DEATH TAKES A HAND
It is safe to say that Bobby and his chums did not get very much sleep
that night. The thought that they had a real chance of escape from the
ship where they had been held prisoners meant more to them just then
than the possibility of finding Takyak’s treasure trove.
As for Bobby, he hardly closed his eyes at all.
He wondered if they had not been foolish to provision the longboat that
night. It would be just their luck to have the provisions discovered the
next day, and then their chance would be gone.
They would be robbed of what little liberty they had enjoyed so far,
and, once more prisoners, would have no hope of escape.
And even if they were successful in getting away from the ship, what
then?
Tossing in his hammock, Bobby could hear the blocks of ice gritting
against the sides of the vessel, hungrily, like some beast of prey
waiting for its victim.
Even though, as Takyak had said, they would be near enough to shore on
the following night to gain it in a few hours, what were their chances
of getting through that ice-blocked water?
Even that day they had seen one or two large icebergs looming against
the skyline.
Of course, the danger from these monsters of the sea would be very much
less in the daytime than at night. For, in the darkness, how could they
tell of the approach of one of these until it was almost upon them, too
late, then, for them to get out of the way?
From these troubled thoughts Bobby’s mind went to Takyak, the dying
Eskimo chief. Wasn’t it possible, he thought, that Takyak thought he was
worse off than he actually was?
Suppose he should recover and repent of his confidence?
“Well,” thought Bobby, “in that case he shall have his treasure and we,
at least, will try for liberty.” He hoped the Eskimo would recover. He
was kind-hearted and had tried to put in a good word for them with
Captain Garrish.
Garrish! At the name Bobby felt the same fierce rush of anger he had
felt the day before when the captain had regarded him with that bullying
look of suspicion.
How much did the captain suspect?
Well, if they had any sort of luck at all, they would soon put so much
distance between themselves and the surly captain that what he thought
or did not think would make no difference at all.
If they only had some warm clothing! They had been given top coats from
the ship’s locker, but they were far too big for them. Rushed as they
had been with work on deck, they had not been so conscious of the bitter
cold. But in an open boat, with nothing to shield them from the fierce
winds, they might be frozen to death.
Bobby shivered and thought of the snug fur coats worn by the Eskimo
members of the crew. That was the only thing that could keep out the
biting cold of the Northland—fur, and plenty of it.
“Oh, well, we’ll have to take our chance of freezing to death. That,
after all, may be pleasanter than running into an iceberg,” he muttered,
with a sigh.
And so, still listening to the grating of the ice against the sides of
the ship, Bobby at last fell into a doze from which he was rudely roused
a half hour later.
Once more he stumbled blindly to the deck, still more than half asleep
and shivering with the cold.
Another gray day. Angry snow clouds scudded across the leaden sky, the
wind whistled through the mastheads with a threatening sound, heavy ice
blocked the sea, becoming thicker and thicker as they plowed further and
further into the north.
Breakfast cheered Bobby a bit, and he was suddenly seized with an almost
overwhelming curiosity to see if their secret of the longboat had been
discovered yet.
It was some time before he found the chance to make his way to the spot
unobserved, but when he finally got there he found to his intense relief
that everything seemed just as it had the night before when they had
fled before the approach of the second mate.
The extra tarpaulin, which he had replaced with careful carelessness in
the bottom of the boat, looked just the same as it had the day before,
when it had not hid their hope of escape.
Bobby went to work with renewed hope. The hours that stretched between
him and dark seemed an endless procession, but he knew that the best way
to make them pass quickly was to throw himself into the work at hand
with all his heart.
This he did, to the apparent gratification of Captain Garrish. It seemed
to Bobby that there was less suspicion in the eyes of the skipper when
they turned his way.
Perhaps, he thought, with an inward grin, their quiet attitude of the
last few days, as if they had become resigned to a hard fate, was having
its effect at last. Captain Garrish was beginning to think them
harmless.
The second mate watched them less intently too, and the boys took
advantage of the fact to send wireless messages back and forth.
They were so full of excitement and eagerness to start on their
adventure that Bobby wondered how the keen eyes of Captain Garrish could
fail to notice it.
For one thing, and this Bobby did not know, the skipper had more
important things to think about than the behavior of four boys on board
his ship.
Takyak, upon whom he had depended to guide him to the scene of the
wrecked ship and to use his influence with the natives in the business
of recovering the treasure, was dying in his bed and, worse than that,
he was dying with some of the most important details of the adventure
still unknown to Captain Garrish.
Vainly the skipper had tried to cajole, and finally to force, the
information from the lips of the dying man. The chief had refused to
tell anything, and now he had fallen into a coma from which there was no
rousing him.
No wonder Captain Garrish wore a dark and angry frown and failed to
watch the boys as he had done. Lucky for the boys that on that day, of
all days, the bullying captain had something besides themselves to think
about.
All day Bobby’s thoughts were full of Takyak, wondering if the old
fellow’s prophecy would prove true or if he were getting better.
It was not till near nightfall that he and the other boys learned the
truth, and then in a peculiar way.
Shivering with cold and excitement they were descending the ladder to
take a hard-earned rest when a roar that sounded like that of a mad bull
let loose in a field of red flags reached their ears and made them stand
still, gazing, bewildered, in the direction of the noise.
A moment later a door was pushed open as though with the tremendous
impact of some heavy body behind it and Captain Garrish charged out, his
face purple, his very beard bristling with rage.
As the boys still stood rooted to the spot they saw some one running
toward the enraged captain and in a moment recognized Mr. Campbell, an
aged man who acted as the ship’s doctor.
At sight of the latter the captain’s fury seemed to increase until he
became a madman.
He sprang at the aged doctor, caught him by the throat and shook him as
a terrier does a rat.
“You confounded rogue!” he bellowed. “What do you mean by
double-crossing me? I told you if you let that greasy Eskimo die, it
would be your last act on earth! Say your prayers, you—you—”
The unfortunate doctor was struggling against the huge hairy hands that
were locked like an iron band about his throat, but his face was purple
and his eyes bulged from his head.
The boys started forward, but at that moment the first and second mates,
hearing the captain’s bellow of rage, had come running, and now they
leaped upon him, forcing his hands loose of their hold upon Dr.
Campbell.
In his rage he would have turned upon them, but they were both strong
men and they held on grimly till he abandoned his struggles.
“You’re mad, Captain,” said the mate. “Let up.”
“I’ll fix him!” bellowed the captain, making another lunge at the
unfortunate doctor, who was feeling gingerly of his injured throat. “Let
me at him! Let me—”
But at this point, seeing that the two mates were amply able to handle
the enraged captain and thinking that it was about time they left the
scene, the boys crept away unnoticed.
Most of the men having run to see what was going on, the boys found
themselves temporarily alone.
“Gee,” said Fred, his face a mixture of emotions. “Well, it’s all over
with poor old Takyak.”
“Yes, and it was pretty near over with Doctor Campbell,” added Billy.
“I’ll say that fellow had a close call.”
“I’m sorry for poor Takyak,” said Mouser thoughtfully. “But, just the
same, it’s lucky for us this happened. It will keep the skipper’s
attention from us for a little while, anyway.”
“Yes, but only for a little while,” Bobby reminded him. “As soon as he
gets over raving about Takyak, he’ll begin to think of us and wonder if
we know any more about the treasure than he does.”
“And when he does,” said Fred ruefully, “something tells me it will be
all up with us.”
“The only thing we can do,” said Bobby hurriedly, for they could hear
the heavy tramping of the sailors who were returning, “is to take a
chance and start as soon after dark as we can. A few hours from now this
old boat will be getting a little more unhealthy for us than it already
is.”
“Righto,” agreed Fred cheerfully, and then they separated, but only
until the welcome darkness gave them the secrecy they must have.
All about him Bobby heard the men talking about the captain’s outbreak,
laughing hoarsely and cracking rough jokes at the skipper’s expense.
“Didn’t think the old man loved Takyak like that,” said one of them, in
a mock-sentimental tone. “It’s enough to make a bloke cry ’is eyes out,
so it is.”
And still later another man, a big rough fellow with a week’s growth of
beard and smoldering, deep-set eyes, turned to glower at Bobby.
“If I wuz you, me lad—” he said, as he took a dirty-looking old pipe
from his pocket—“if I wuz you, I’d cut loose from this outfit, so I
would, at our first port. The skipper’s got it in for you good an’
plenty an’ the skipper’s a powerful mean man when he’s roused.”
“So,” retorted Bobby dryly, “I’ve noticed!” And then, with a thrill of
excitement, he glanced out of a porthole and saw that it was dark.