The passengers so mysteriously imprisoned in the first-cabin quarters
were soon to meet again that vanished scientist and fellow-voyager
Professor Ernst Wilhelm Vonderholtz. Shortly before noon one of the
doors which had blocked exit to the promenade-deck was opened from
the outside. An alert, blond man stepped upon the brass threshold and
stood gazing at the huddled, wondering passengers. The expression of
his keenly intelligent face reflected easy confidence and half-smiling
contempt.
He wore the blue uniform cap and blouse of a ship’s officer, obviously
purloined from the lawful owner, for the insignia was that of the
International Line. The gold-rimmed spectacles and the precise,
studious manner discarded, it was painfully apparent that he was
something very different from a harmless professor of chemistry.
Behind him, and filling the doorway, stood four other men in the grimy
garments of the stoke-hole. The smears of coal-dust which blackened
their features gave them a forbidding, sinister appearance. They were
openly armed with revolvers. Their leader motioned them to remain where
they were. He moved just inside the hall and addressed the passengers
in his clean-cut English with its Teutonic shades and intonations. The
audience was flatteringly attentive. The sight of the four grim stokers
in the background compelled absorbed attention.
“This steamer is in my control,” crisply began the singularly
transformed university professor. “It is useless for you to wax
indignant, to weep, to protest. The thing has been most carefully
planned. I will explain a little in order that you may know why it is
best for you to do as you are ordered. The strike of those firemen
in Liverpool? It was fomented by my agents. They caused the strike
to occur on the day of sailing. It was necessary to get rid of that
crew of firemen. In their places were shipped my own--our own men.
The company was surprised to find a new crew so easily. The stupid
management suspected nothing. Many months, much money it had taken
to select these men of mine, to have them all together in Liverpool
prepared for the opportunity.”
The vanity of the man showed itself in this frank praise of his own
adroit and masterly leadership. His ego could not help asserting
itself. Now his easy demeanor stiffened and his face became hard and
cold as he went on to say with more vehemence and an occasional gesture:
“Who are we? You wonder and you are afraid. It is the Communal
Brotherhood, powerful and secret, which seizes this steamer. This is a
bold skirmish in the war against capital, against privilege, against
the parasitic class which must be utterly destroyed. Labor is the only
wealth; but does labor own the factories, the steamships, the land? No,
it is enslaved. This stroke will be talked about all over the world.
Wealth is always cowardly. It will tremble and----”
From the fringe of the silent company rose the shrill, rasping accents
of Jenkins P. Chase. The American multimillionaire was fragile,
dyspeptic, and nervous, a mere shred of a man physically, but, given
sufficient provocation, he had aggressive courage in abundance. Nor
had his enemies in the world of commerce and finance ever called him a
coward. This situation exasperated him beyond words.
“You’re a fuddle-headed liar, you bragging, anarchistic scoundrel!” he
cried, shaking his fist at the speaker. “Cut out all that hot air and
balderdash. We can read it in books. Get down to business. What do you
propose to do with us? Hold me for ransom?”
The eyes of the bogus Professor Ernst Wilhelm Vonderholtz were
unpleasantly malevolent as he calmly answered:
“It is an accident that you yourself are on board. You were not
included in our plans. I do not intend to hold you for ransom. It will
be doing a great service to mankind if I throw you into the sea.”
Quite undaunted, for his blood was up, Jenkins P. Chase flung back at
him:
“You’re a lunatic. I presume you are after the two millions in gold,
consigned to New York bankers, which is in the ship’s treasure-room.
You have the upper hand? Why don’t you take the plunder and leave us
alone?”
“We require no advice from you,” and the captor showed his teeth in a
mirthless smile. “I wish to inform the passengers that they will be fed
as long as they shall behave themselves. They also have permission to
use a part of the promenade deck which will be roped off and guarded.
Any person attempting to reach other parts of the ship will be shot. It
is possible that you will suffer no harm. What to do with you has not
yet been decided.”
That interested observer, Captain Michael O’Shea, swiftly whispered to
Johnny Kent:
“Tuck your gun under the cushion of the settee behind us. The
passengers will be searched for arms. The professor knows his business.”
The acute mind of Jenkins P. Chase had already concluded that these two
men were ready-witted and unafraid. He marked their bearing, and he was
impressed with the fact that O’Shea had been aware of trouble aboard
the ship before the other passengers suspected it. Inviting them into
his luxurious rooms, he brusquely demanded:
“What’s your opinion? Have you any suggestions?”
“I am a shipmaster by trade and me large friend here has been chief
engineer of a good many steamers,” answered O’Shea. “We have knocked
some holes in the laws of the high seas ourselves, but ye can set us
down as amateurs alongside this rampageous chemical professor. ’Tis the
biggest thing of the kind that was ever pulled off. This Vonderholtz
has brains and nerve. And he is as cold-blooded as a fish. The man is
bad clear through. And he is crammed full of conceit, which is his one
weak point, the flaw in his system.”
“Call him all the names you please, but how does that help us?” snapped
Jenkins P. Chase.
“Go easy, my dear man. ’Twill do no good to hop about like an agitated
flea. What I am getting at is this. Vonderholtz is so well pleased with
his plans that he thinks they cannot be upset. We may catch him off his
guard.”
“But what if we do?” demanded Mr. Chase. “These villains have captured
the whole crew of the steamer--officers, sailors, stewards.”
“’Twas not hard to take them by surprise in the night and lock them in
their quarters under guard, sir,” explained O’Shea. “Half of them were
off watch and asleep, ye must remember. Vonderholtz has near a hundred
and fifty men, and no doubt every one of them came aboard with a gun in
his clothes. There are enough of them to work the ship and to spare,
and I suppose there are navigators and engineers amongst them.”
“I can believe all that,” irritably interrupted Jenkins P. Chase. “Now
that the damnable piracy has succeeded, it is easy enough to see how a
gang with a capable leader can take possession of any Atlantic liner.
Do you think these scoundrels can be bribed?”
“’Tis not probable. Vonderholtz is a fanatic with his wild ideas about
society, and he has recruited men of his own stamp. Besides, they have
the two millions in gold in the strong-room to divide ‘for the good of
humanity.’”
“How will they get away with the gold? The whole thing is
preposterous,” snorted the millionaire.
“I have read in the newspapers that Mr. Jenkins P. Chase once stole a
railroad,” pleasantly returned O’Shea. “Maybe you can figure it out
better than us two sailormen how Vonderholtz stole a steamship.”
“A good hit! You’re not so slow yourself,” cried the other, not in the
least offended.
“The steamer is steering into southern waters,” resumed O’Shea, “and
’tis likely that it was arranged beforehand for another vessel to meet
her and take the treasure and the men aboard. What will they do with
the _Alsatian_? I misdoubt they will sink her with all hands of us,
though Vonderholtz would lose no sleep over it, but he will want the
world to know about his great blow against the capitalists and the
parasites and the likes of us. It is a joke to class Johnny Kent and me
as enemies of the poor, could ye look into our pockets.”
“It certainly makes me swell up and feel rich to be lumped with the
plutocrats,” cheerfully observed Johnny Kent.
Jenkins P. Chase let his small bright eyes rove for a moment, and his
wise, wizened features were sardonically amused as he said:
“We’re in a floating lunatic asylum, where my money is no good. God
knows what the crack-brained anarchist in command will do with the
ship. He has handed out a jolt to capital, all right. Of course, if
you two men can concoct any scheme to win, you’re welcome to fill in a
blank check for any sum you like and I’ll see that it is cashed the day
we land in New York.”
Captain O’Shea clapped a strong hand on the rich man’s bony little
shoulder and exclaimed, as though admonishing a foolish child:
“Tut, tut! ’Tis nonsense ye talk. We are all in the same boat, and
there are women and children amongst us. You must put it out of
your head that your life has any special gilt-edged value out here
at sea. We sink or swim together. And I am not anxious to chop off
me own existence to please this madman of a Professor Ernst Wilhelm
Vonderholtz.”
“He said something about chucking me overboard,” sighed Jenkins P.
Chase.
“And he looked as if he meant it,” amiably observed Johnny Kent.
With this, the twain bade the millionaire take heart and left him
to his unhappy meditations. An idea had come to Johnny Kent and he
wished to thrash it over with his comrade in the seclusion of their
own room. For a long time they argued it, testing every detail, O’Shea
dissuading, but convinced against his will that the thing should be
attempted. It was a desperate hazard, a forlorn hope, and gray-haired,
honest old Johnny Kent must stake his life. Success meant the recapture
of the ship, and the engineer was obstinately determined to undertake
it.
“You will have to go it alone, Johnny,” said O’Shea, “and I cannot help
if things break wrong for you. It will worry the heart out of me to let
ye do it.”
“Pshaw, Cap’n Mike! A battered old sot like me ain’t worth much to
anybody. If I slip up, and they put out my lights, I want to ask one
favor of you. Shoot that blankety-blank chemical son of a sea-cook for
me, will you? It’ll be my last wish.”
“I promise to fill him full of holes, if his gang pots me next minute,”
simply replied O’Shea, and they shook hands on it.
After dark that night Johnny Kent rummaged in his steamer trunk and
fished out an oil-stained suit of blue overalls, his working uniform
when in active service. From another bundle he selected two powerful
adjustable wrenches which could be concealed in his clothing. While he
was thus engaged O’Shea squeezed into the room, affectionately punched
him in the ribs, and exclaimed:
“To look the part ye must blacken your face and hands. We have no
coal-dust, but there are two long drinks in that bottle of Scotch
yonder. Let us hurl them into our systems, and I will make good use of
the cork.”
“And burnt-cork me same as I used to do when we boys played nigger
minstrels, Cap’n Mike? You’re wiser than Daniel Webster.”
When the job was finished, Johnny Kent would have passed anywhere as
the grimiest, most unrecognizable stoker that ever handled slice-bar or
shovel. Peering into the small mirror, he chuckled:
“I feel like cussin’ myself from force of habit. Well, I’ll just sit
here and wait for you to give me the word.”
“Aye, aye, Johnny. I will start things moving right away. This is _au
revoir_. Good-luck and God bless ye!”
“’Til we meet again, Cap’n Mike. Don’t fret about me.”
Leaving the stout-hearted old adventurer to pore over a dog-eared copy
of the _American Poultry Journal_ by way of passing the time, Captain
O’Shea returned to the library and called together a dozen of the men
passengers whom he knew to be dependable. He had already explained what
they were to do, and without attracting the notice of the sentries
posted at the outside doorways, they heaped in a corner of the library
all the combustible material they could lay their hands on, mostly
newspapers and magazines. Several contributed empty cigar boxes,
another a crate in which fruit had been brought aboard, and Jenkins P.
Chase appeared with a large bottle of alcohol used for massage.
The stuff was placed close to the wooden bookshelves, which, with their
contents, were likely to blaze and smoulder and make a great deal of
smoke.
While the men were thus engaged Captain O’Shea chanced to notice the
school-teacher, Miss Jenness, who halted while passing the library
door. She moved nearer, listened intently to the talk, and then turned
away to walk rapidly in the direction of the starboard exit to the deck.
Suspecting her purpose, O’Shea followed and overtook her. Between her
and Vonderholtz some sort of an understanding existed, some relation
more intimate than she was willing to reveal. O’Shea was alert to
prevent her from spoiling his plans. She might not intend to play the
part of a spy, but her behavior had been mysterious and she was not to
be trusted.
O’Shea called her name sharply, and the girl paused. He moved to her
side and said in low tones:
“Are you going on deck, Miss Jenness? I advise ye not to just now.”
“Why? I--I--yes. I am going on deck.”
She was manifestly startled, unable to hold herself in hand.
“You will give me your word of honor that ye propose to hold no
communication with Vonderholtz and to send him no message?”
She hesitated, at a loss for words, and O’Shea felt certain that he
had guessed her motive aright. His decision was instant and ruthless.
Standing close to her, he said:
“You will be good enough to go to your state-room for the rest of
this night, Miss Jenness, and ye will go at once, moving no nearer
the sentries or the deck, and making no outcry. ’Tis a most impolite
speech to make to a handsome girl like yourself, but I have no time for
courtesy.”
Miss Jenness glanced aside. Captain O’Shea stood between her and the
passage to the deck. Then she looked at him, and knew that he meant
what he said. Her lips parted, her breath was short and quick, and she
moved not for a long moment. It was a clash of strong wills, but the
woman realized that she was beaten.
It meant death to O’Shea should he be discovered in the act of setting
fire to the ship, but he was fighting for more than his own skin. The
issue appealed to him as curiously impersonal. His own safety had
become a trifling matter. He was merely an instrument in the hands of
fate, an agent commissioned to help thwart the tragic destiny that
overhung the vessel and her people. The girl was an episode; not so
much a personality as a cog of the mysterious, evil mechanism devised
by the blond beast Vonderholtz.
“I think I will go to my room,” said Miss Jenness.
“Thank you. ’Tis wiser,” softly replied O’Shea.
So fatuously confident was Vonderholtz that his plans were invulnerable
that he had taken no precautions to have the first-cabin quarters
patrolled and inspected beyond the exits. He had herded the passengers
like a flock of sheep and concerned himself no further about them. They
could start no uprising by themselves, and unarmed.
Captain O’Shea felt confident that the men in possession of the ship
could get the fire under control. At any rate, it must burn itself out
within the steel walls of the deck-house. State-rooms and halls might
be gutted, but he quoted his favorite adage that one cannot make an
omelet without breaking eggs. For his part, he would rather burn and
sink the ship than meekly to surrender to this mob of pirates.
Thereupon he scratched a match and touched off the fire. Wetted down
with alcohol, the newspapers blazed up fiercely and the flames licked
the paintwork of shelves and panels. Smoke drove into the halls in
thick gusts. The passengers, some of them genuinely frightened, shouted
lustily, and there was much confusion.
O’Shea was delighted. His conflagration was a success. The sentries at
the doorways and the men on deck ran in pell-mell and dashed out again
to find hose and buckets. They bawled orders to one another and were
bewildered by the smoke which billowed into the passages.
Before the hose lines had been dragged in and while the fire was
unchecked, a bulky figure in blue overalls, his face blackened as
with coal-dust, emerged from a state-room, peered cautiously into the
smoke, and with tread surprisingly agile for his weight and years, ran
straight toward the crowd of men in the large hall outside the blazing
library. The smoke effectually curtained his dash for the deck. The
doorways had been left unguarded. Those whom he shoved out of his way
mistook him for one of Vonderholtz’s crew.
The stratagem of the fire enabled Johnny Kent to escape from the
steel-walled prison and to run the gauntlet of the guards on deck. At
top speed he clattered down a ladder to the next deck below, slowed his
gait, and stood puffing to regain his breath, for he was a short-winded
hero and ample of girth.
In the printed matter advertising the International Line he had
discovered a plan of the _Alsatian_, drawn with much detail. He knew
it by heart, and was confident that he would not go astray in the
labyrinth of her many decks and bulkhead passages. Moreover, he was a
man with a lively interest in his calling, and when the _Alsatian_ was
launched he had studied the descriptions of her machinery and the like
with a keen professional eye.
Without hesitation he stepped nimbly through an iron door amidships and
entered a narrow alley lighted by an electric bulb. A man, also clad
in the overalls of a fireman or machinist, brushed past him, and said,
without looking up:
“Fire amount to anything?”
“A stream of water will douse it,” gruffly answered Johnny Kent as he
emerged from the alley into the great, clangorous open space above
the engine-room. Below him ran iron ladders and platforms, flight
after flight, past the huge, shining cylinders, down to the toiling
piston-rods and the whirling crank-shafts. Dynamos purred and auxiliary
engines hummed in shadowy corners and the pumps beat time to this
titanic anthem.
Johnny Kent wiped the dripping sweat from his face and the burnt cork
smeared itself in grotesque streaks and blotches. He had reasoned it
out that among a hundred and fifty men sailing together for the first
time he could pass unchallenged long enough to serve his purpose. And
now that he had gained the engine-room his very presence there would
safeguard him against suspicion. Men were coming and going, and several
of the fire-room gang chatted with the engineers on watch. It would
be easier to mingle with them because of this fraternal slackness of
discipline.
His stout heart thumping against his ribs, but his spirit undaunted,
Johnny Kent stepped from the lowest ladder to the grating of the
engine-room floor. Pulling the greasy black cap low over his eyes, he
dodged behind a steam-pipe and made for the entrance to the nearest
fire-room. Stripped to the waist in the red glare, the stokers were
rattling coal into furnace doors. Johnny Kent said never a word, but
picked up a shovel and took his station in front of a boiler. An
officer of some sort shouted at him:
“Who sent you down?”
“I was ordered to shift my watch,” bellowed Johnny Kent.
“Good enough. We are short-handed,” was the reply.
The heat and the arduous exertion made Johnny Kent grunt, but he had
been a mighty man with a shovel in his time, and he would show these
scoundrels how to feed a furnace. He observed that armed guards were
stationed in this compartment, and concluded that some of the steamer’s
regular crew had been set to work under compulsion.
Thus far he had made no blunders. There had been no flaw in his plans.
His greatest fear was that Vonderholtz might come below and recognize
him. But the conflagration conducted by Captain O’Shea was likely to
keep the leader on deck.
Painstakingly Johnny Kent sought to recall every scrap of information
he had read in technical journals concerning the under-water
specifications of the _Alsatian_. His memory was tenacious and he
believed that he could trust it now.
He had entered the fire-room in the middle of a watch, and therefore
had not long to serve as a stoker before the men were relieved and
another gang took their places. When the next watch came trooping in,
there was much passing to and fro, and as one of the crowd Johnny Kent
felt much safer against discovery. He knew where to find dark corners
and tortuous passageways in this complex, noisy part of the ship, far
below the water-line.
When the firemen of his watch began to climb the ladders to their
living quarters, he was not among them. Two hours later, a bulky
gray-headed person in blue overalls might have been seen crawling
on hands and knees or wriggling on his stomach in the bilge of the
_Alsatian’s_ hull, beneath the floor.
From the state-room wall he had unscrewed the small candle lamp
provided for use when the electric-lighting system was turned off. With
this feeble light he was searching for the sea-cocks, those massive
valves set into the bottom of a steamer’s hull for the purpose of
letting in the ocean and flooding her in the emergency of fire in the
cargo holds and coal-bunkers. A steamer is sometimes saved from total
destruction by beaching her in shoal water and opening the sea-cocks.
To open these valves in the bottom of the _Alsatian_ was to admit a
rush of water which would soon rise to the furnaces and engine-room in
greater volume than the steam-pumps could hold in check. It was not
Johnny Kent’s mad intention to sink the liner in mid-ocean, although
this was a possible consequence.
After prodigious exertion, he found what he sought and bent his burly
strength to releasing the gate-valves constructed to withstand the
pressure of the sea. He heard the water pour in with sobbing gush
and murmur and splash against the steel plates and beams. With a
healthy prejudice against being drowned in a cataract of his own
devising, Johnny Kent scrambled in retreat and regained the engine-room
compartment, bruised and exhausted.
Thus far he had succeeded because of the sheer audacity of the
enterprise. It was a seemingly impossible thing to do, but the process
of reasoning which inspired it was particularly sane and cool-headed.
He had been unchallenged because it never entered the minds of his foes
that any one would dare such a stratagem. They had gained the upper
hand by means of force. In a game of wits they were out-manœuvred.
Johnny Kent showed the superior intelligence.
“It looks as if my job as Daniel in the lions’ den was about done,” he
said to himself.
He became a stowaway until the next watch was changed in the fire-room.
Then he mingled with the crowd of sooty men who went off duty.
Unmolested, he clambered up the ladders, slipped into an alley-way,
and came to the promenade deck with the blessed open sky above him.
Ostentatiously swinging a wrench, he ambled aft and reconnoitred the
entrance to the first-cabin quarters. Men were dragging out lines of
hose, others chopping away charred woodwork and pitching it overboard.
One of them paused to look at the large grimy person in overalls, but
he displayed the wrench and casually explained:
“Orders from the engine-room. The heat warped the skylight fittings.
Hot work, wasn’t it?”
Once inside the doorway, Johnny Kent made for his state-room, which
had been untouched by fire. O’Shea saw him pass, but made no sign of
recognition. A few minutes later the comrades twain were holding a glad
reunion behind the bolted door. The engineer collapsed on the transom
berth and sat in a ponderous heap, holding his head in his hands.
“My legs are trembly and I feel all gone in the pit of my stummick,
Cap’n Mike,” he huskily croaked. “I was plumb near scared to death.
This easy livin’ has made me soft, and I ain’t as young as I was. But I
got away with it.”
“How? ’Tis a miracle ye have performed this night, Johnny, me boy.”
“I let in the water and she’ll flood herself,” was the weary reply. “It
was easy after I once ran the blockade. What about your bonfire? She
was a corker by the looks of things.”
“She was that,” laughed O’Shea. “Vonderholtz came boilin’ in with his
men and put it out after a tussle. He suspected we touched it off, but
he could not prove it. It was the stump of a cigar that some careless
gentleman tossed into the library waste-basket, ye understand. Let me
help you get your clothes off. Lie down and rest yourself.”
Kicking off the overalls, Johnny Kent lighted his pipe, stretched
himself in his bunk, and exclaimed:
“I’ll turn in with my duds on. We are liable to be roused out between
now and morning.”
“Are ye sure the ship will not go to the bottom?” anxiously asked
O’Shea.
“I won’t swear to it, Cap’n Mike, but this is a well-built steamer,
and she was new a year ago. Her bulkheads will stand up under a lot
of pressure. The engine and fire room compartments will fill to the
water-line, but she’ll float, or I’ve made a darn bad blunder.”
“You know your business, Johnny. If the blackguards think she is
sinking under them, ’tis all we ask.”
“Tuck me in and wash my face,” murmured the engineer. “I’m too doggoned
tired to worry about it.”
O’Shea made him comfortable and withdrew to keep an eye on events.
Order had been restored. The passengers were once more closely guarded,
and as a new precaution sentries were stationed in the halls. O’Shea
waited until the men with revolvers were relieved at midnight and
another squad took their places. Then he heard one of them say to
another that there was serious trouble below. The ship had run over a
bit of submerged wreckage or somehow damaged her bottom plates. She was
leaking. The water was making into the midship compartments.
To O’Shea this was the best news in the world. With an easier mind, he
went to his room. The hateful inaction, the humiliating imprisonment,
were almost over. God helping him, he would whip this crew of outlaws
on the morrow and win the mastery of the _Alsatian_.
Before daybreak Johnny Kent turned over in his bunk and growled:
“She’s slowed down, Cap’n Mike. The engines are no more than turnin’
over. That means the water is almost up to the furnaces and the men
are desertin’ their posts. You can’t keep firemen below when the black
water is sloshin’ under their feet. It gets their nerve.”
“The whole crew will go to pieces if the panicky feeling once takes
hold of them, Johnny. They have never worked together. A lot of them
are no seamen at all. And Vonderholtz will not be able to hold them.”
The _Alsatian_ moved more and more sluggishly, like a dying ship.
The water was pouring into her faster than the pumps could lift it
overside. It was only a question of hours before the fires would be
extinguished, the machinery stilled, and the liner no more than a
sodden hulk rolling aimlessly in the Atlantic.
The passengers were no longer under guard. They walked the decks as
they pleased. The communal brethren, who had found it so easy to
capture the ship, were now at their wits’ ends. Once or twice their
leader passed hastily between the bridge and the engine-room. The
confident, sneering egotism no longer marked the demeanor of the man.
Nervously twisting his blond beard, he moved as one without definite
purpose. His elaborate enterprise was in a bad way. The war against
society had suffered an unexpected reverse.
O’Shea and Johnny Kent watched him gloatingly. The advantage was all
theirs. They were waiting for the right moment to strike, and to
strike hard. They saw Vonderholtz halt to speak to Miss Jenness, who
stood apart and alone. He argued with fiery gestures. She protested
earnestly, her face sad and tragic. It was as though they had come to
the parting of the ways.
At length the _Alsatian_ ceased to forge ahead. The water conquered
her. The long, black hull rode low, sagging wearily to starboard. The
bulkheads still held firm, but it seemed inevitable that she must
shortly plunge to the bottom.
Vonderholtz and his men were between the devil and the deep sea in more
ways than one. They dared signal no passing vessel and ask assistance,
for the gallows awaited them ashore. Many of them were for abandoning
the liner at once. It was useless, they argued, to wait until she
foundered under their feet. The _Alsatian_ had become untenable.
Refusing to acknowledge that ruin had overtaken his splendid
conspiracy, Vonderholtz stormed like a madman at the cowards who would
take to the boats. He swore he would stand by the ship until she went
down. Were they to abandon the two millions in gold? It was impossible
to save it in the boats. Castaways could not explain the possession of
a fortune in treasure.
The mutineers, who had openly broken away from their leader, replied
that they would quit the ship and take chances of being picked up or of
making a landing at the Azores. Let the crew and passengers drown in
the ship, and good riddance to them.
The dissension increased, the bravest of the rascals resolutely
standing by Vonderholtz. Those who were for deserting the liner
began to crowd to the boats and swing them out, ready for lowering.
Discipline had vanished.
Captain Michael O’Shea said a word to Johnny Kent, who pulled his
revolver from the breast of his shirt. Twenty of the passengers were
ready for the order. Some had armed themselves with pieces of steel
piping unscrewed from the frames of the state-room berths. Others
flourished clubs of scantling saved from the wreckage of the fire. They
were men unused to violence--lawyers, merchants, even a clergyman--but
they were ready to risk their lives to win freedom from their shameful
plight.
The compact little band swept out on deck like a cyclone. O’Shea and
Johnny Kent opened fire, shooting to kill. The enemy was taken in flank
and in rear. Those who were busied with the boats tumbled into them.
Before the rush of the passengers could be checked they had cleared a
path forward and gained the stairway to the bridge-deck. Scattering
shots wounded one or two, but shelter was found behind the wheel-house
and chart-room.
O’Shea ran to the captain’s quarters and entered with fear in his
heart. The room was empty, but there was blood on the floor and signs
of a struggle.
“They did away with him,” O’Shea cried, his voice choked. “He died like
a brave sailor. Now for the officers.”
Snatching an axe from the rack in the wheel-house, he jumped for the
row of cabins. The first door was locked and he smashed it in with
mighty blows. The chief officer of the _Alsatian_ was discovered
within, irons on his wrists, a nasty wound slanting across his forehead.
“Take me out of this and give me a gun,” sobbed the stalwart Englishman.
“How about the rest of ye?” shouted O’Shea.
“They shot the old man and clubbed Hayden, second officer, to death.
The others are alive.”
“Lay your hands on the rail yonder and hold steady,” O’Shea commanded
him. “I will shear the links of those bracelets with the axe.”
This done they broke into the other rooms and released the surviving
junior officers who had been surprised while asleep. Raging and
cursing, they caught up axes and iron belaying-pins and joined O’Shea
in the sally to release the seamen locked up in the forecastle and the
stewards penned below. Recognizing the grave danger, Vonderholtz tried
to rally his armed men and hold the boat-deck against attack. But his
force was divided and disorganized and part of it was in the boats. His
power had crumbled in a moment. He was on the defensive, fighting for
life.
Now the crew of the _Alsatian_ came swarming against him, even the
stewards no longer obsequious slaves of the tray and napkin but yelping
like wolves. Heedless of bullets, the large force led by O’Shea, Johnny
Kent, and the chief officer of the _Alsatian_ charged with irresistible
ferocity. They penned forty of the Communal Brotherhood between the
rail and the deck-house amidships, and fairly hammered and jammed them
through the nearest doorway and made them prisoners.
Vonderholtz comprehended that the ship was lost to him and that it was
every man for himself and flight into the boats. He somehow got clear
of the whirling conflict, found room to turn, and stood with his back
to a derrick-mast while he let drive with his pistol and put a bullet
through O’Shea’s arm.
Roaring vengeance, Johnny Kent would have killed the blond leader in
his tracks, but just then Miss Jenness ran swiftly to Vonderholtz,
caught hold of his hand, and urged him frantically toward the nearest
boat. Johnny Kent forbore to shoot. He could not hit his target without
driving a bullet through the girl. Nor did any man hinder them, as
Vonderholtz and Miss Jenness, dark, tragic, incomprehensible, moved
quickly to the edge of the ship and leaped into the crowded boat that
had just swung clear. It descended from the overhanging davits and
plopped into the smooth sea. As the falls were unhooked at the bow and
stern, the men on the thwarts set the long oars in the thole-pins and
clumsily pushed away from the side of the liner.
It would have been easy to shoot Vonderholtz from the deck above, but
he crouched in the stern-sheets with the girl clinging close at his
side, so that she seemed to be trying to shield him. No one was willing
to risk killing the woman in order to deal retribution to the chief
criminal.
“Blaze away at the other boats! Kill all you can!” shouted the chief
officer of the _Alsatian_. “Shoot into the thick of them before they
pull out of range!”
“Let them go,” gravely counselled O’Shea, who was trying to bandage his
bleeding arm. “God Almighty will hand out justice to them. Those boats
will not live through the first squall, for they are overcrowded and
there are few seamen amongst them.”
The lawful crew of the _Alsatian_ gathered together and watched the
boats drift to leeward. There was no more shooting by either side. It
was as if a truce had been declared. Johnny Kent made a trumpet of his
hands and shouted in tremendous tones to the boat in which Vonderholtz
had escaped:
“We tricked you and we whipped you, you cowardly dogs. The ship will
float and she’ll be towed to port. The laugh is on you, and you can put
that in your pipe and smoke it, my gay chemical professor.”
Cries of rage arose from the boats, but there was no returning to the
liner, no possible way of scaling her towering sides. Her own crew
held possession of her as securely as if they were in a fortress. The
wind freshened briskly and the boats drifted farther and farther away
to leeward. The men who filled them must face the dreadful perils
and sufferings of castaways in mid-ocean. At length the boats became
no more than white specks, and then they vanished beyond the misty
horizon.
“If Vonderholtz could have had his way he would have destroyed the ship
with every soul in her before he abandoned her,” said O’Shea.
“He had me on the list,” piped up Jenkins P. Chase, who strutted
importantly, for he had knocked down a foeman and clubbed him into
submission. “Now, about that young woman, Miss Jenness. Hanged if she
wasn’t a fine-looking proposition. There’s a romance for you, eh?”
“’Tis my guess that she loved him but could not stand for his violent
doctrines,” said O’Shea. “And she was afraid to oppose him for fear she
would lose him entirely. And maybe he persuaded her to make this voyage
with him and he would take her away to live with him somewhere and be
happy. ’Twas an evil day for her when she met him, wherever it was, but
she was ready to die for him. The love of women!”
Four days later an unlovely little British cargo tramp, wandering
across from South America with an empty hold, sighted the _Alsatian_
helpless and flying signals of distress. The humble skipper of this
beggarly craft could not believe his eyes. His wildest, most fantastic
dreams of salvage were about to come true. As he steamed alongside the
chief officer of the liner shouted:
“Tow us to New York and settle with the owners.”
“Will I?” bawled the bewhiskered skipper, dancing a jig. “I’ll hang
onto my end of the bloomin’ hawser as long as this hooker of mine will
float. Are you stove up inside? Broke a shaft?”
“No. Engine-room full of water. We opened the sea-cocks on purpose.”
“You’re drunk or crazy,” cried the skipper; “but I will tow you to
hades for the price that will be awarded for this job.”
It was a plucky undertaking for the under-engined, under-manned tramp,
but the _Alsatian_ sent extra hands aboard, and the two vessels crept
slowly in toward the Atlantic coast, swung to the northward, and after
a tedious voyage came in sight of Sandy Hook. The wild and tragic
experience through which she had passed seemed incredible to those on
board. So many days overdue was this crack liner of the International
service that tugs had been sent to search for her. The newspapers
reported her as missing and probably lost.
“You and Johnny Kent will be grand-stand heroes,” said Jenkins P. Chase
to Captain Michael O’Shea. “You have done a tremendously big thing, you
know. By jingo, nothing is too good for you. Of course, the company
will treat you handsomely and come down with the cash. But don’t forget
my proposition. It still holds good. Come to my office and fill out a
blank check and I’ll sign it like a shot. That murderous scoundrel,
Vonderholtz, intended to throw me overboard. I saw it in his eyes.”
“About that check, Mr. Chase,” said O’Shea with a friendly smile,
“forget it. You are a great little man, and we forgive you for being so
rich, but ’twas not the kind of a job that seafarin’ men take money for
from a shipmate. Johnny and me had to find a way out. It was a matter
of professional pride, as ye might say.”
The rubicund engineer beamed his indorsement of this sentiment and
added cheerily:
“What the company chooses to give us will be our lawful due, which we
earned in savin’ property and treasure. And if my share amounts enough
to buy me a tidy little farm in the grand old State o’ Maine, I won’t
envy you and your millions one darned solitary mite, Mr. Jenkins P.
Chase. And I won’t feel like joining any Communal Brotherhood to take
’em away from you.”