Gold Out of Celebes Part 23

"No doubt you have heard there is," smiled Vandersee, but his smile was sad. "My Government want that business cleaned up, of course. I think Houten will be satisfied with your work, when it's finished, and I give him my report too; but there is another side to the business which is mine entirely, at least until it comes to a head, when you shall all share in the harvest. You know, don't you, Gordon?"

The big Hollander appeared sorely agitated, and his utter alteration of countenance sent a pang to Barry and Little. They ceased to wonder and decided to accept Vandersee without question, when Gordon quietly responded: "Yes, G.o.d knows I know! And when it's over, gentlemen, you'll hate yourselves for ever doubting!"

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Vandersee folded away his map and then outlined the plan he had formed.

While he spoke, Gordon shifted uneasily to the other side of the room, merely saying, though Little had not spoken:

"Don't look at me like that, Little. I'm clean now, if I wasn't when you first met me; please let that be my excuse for the present for anything I may have done to offend you or Houten, won't you?"

Little colored deeply and looked embarra.s.sed. He found he had been staring rather inquisitively at the man he had come to supersede, and with his native courtesy and honesty he thrust his hand over the table to grip Gordon's. Neither man uttered another word; but Gordon's eyes unmistakably said, "Thank you."

Vandersee watched this little side play, pausing in his explanation, then resumed:

"You see, Captain, as long as your brigantine is blocking up the river for his schooner, Leyden is not likely to hang around here. And the trails over the island are so many and divergent that I believe all the men I have at my command can scarcely hope to track every one of his gang. Of course, we want him most; but every man of his crew is wanted, too, and unless the _Barang_ is raised and moved, to give him hope of escape, I'm afraid he will prove slippery for sometime yet. One other thing is, that through his cunning and lies, the Mission folk here fully believe that Cornelius Houten is the rogue, and their reports to my Government are becoming quite harmful to our friend in Batavia.

"I might say here that Houten is on his way to us by now." An exclamation of fresh surprise from the skipper halted the big Hollander, and Gordon's face went livid again. Vandersee hastened to add: "Don't be alarmed, Gordon. You have suffered, and I give you my word that Houten fully understands everything." He turned to the rest: "I sent one of my runners to the coast with a cable to Houten the moment I knew surely that there was no gold in his river. I thought it best.

"Now, Captain Barry, how long will it take to raise your ship?"

"With Rolfe and Blunt and a full crew I can get her afloat in two tides, unless her leaks are bigger than her own and some extra pumps can check," the skipper replied confidently. "How's the mud here?"

"Mere slime. Pumps ought to suck it out. As for your mates and the crew, they are all living in the village. Plenty of huts there now, since most of the male natives have gone over to Leyden. Two tides then?"

"Plenty. What do you want me to do with her when she floats?"

"Take her downstream to that swampy creek I pointed out in coming up.

I'll have some men clear away the gra.s.ses at the entrance, and she will float inside there easily. You can leave her there, hidden from the river, until one is almost abreast of her; and if luck favors us to the extent that Leyden falls into the trap, we can haul out quickly and get his vessel as she comes down, with all her crimes in evidence aboard of her."

"But suppose she slips us before I can get the _Barang_ clear? What of Miss Sheldon then, if she's on board?"

"Once more I ask you to rest easy about that, Captain," Vandersee smiled back, and suddenly Jack Barry felt complete trust take hold of him. He nodded, without further question, and turned to Gordon. "How about you, Gordon? Want to lend a hand?"

"To raise your ship? Like a shot, skipper. And the harder the work you give me, the better I'll like it. I'm in need of hardening."

The river soon seethed with activity again. Bill Blunt came down from the village, leading the crew with great importance, for he was going to a job that would call forth all his exhaustive knowledge of the sailor's craft. Jerry Rolfe scouted for boats, and by half-ebb tide the _Barang's_ wet decks were filled with men.

Rigging extra pumps occupied all the time until low water, and as the sluggish stream paused at slack, just before turning, every available hand in the ship ground away on brakes and chain pumps until the old brigantine gushed yellow water at every scupper. Barry, hanging over the hatch coaming, peered anxiously into the dark hold, hoping against hope that the pumps were gaining. The sight of swirling waters that surged upward from the sides and spread oilily over the lowering surface proved that the leaks were too serious to be completely checked, and it was necessary to do something else.

"Have to send divers over and try to plug those leaks," he announced and stared doubtfully at the panting crew. Gordon asked some questions of Rolfe, then stepped beside the skipper.

"You can see about where they are, can't you, Barry?" he asked, peering down at the foul water inside the ship.

"So far, yes. But they must be near water line, or the rascals could never have made 'em. Unluckily we can't raise her to her water line; and I hate to send men down into that slime. It might mean suffocation.

Don't you smell the gas?"

"But why not outside?"

"Too smooth, Gordon. Inside there are stringers and frames to claw on to while feeling around; outside her skin is too slick for anything except a barnacle to grab hold of."

Gordon coolly flung off his jacket and kicked off his shoes. And little, at first not seeing the move, suddenly sprang to join him, throwing aside his own clothes with a whoop of joy.

"Gosh, Barry! Why didn't you say you needed a fish?"

The skipper grinned at him in spite of his uneasiness at letting men go down there and shrugged his shoulders resignedly.

"Go ahead, both of you. If Gordon's as much at home in the water as I've seen you, our job is done. Don't know how I forgot your mudlark proclivities, Little."

There was a glow of enthusiasm on Gordon's face as he followed Little over the hatch coaming, and Barry thrilled to see it. There was needed no better proof of the man's complete emanc.i.p.ation from the alcoholic curse that had made him a willing and pliable tool in Leyden's crooked schemes. For a moment the skipper watched the two men, not quite satisfied of their safety, ready in an instant to order them up or go after them himself, should they get into trouble. But he was soon rea.s.sured. First Little came up, snorted choking mud from his nostrils, inhaled a breath of clean air, and plunged down again. Gordon followed, and at the second plunge both reported having found a leak.

"Holes about an inch across, in groups of five in a s.p.a.ce as big as a plate, skipper," gasped Little, resting before taking another dive farther forward. Gordon had found a similar leak; and another search discovered a series of such places running half the length of the ship.

"Holy smoke!" growled Barry in wonderment. "Must have had twenty water rats working on her to do that in such a short time. Rolfe must have been dreaming not to hear anything."

But Rolfe and Bill Blunt were away in the boats, picking up the upstream anchor which could not be hove in, simply because the ship could not be brought over it. And watching their arduous labor, Barry put aside his rising irritation and postponed the warm reproof he was bursting to hurl at them. Instead, he set men busily to work making plugs for the holes, and when the pumps were still for the moment he dropped into a canoe alongside and paddled down to join the boats.

"Got it, hey?" he remarked, nodding with approval as Blunt's boat hauled the great anchor dripping between his boat and Rolfe's, where the mate's crew made it fast, swinging on both gunwales by a baulk of timber laid across, ready to be either let go again, or taken under the brigantine's bows and hove up with the windla.s.s.

"She sartainly sucks hard, sir," said Blunt, straightening his broad back and taking out a huge plug of tobacco. "If that there mud sticks to th' ship like it stuck to this yer mudhook, then we'll need sheer-legs to raise her, Cap'n."

"Saw a pile o' empty oil drums behind the stockade," rumbled Jerry Rolfe, avoiding the skipper's eye as if expecting to hear some scathing comment on the ship's situation.

"How many?" Bill Blunt demanded, without waiting for Barry to speak. "Be they big uns? Is ther' plenty of 'em? Holy Sailor! Beg pardon, Cap'n, but them's what we want, ain't they, now?"

"What can you do with them, Blunt? You'd need a thousand to raise the _Barang_ a foot. And how will you fasten them? Can't get lines under the keel."

"Beg pardon, sir, fer a-shovin' in me oar," returned Bill, with a grotesque tug at his forelock. "I seen som'at o' the sort done once, though, an' if so be as you ses so, I'll do me best, sir."

"Oh, go ahead, Blunt. Go right ahead. I suppose whatever you do won't put her in any worse a pickle. No doubt she'll come up herself when the holes are plugged and the pumps get going again."

They pulled aboard the _Barang_, and while the boats were sent ash.o.r.e to bring down all the empty drums, Bill Blunt a.s.sumed a comical air of study and thought out his plan. He first asked about the holes and what had been done with them. By this time the tide had risen a foot, and the plugs were almost ready to be driven in. Barry watched the old fellow with a grin, and when Bill began to count laboriously on his gnarled fingers, stepping from the bulwarks to the hatch and back again, peering over the side and down the hold, the skipper said with mock apology:

"I suppose you're wondering why we're going to drive in the plugs from inside, hey?"

"No, sir. I never wonders at what my skipper does. It's allus right.

That's what you be skipper fer, I take it. No, sir. I sees as it ain't easy to drive plugs into holes as you can't reach, and them holes seems to be away below the mud outside. Course, some clever sharks as I knows on might say as you was wrong, and that the water outside 'ud drive them plugs back into the belly o' the wessel. But 'tain't so. No, sir." The ancient mariner maintained his bearlike pacing to and from the hatch, and his speech was astonishingly longwinded for him; still he kept on chattering, and presently Barry began to listen with real interest, and Little and Gordon, waiting for the plugs, stared at the sailor in awed admiration.

"No, sir," went on Bill, "them plugs has to be druv from inside; an'

makin' free, genelmen, I'd make 'em twice as long as them you have ready."

"Twice as long?" snorted Barry. "D' you mean these are all useless?"

"P'raps not quite useless, Cap'n, but they ain't no blessed good, an' I bet my head on that. See, if you drives all them plugs well through her, and they sticks out good an' proper outside, it ain't so hard to grope around under the mud an' grab a holt on 'em. Then 'tain't very hard, genelmen, to paddle away a bit o' mud about each bunch o' plugs, an'

when that's done, 'tis about all done. I'll lash a wire to them long plugs, and stretch her right along th' ship. That keeps them plugs in, don't it? an' it's some'at to hang short lines to, ain't it? Werry well then; say we has a hundred or two hundred short lines bent on to that wire, genelmen, an' on each short line is a hempty drum, bunged up tight--"