look.
“Playing doggo, eh?” he muttered. “Well, we’ll see.” He looked over at
his mate with a grin, and said, “Now, you just tell that story of yours
again, Mr. Briggs.”
The mate nodded.
“It was this way, sir,” he started, gazing up at the overhead with an
expression of shocked innocence. “Just before suppertime, I happened to
be passing the galley and saw these two.” He lowered his eyes and jabbed
a dirty thumb in the direction of Sandy and Jerry. Then he raised his
eyes again and said, “They were playing catch with a can of tomatoes.”
Jerry gasped in indignation, and Sandy quickly gave him a warning nudge.
“That’s what they were doing, sir—throwing it back and forth like a
couple of schoolkids at a picnic. Then this black-haired fellow here, he
let go a good one and it went right through the grandstander’s hands and
hit the can of fat on the stove and knocked it over on the fire. And
then, sir,” the mate concluded, a note of smugness in his voice, “then,
sir, the fat was really in the fire.”
With a look of gloating, the captain swung his eyes on Sandy and
Jerry—and that was when Sandy opened his mouth and said, “He’s a liar.”
Almost the moment that the words dropped from his lips, Sandy Steele
wished he could have bitten his tongue in two. But he had finally had to
give in to the resentment that had been smoldering inside him almost
from the moment he had walked aboard the _James Kennedy_. But, to say
that, after all his good advice to Jerry! He glanced over at his friend,
half expecting him to be disgusted with him.
He was grinning!
Then Sandy had to laugh, too—if not from the delight so plain on Jerry’s
saucy face, then from the look of injury on the face of the mate. Mr.
Briggs actually acted as though he had been unfairly accused! So, Sandy
laughed—and when he did, Captain West arose from his chair with a roar
of rage.
“Get out of here! You smooth-faced, insubordinate little firebugs! Get
back to your quarters and stand by to face a court of inquiry on charges
of arson and insubordination! That’ll teach you to laugh at me and call
my mate a liar! Eh? How about that, eh? How will your friend, Old Man
Kennedy, like that, eh, when he hears that his white-faced schoolboys
are headed for some Buffalo jail? And you, Mr. Briggs, I’m ordering you
to keep these two under lock and key until we get to Buffalo.” Then,
puffing up his chest like a giant bullfrog, Captain West issued a final
roar:
“GET OUT!”
Their heads held high, Sandy and Jerry marched back to their quarters.
And the door had hardly swung shut behind them, before the skipper
whirled and pounced upon his mate with the low snarl of an enraged puma.
With a cry and a whimper, the fawning mate who had opened his mouth for
words of toadying praise, cringed back against the bulkhead.
“No, Skipper, don’t,” he whined, but Captain West ignored his pleas and
seized him by the shirt collar and began to shake him.
“You lying, sniveling drunk!” the skipper growled. “Do you think you
fooled me for a moment? I saw you smash that rum bottle in front of that
Steele boy’s face tonight. I smelled your breath when you came reeling
down the passageway, shrieking like the lily-livered ninny you are.” He
shook Mr. Briggs again, fiercely. “Do you think I believed that
cock-and-bull story of yours? Do you? Answer me!”
Terrified, the mate babbled, “N-no, sir.”
“But you still took me for a fool, is that it?” the skipper snarled,
almost beside himself. Then, seeing Mr. Briggs burst into a fit of
uncontrollable blubbering, he uttered a growl of disgust and flung him
back on the bunk like a sack of wheat. He returned to his desk and sat
down again.
“Briggs,” he said heavily, “if it wasn’t for the fact that I can make
use of you, I’d have skinned you alive long ago. I pretended to believe
you tonight only because I saw a chance to put those nosy brats of
Kennedy’s in their place. I want them under lock and key until that deal
is signed in Buffalo. And that’s the day after tomorrow.” The skipper
drew another deep breath. “They belong to you, Briggs,” he said. “And
you’ll answer for them with your hide.” His voice took on an ugly,
menacing tone that raised bumps of fear all along the mate’s spine.
“If something goes wrong, Briggs, if I see you so much as look at
another bottle, I’ll flay that hide of yours from one end of the Lakes
to the other. I’ve got too much at stake to fool around! Paul Chadwick
wants those Kennedy boats and I want him to get them. If it’s the last
thing I do, I’m going to be chief captain of the combined Chadwick and
Kennedy lines—and no high school kids are going to get in my way by
telling Old Man Kennedy about those high-grade ore discoveries. So,
remember that, Briggs—and now get out of here and let me get some
sleep.”
Still trembling, the shaken mate crept from Captain West’s quarters and
closed the door softly behind him. Then he slipped down the passageway
toward the tiny cabin occupied by Sandy Steele and Jerry James.
The moment Mr. Briggs vanished from sight, the door of the cabin
adjoining the skipper’s came stealthily open. Then, slowly, the figure
of a little bald-headed man emerged. He shut the door carefully behind
him, and then glanced swiftly up and down the corridor.
On tiptoe, he slipped over to Captain West’s door. He bent his head to
listen. Then he backed off carefully and raised both clenched fists to
shake them in a gesture of anger and defiance, before he whirled
silently and made his way out of sight.
The little bald-headed man was Cookie.
He had heard every word spoken in the captain’s cabin since Sandy and
Jerry had made their appearance there. Every inch of his little frame
burned with determination to come to the rescue of his young friends and
help thwart the schemes of the crafty Captain West.
In their own cabin, meanwhile, the two friends had just climbed wearily
into their bunks.
Suddenly they shot erect as they heard a rattling and clanking outside
their door. But they knew in the next instant what the noise meant. It
was Mr. Briggs “dogging down” the heavy outside handle.
“Well,” Jerry said, “now we’re prisoners.”
“Yes,” Sandy said, “but I have a funny feeling that things are going to
start to get better.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Sandy said grimly, “they couldn’t possibly get any worse.”
CHAPTER TEN
The Unsalted Seas
Unfortunately, Sandy Steele was wrong.
Things could get worse, and they did.
They worsened, not only for the two youths from Valley View, California,
but for everyone aboard the _James Kennedy_—to say nothing of all those
other thousands of human souls who sailed the lower Lakes on that
memorable summer morning.
For it was on that morning that a freak summer storm that had been
rushing down from the north, roared like a scourge across Lake Huron
before bursting in all its fury upon the shallow waters of Lake Erie. It
was a storm that blew with shattering force across a body of water
notorious for rough weather.
There are no storms so sudden and so strong as those that fall upon the
Great Lakes, and Sandy Steele and Jerry James were about to witness one
of the worst within the memory of the grizzled sailors of “the unsalted
seas.”
There are the treacherous gales, and sometimes hurricanes, of late fall
or early winter—those wailing winds that sheathe a ship in fresh-water
ice, before driving it to its destruction.
In the days of sailing ships, there have been single storms upon the
Lakes in which as many as a hundred ships—with thousands of sailors and
passengers—have perished within twenty-four hours. Steam-driven
freighters, and motorships, too, have sunk to the bottom of these cold
waters—and more than a few of the ocean liners that have managed to make
their way to the Lakes via the St. Lawrence River have gone to a
fresh-water grave.
The very first ship to sail the Lakes was the bark, _Griffon_, of the
famous French explorer, LaSalle. It set sail from Buffalo on August 7,
1679, reached the shores of Lake Michigan, and then disappeared
completely on its return voyage.
From Superior to Ontario, the floors of the Lakes are littered with all
manner of ships that have gone down in these storms—with their cargoes,
their jewels, their gold, their stacks of currency still undamaged in
safes.
And it is above the surface of Lake Erie, the body of water toward which
the _James Kennedy_ was placidly steaming, that the Great Lakes storms
blow the worst and the wildest. For Lake Erie is the shallowest of all
the lakes. Its average depth is only 70 feet, compared to that of 250
for the rest of them. At its deepest, it is only 210 feet—compared to
1,180 feet on Lake Superior.
Erie is a shallow saucer, a basin, and when the winds go whistling
across its surface they create something of the effect that a boy might
make by blowing onto a shallow saucer of water—but on a much, much
greater scale. The winds whip up mountainous waves that can break a
freighter in two. There have been storms on Lake Erie as freakish and
furious as that recorded by the veteran mariner who had moored his
vessel on the Canadian shore opposite Buffalo. To his amazement, the
wind blew so savagely that it drove the water out and away from his
ship’s hull and left him sitting there, high and dry!
Even today, in our modern age, there have been freighters that have
ventured into Erie storms, from whom nothing has been heard except a
last, despairing message: “We are breaking up.”
So it was on Lake Erie that this unusual summer storm struck with such
violence, only a few hours after the _James Kennedy_ had left the
Detroit River and swung its prow east by north for Buffalo.
Oddly enough, Captain West was elated when the storm broke.
He would not have been quite so overjoyed had he known how terrible it
would become. But his first reaction to the gale was simply that this
would probably keep the _James Kennedy_, and the two youths, out on the
Lakes until well after Mr. Paul Chadwick had finished his deal with Mr.
Kennedy.
In fact, Captain West had decided against going ashore in Detroit for
much the same reasons. He had suddenly realized that it might be risky
to place Sandy Steele and Jerry James within reach of a big city—with
its telephones and telegraphs, and, worse, its buses and railroads. They
might, in some way, get off the ship. Then they would be free to warn
Mr. Kennedy.
So Captain West had left orders to make downriver past Detroit and out
into Lake Erie.
He awoke to the shudder and roll of his ship. In his ears, he could hear
the whine of a rising wind. When he gazed out of his porthole, his eyes
fell on a slate-gray sea.
“A storm!” he cried, grinning with wicked delight. “Oh, ho, Captain
West’s luck is running good. This’ll close that deal for good and all!”
Pleased as could be, the skipper sprang from his bunk and began putting
on his foul-weather clothing. He strode briskly from his cabin. About to
make topside, he paused at the mate’s door. He swung it open and leaned
in.
“Briggs, I think you’d better unlock those boys.”
The mate gawked as though he couldn’t believe his ears, but Captain West
held up a thick, hairy paw when he opened his mouth to protest.
“Do as I say! They’re not going anywhere, especially in this storm. It’s
one thing to keep them locked up like that under the pretext of facing
charges, Briggs. But it’s another to have them trapped below decks
during a storm.”
The mate nodded obediently, and Captain West wheeled and headed for the
ladder. Moving along the passageway, he was surprised to find that he
had to stretch out flat against the bulkhead to keep from falling. The
_James Kennedy_ was bucking that much!
Clambering up the ladder, he needed all his strength to keep from being
thrown below. When he got on deck, the wind seemed to whistle through
his ears, and he pursed his lips in a whistle of his own when he
observed the huge, rising seas and the dirty clouds scudding low and
threatening above him.
Glancing over the side, Captain West whistled again.
There was a good two feet less of freeboard already, and the _James
Kennedy_ seemed to be plunging deeper into the steely, rain-dimpled
waves. Captain West pulled his cap lower on his forehead and thrust one
powerful shoulder ahead of him as he bucked into the screaming wind. The
rain came slanting at him in sheets and raked his face. He ducked his
chin deeper into his shoulder, not quite so jubilant a skipper as he had
been upon awakening.
For this, indeed, was the start of a real blow!
Below decks, Sandy Steele and Jerry James were awake, too. They had been
so for perhaps a half hour before Captain West, roused from a deep sleep
by the unfamiliar pitching of the vessel. Now they sat on the lower
bunk. Both boys had deeply serious expressions on their faces. Sandy was
not even aware of the cowlick that hung forward on his forehead, and
Jerry James’s brow was a mass of wrinkles. They were listening to the
steady clanking and groaning of the _James Kennedy_’s steel fibers as
the laden ore boat rolled in the rising seas. Even below, they could
hear the thin wailing of the winds above.
“Sounds like a real storm, Sandy.”
“Yes, and do you realize what this could mean?”
“Well, I guess it could mean anything—that is, if it got bad enough.”
“Oh, I don’t mean sinking or anything like that. I mean it could keep us
from reaching Buffalo in time.”
“Oh,” Jerry said, in a small, glum voice, and for a time neither youth
spoke. Then they heard a rattling at their door.
It opened, and the unfriendly face of Mr. Briggs peeped in. The two
youths leaped to their feet.
“Stay where you are!” the mate snapped. “You ain’t going anywheres.” He
grunted, pushing the door back and securing it against the bulkhead.
“Skipper says he wants your door open. Can’t say as I agree with him,
but he’s the skipper.”
“Can we go out?” Sandy asked.
“No.”
“How about some food?” Jerry queried, rubbing his stomach.
The mate snickered. “You’ll get the same as the others—biscuits and
water.” He snickered again. “That’s all the food that’s left after what
you two boobs done to the galley.”
“What _we_ did!” they chorused, indignantly.
“Yes, you!” the mate snarled, backing into the passageway. “And don’t
try to come it over me with that innocent-angels business.”
Sandy and Jerry exchanged glances of amazement, and then, again, they
burst out laughing.
“Boy, oh, boy,” Jerry breathed, to the annoyance of the mate, “when our
Mr. Briggs tells a story, he sticks to it!”
The mate’s mouth flew open for an angry reply, but then, it just
remained agape and not a sound issued forth.
The mate seemed to be rising in the air, towering over the two youths in
the cabin. He lost his balance and fell. His mouth still yawning and his
hands frantically clawing for a hold on the smooth steel deck, he began
to slide toward them.
Then the boys were hurled backward against the bulkhead. They struck it
with a crash and slithered to the floor, all but stunned.
For one long dreadful moment, it seemed to all three of them that the
_James Kennedy_ would never return from that sickening roll to
starboard. There was that bottomless instant when it appeared that the
heavily burdened vessel would never stop heeling over until it had
turned turtle and plunged to the bottom.
Then, it stopped.
It seemed to hang in the air.
Sandy and Jerry drew their breath in sharply. They had the terrible
sensation that there was nothing beneath the _James Kennedy_ to support
it, and that once this long, hanging pause had ended—it would drop,
drop, drop. Slowly, they let their breath out.
The vessel had begun to right itself.
With the same slow, deliberate, rolling motion, it heeled over to port,
and now it was Sandy and Jerry who rose in the air above the mate and
who felt themselves sliding toward him. Again, it seemed that the _James
Kennedy_ would overturn, and the hanging sensation was repeated. But
when the vessel had righted itself this time, it seemed merely to
shiver—before plowing straight ahead.
Scrambling erect, the two youths stared at Mr. Briggs. The mate’s face
had been drained of color and his little eyes glistened with fear.
“That,” he said, in a voice hoarse with awe and disbelief, “was a wave!”
Up above, in the pilothouse, Captain West had watched that monster swell
come and go, and now even he was a trifle shaken as he mopped his brow
in relief. He wondered what would have happened if that wall of water
had struck them fore and aft, rather than abeam.
He gazed through his windows and wagged his head gravely. The winds
still rose in violence. They whipped at the _James Kennedy_ from every
quarter, seeming to change direction every other moment like a cyclone
gone mad. The seas were a battering confusion. The waves ran this way,
the wind another. Between them, they tore at the ship’s superstructure
and thundered against her sides. Sometimes two great waves would dash at
each other from opposite directions, colliding with a great roar and a
shattering shower of spray.
Captain West saw with alarm that the waves were increasing in height.
They were already well past ten feet. They would go on to twenty, of
that he was disturbingly certain—and after that?
After that, Captain West knew, waves and running seas of that height
would batter the long, narrow, shallow _James Kennedy_ until she broke
in two. He no longer placed such great importance on staying out of port
to make sure of Mr. Chadwick’s deal. He would have given anything, just
then, to be safe and snug behind the breakwater at Buffalo.
Peering through his rain-splashed windows, the skipper sought a glimpse
of some other vessel. But his visibility had been greatly reduced by the
sheets of rain and the darkening skies. The unearthly light that had
greeted him when he came on deck had been slowly subsiding. Now, as the
clock raced on toward noon and the storm raged on in unabated fury, he
could see only the clashing seas around him and hear that high-pitched
wailing of the wind.
He shook himself.
“This is bad, very bad,” he said to Sam, who had taken over as
wheelsman.
“Aye, aye, sir,” Sam said. “I’ve been through some bad ones on the
Lakes—but I’ve not seen any worse than this one. And it’s just starting,
if I read the signals right.”