Tommy grinned cheerfully and began to load the ponderous weapon, “I’d like to—”
But he never finished his remark, for away aft there suddenly arose a loud shouting. “They’ve discovered we’re missing!” said Bullard, going to first one door and then the other to examine the bolts. “Hark to the Old Man! He’s hammering the Steward!”
“Iron covers over the ports—smart, you chaps!” cried Larry, quickly, at this moment, leaving his pistol and springing to the nearest. “There’s the Second Mate! Screw ’em up hard!”
As each lad jumped to do this job there came a loud shout outside the after door, and immediately it was shaken and kicked. Then came a roar from the Second Mate.
“Open at once, you young devils,” he shouted, “or it’ll be all the worse for you!”
II
As the Second Mate shouted, Jumbo held up his finger for absolute silence, and the officer bawled the order again, with foul language, and punctuated by heavy kicks. Abruptly he was silent, listening, as they supposed; for directly afterwards he shouted: “I hear you in there, you—! Just wait five minutes, and we’ll murder you!” Then, to some man near him, “Bring the Blacksmith’s sled out of the Bo’sun’s locker. We’ll soon have ’em out, Sir.” Evidently he was now speaking to Captain Beeston. “I’ll make ’em wish they’d never been born!” In a lower tone he added: “I’m blowed, Sir, if I can understand how they got loose out of the lazarette!”
“Stand clear, Sir,” was his next remark, after a few seconds’ quietness. Then came a tremendous blow upon the steel door, making the whole of the interior of the little steel-house ring like a monstrous drum. But, though the furious officer struck blow after blow, until he was exhausted, he produced no effect upon the strong steel door beyond slightly denting it.
He stopped and hove the hammer onto the deck, swearing breathlessly. Immediately afterwards he gave an order to some of the men: “Bring the hose aft—smartly, now! Shove it on the nearest nozzle, and two of you man the pump.”
“What’s he going to do now?” whispered Edwards, staring round and round the berth.
He could not conceive just what was going to be done; how the attack was to be made. Jumbo and Bullard tiptoed silently to the after door and listened. Kinniks and Harold Jones stared at each other, with a queer mixture of terror and nervous excitement. The silence was unbearable.
Suddenly Larry felt something touch his head; he jumped back and stared up. Something was coming down the little ventilator in the decked roof—the brass-coupled end of the hose was being pushed down it into the berth.
“Look!” called Edwards, breathlessly. As he spoke the pump on the fo’cas’le head was manned and a great jet of water came pulsing down into the place.
“Great Scot!” cried Jumbo; “they mean to flood the place!” And he whipped out his sheath-knife, with some vague intention of cutting the hose, which, of course, would have done no good at all.
“No!” shouted Tommy; “twist it up, put a turn in it; that’ll stop the water.” Which it did at once, the canvas pipe swelling up, above the twist, to bursting point, with the strain of the checked water in it, for the pump-men were working furiously. “Now pull for all you’re worth,” said Larry; and they tailed onto the hanging length of twisted canvas and pulled.
Abruptly something gave, and they went down in a muddle on the deck of the berth, whilst a confused shouting and cursing sounded out on deck. “Pull! Oh, pull!” shouted Jumbo, getting to his feet with a jump. The hose came in hand over hand, as the sailormen say, and in a few moments the end came switching down on them, slatting water in all directions.
“It’s bust clean away from the lashing on the other coupling,” said Jumbo, picking up the final part and examining it. “We’ve done ’em proper; we’ve got the whole lot. Good boy, Larry! There’s no spare hose; the other’s rotten; an’ Sails will take a week to make another.”
Outside on deck there was loud, angry talking between the Second Mate and Captain Beeston. “I’ll match them! I’ll match them!” the ’prentices could hear the Second Mate saying, time after time, in an excited, furious voice. They heard him go aft into the saloon at a run, and then the sounds of his footsteps returning. He ran to the little house, and they heard him spring up the small steel ladder, and so to the decked roof. Then his voice sounded at the ventilator:—
“Open the doors at once, you young—, or I’ll shoot you down for mutiny on the high seas!”
“Don’t talk rot,” replied Jumbo, staring quietly at the ventilator, but reaching out his right hand until he held his rifle; for there was no saying what the man would do. “Will you promise to stop treating us all like a lot of dogs? That’s the first thing to settle.”
“Open that door!” was all the Second Mate’s reply. “We’re going to take the flesh off your backs and see if that won’t learn you. Open that—”
“Oh,” said Jumbo, angrily, “go to the deuce!”
There was a burst of nervous laughter from the other lads, and this seemed to set the Second Mate off like a light to powder. He literally screamed something, and his great hand and arm came down the ventilator. “Flash-bang! flash-bang! flash-bang!” He was shooting madly and indiscriminately among the lads! Three shots he fired. There was a fourth; but it was from Jumbo’s saloon rifle. The Second Mate dropped his revolver and ripped his hand out of the ventilator, screaming and cursing as only a man shot in the hand can.
“Anyone hurt?” shouted Jumbo, through the smoke that filled the place. There was a general instinctive feeling-over, to make sure, whilst overhead the Second Mate’s feet beat a mad tattoo of pain upon the decked roof of the house; and from the main-deck there was loud shouting in the Skipper’s voice, and, finally, the First Mate singing out something.
“Turn up the lamp more,” said Larry. “No one’s hurt, thank goodness! That’s what I call a rank attempt to murder, if you like. We ought to block up the ventilator right away.”
This was done, by screwing one of the bottom boards out of a bunk over the opening. Whilst they were doing this they could hear a loud and excited talk under the break of the poop, and presently the First Mate’s voice: “No, Sir,” he was saying; “you can do what you like in your own ship, of course; but I’ll have nothing to do with any of it. You mark my words, Sir, an’ you, too, Mister, you’ll have sad cause to rue, if you don’t ease up on them boys. You’ll have a police-court case, an’ there’s going to be some hanging done, if you don’t drop it. There, I’ve had my say. Please yourselves; but I’m out of it.
“Good old Mate!” said Larry, enthusiastically. “I’ll bet we find him useful. We may be able to slip out for things at night in his watch. I’ll bet he’ll take good care never to see us.”
At this moment there came the Captain’s voice:—
“Take your watch, Mr. Henricksen, and rig a gantling. Take the old mizzen-royal yard; sling it by the parral, and bash the door in. Use it as a battering-ram. The for’ard door’ll be best. I’ll teach the young beggars!” and he swore horribly.
“Well,” said Jumbo, “we’ve got to stop that. They’ll just murder some of us if they get in now. Get that big pistol of yours finished loading up, Tommy. Don’t use those bb’s; fill her with some of that broken-up rock-salt instead, and mind you don’t shoot at their faces, or you’ll blind them for life. Aim at their legs. They’ll be close enough, goodness knows.
“Now,” he continued, standing up and looking rather pale but very determined, “out with the lamp. You take the other port; I’ll take the one in the starboard end of the house. Don’t you shoot unless there’s a rush that I can’t stop. And, for Heavens sake, aim low. You’ll be glad afterwards. It makes a horrible mess, that saltpetre.” (I had better explain here that the rock-salt had come out of a beef-barrel which the Steward had been emptying.)
The lamp was turned out, and then, very silently, the two of them unscrewed the iron covers of the two forward ports and peered out. They saw that the gantli
ne was already rigged and the men were bending it on round the yard, near the parral. This was done, and the Second Mate gave orders to hoist away until the yard was about half a fathom off the deck and about level with the middle of the berth door.
“Make fast, there!” he shouted. “Come here, all of you, and get hold; on both sides, lads—on both sides. Steady her!”
It was at this moment that Jumbo unscrewed the glass port light itself and put his head out.
“Mr. Henricksen,” he said, speaking as calmly as he could, “you’ve got to stop that, or we shall shoot.”
The Second Mate stopped swiftly, caught up an iron-bound snatch-block with his uninjured left hand, and hove it at Jumbo’s unprotected head. It would have killed the lad, probably, had it struck; but he drew back in time, and the great heavy block crashed against the brass circle about the port-hole and fell with a thud to the deck.
“Back with it, lads!” shouted the Second Mate. “In with the door!” He caught the far end of the big spar, so as to steer it, for it swayed clumsily with the rolling of the vessel.
“I give you one more warning,” shouted Jumbo, from within the house.
“All together, lads! All together!” roared Henricksen, steadying the yard with his left hand. “Now!”
At the same instant Jumbo levelled his rifle and fired. The Second Mate gave a shout, loosed the end of the yard, and caught at his left thigh.
“Now, then, you chaps,” cried Jumbo, to the hesitating men; “you clear off and be sensible. We don’t want to hurt you; but there’s going to be sudden death aboard here if we ain’t left alone and treated proper.”
Still they hesitated, seeming half-minded to obey the Second Mate’s groaning orders: “In with the door!”
“Now, Larry!” said Jumbo, quickly drawing back into the dark half-deck, “shove out your pistol. If they don’t move, let ’em have it in the legs, and Heaven help them!”
Edwards pushed his great pistol out through the other port. “Now,” he said, “run!” And as one man they loosed the hanging spar and ran, leaving it there to bash and clatter and sway about. Behind them Larry’s great weapon roared; for he had fired over their heads to hasten them. In ten seconds not a man was visible, even the groaning and cursing officer having thought it advisable to remove himself to a safer place.
‘That’s done it!” said Edwards. “Let’s screw everything up tight again. They’ll not touch us again tonight. Have you seen poor old Darkins and Peters?” He drew back their bunk-curtains, and the five boys stood round solemnly in a semicircle, staring rather helplessly.
“How queer Peters is breathing!” said Jumbo. “Where’s he hurt? Who bandaged their heads up?”
“The Steward,” said Tommy. “The Old Man wouldn’t let him come, but I got him to sneak in and fix them up. Look at the colour of Darkin’s face! There’s going to be an awful row about all this when we get home. Anyway, I’m glad we didn’t start the shooting first.”
“Jove!” said Jumbo, “I wish it was all over!” He was old enough to realise the hopeless, dreadful piteousness of it all, and to see something of the awful complications that might lie ahead.
They drew back the curtains of Connaught’s bunk and had a look at him, but found him still in a kind of heavy, dull sleep, or stupor.
They drew the curtains again before the three unconscious lads, held a council, and finally decided to turn in.
Edwards proved to be right in supposing that no further attempt would be made on them that night. They were left absolutely unmolested for three days—the work of the ship going on about the closed steel-house as though it held nothing more unusual or tragic than its accustomed set of light-hearted, healthy careless crowd of ’prentices, instead of two lads near death, and a third who was still in a kind of heavy stupor, and all of the others under threat of most brutal reprisal, once they should open the doors of the little house.
Within the berth the lads cleaned up, cooked, ate, and tried crudely and ineffectually to feed their unconscious mates with soup of a kind of mawkish beef-tea which they made on their little oil-stove with water and corned beef. Fortunately they did no harm with these well-meant efforts; and presently they desisted for fear that they should.
At times during those three days they would catch snatches of the talk that went on between the men—talk that came plain to them as odd men happened to pass near the house. In this way they gathered bits of news, there behind their steel barrier. They learned that the Second Mate was very bad in his bunk; that one of the men had actually received a portion of the charge from Edwards’s pistol in the back of his neck, and was feeling very sore about it, in more ways than one. Also, the lads learned that they were considered by some of the men to be “plucky young devils,” and by others as needing something to “break ’em in”; these latter having evidently, from their remarks, a strong relish in the picture of all the ’prentices being tied up in the rigging and the Bo’sun “easing ’em of their bucko with a fathom of ratlin-line.”
In the second dog-watch of the third day, when it was growing dusk, a little before eight bells, the ’prentices had a pleasant little “heartener,” for they heard one of the men speaking to them cautiously through the keyhole of the for’ard door. “Good on you, mates!” he said. “Stick to it! There’s a lot of us is bettin’ you’ll win yet. Curse ’em! I says.” Which, though no more than an expression of sympathy from a half-developed mentality, was yet a cheering thing to the imprisoned five, upon whom the anxiety and confinement of their position were beginning to tell, as they sat there in the lamplight, playing cards most of the day, and talking in whispers; for they had always the feeling that some spy of the “afterguard” might be near one of the doors listening.
Then, on the night of that same third day, about three bells in the middle watch (half-past one in the morning), something happened. Larry Edwards woke with a sudden feeling that something was wrong. He sat up very quietly in his bunk and looked, first at one closed door and then the other. Both were safely shut. He let his glance wander all round the berth and saw nothing unusual. Keeping absolutely still, he listened intently. As he did so he became aware of a faint, curious sound that he could not locate. It began, continued a little, paused, and then began again—a faint grinding sound, slow and stealthy.
The slight, curious noise, distinct above the faint natural creakings of the bunks and fittings, as the vessel rolled, troubled Larry more than anything that had happened yet. He knew in his heart that the enemy were attacking their security in some way; but he could not imagine how or where. Again and again he let his gaze go slowly round the berth.
Suddenly he looked upwards, and saw something that made him tingle with excitement and apprehension. The end of a big auger was coming slowly through the decked-roof of the berth!
He sat up silently, and let his feet down over the edge of the bunk; then took a closer look. The auger was slowly withdrawn, and Tommy Dodd saw that it left an inch hole that was one of about a score of others, all bored to follow round what would make (when completed) a circle some eighteen inches in diameter.
The lad saw the plan in a moment. When the person on the roof of the house had completed his series of holes, all that would be necessary to finish his work would be a little quiet manipulation of a narrow-bladed saw; then, hey! a blow or two with the Carpenter’s heavy maul, and a circle of the roof-planks would be driven clean in, to be followed instantly by Captain Beeston, Schieffs, the Bo’sun, and some of the more brutal of the men, who would thus be upon them before they had fully comprehended the meaning of the noise that had wakened them. A good plan it was, too, and one that would certainly have left them at the mercy of the brutes in authority, but for young Edwards’s providential awakening.
As he slid cautiously from his bunk to the chest that lay beneath him he heard the slow grinding of the tool commence again, very gently, and knew that the man above them was continuing his work, all unconscious that he had waked anyone.
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br /> Larry reached behind him under his pillow, and brought out his big old flint-lock; then he stepped from his chest to the next, and stooped down to wake big Jumbo, who preferred, for some incomprehensible reason, to sleep in a bottom bunk (hence the reason that Larry, a young ’prentice, was allowed to have a top bunk—a luxury above the heads of first-voyagers, in every sense of the word). He shook the senior ’prentice gently, and the young man heaved himself up instantly, muttering: “What’s up? What’s up?”
“Hush!” whispered Larry. “They’re boring through the roof. Look!”
He pointed, and even as Jumbo looked, with anxious, startled eyes, he saw the end of the auger come through, whilst a few tiny chips and shavings came fluttering down to the deck of the house.
“My goodness!” growled the big lad; and was out of his bunk in a moment, rifle in hand and ready to fire. When, however, he saw that there would have to be bored at least another twenty holes before any immediate danger need be apprehended, he eased the tenseness of his attitude and beckoned Tommy close to him.
“Plenty of time, Larry” he said. “It’s lucky you woke up, though, or they’d have been through on us, and I believe that would mean right-down murder, in the spirit they’ll be in now.”
“Yes,” agreed young Larry Edwards. “I’ve got a notion, too—pepper! Put pepper in my pistol, instead of bb’s. Fire it up one of the holes. That’ll give ’em snuff!”
Jumbo laughed silently, and held out his hand for the big weapon. Then, with a strand of steel hawser wire, he raked out the paper wad that Tommy had pushed down the barrel to hold in the shot. Next he poured out the shot—a big handful. “My word, Larry!” he said, “you meant to make sure of hitting something!” Afterwards he drew the second wad of paper, that held the powder down, and so was able to empty away about three-quarters of the explosive.
The Ghost Pirates and Other Revenants of the Sea Page 25
