Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound Part 15

As she struggled to her knees, picked up her bag, and gained her feet, Ruth realized, as in a flash of light, that the man who had shouted was Dykman, the under officer whom she had previously suspected. He was in the conspiracy with Irma Lentz and the flaxen-haired man-the latter, she was sure, having hidden in the small motor boat.

And what was now ahead? She had no idea how long she had lain unconscious. Nor did she hear a sound from the deck above.

Had she been abandoned on the sinking ship, even by Mr. Dowd, the first officer? That Captain Hastings had neglected to see that all the pa.s.sengers were taken off the _Admiral Pekhard_ did not greatly surprise Ruth. She had a very poor opinion of the pompous little skipper.

But Mr. Dowd!

She stumbled out of the dark pa.s.sage and found the saloon stairway. The door at the top was closed. She had to put down her bag to open it. Her shoulder pained like a toothache, and she could not use her left hand at all.

She finally stumbled out upon the open deck. Darkness had shut down on the ship. There was not a light anywhere aboard that she could see. The ship was rocking gently to the swell. It did not seem to her as though it was any deeper in the sea than it had been when last she was above deck.

But one certain fact could not be denied. The davits were stripped of boats. Every lifeboat was gone! She looked aft and saw that the big motor launch had likewise been put off. Forward the deck was clear, too.

The boat in which she had observed the stowaway had disappeared.

She was trapped. She believed herself alone on a deserted ship in a trackless ocean. She had no means of leaving the _Admiral Pekhard_; surely had the steamship not been about to go down, it would not have been abandoned by all-pa.s.sengers, crew, and officers.

Captain Hastings, the Red Cross officer, even Mr. Dowd, had all quite forgotten her. Her enemies (she must consider Irma Lentz and Dykman personal foes) had made it impossible for her to escape in any of the boats. Perhaps they feared that she knew much more of the plot than she really did know. Therefore their determination to make her escape impossible.

Suddenly she saw a flash of light far out over the sea. It bobbed up and down for several minutes. Then it disappeared. She believed it must be one of the small boats that had got safely away from the _Admiral Pekhard_. The disappearance of the light seemed to close all communication between the abandoned girl and humankind.

She had dropped her bag. As the steamship rolled gently the bag slid toward the rail. This brought her to sudden activity again. She went to recover the bag. And then she peered over the high rail, down at the phosph.o.r.escent surface of the sea.

It did not seem to Ruth as though the _Admiral Pekhard_ had sunk a foot lower than before she left the deck to obtain her possessions. There was something wrong somewhere! Rather, there was something right. The ship was not about to sink. Why, hours had pa.s.sed since she had fallen and struck her head below near her stateroom! If the ship had been in such danger of sinking when the alarm to take to the boats was given, why was it not already awash by the waves that lapped the sides?

There was some great error. Captain Hastings must have been terribly misled by his officers regarding the condition of the ship. Much as she disliked the pompous little man, she was sure that he would not have knowingly deserted the steamship unless he had been convinced she was going down-and that quickly.

"But Mr. Dowd knew better," murmured Ruth. "Or he must have suspected there was something wrong. And Mr. Dowd-I do not believe he would have left the ship without making sure that I was safe."

The thought was so convincing that it bred in her mind another and, she realized, perhaps a ridiculous one. Yet she was so impressed by it that she turned back to the open companionway. She started down into the saloon-cabin. But it was so dark there that she hesitated.

Then, of a sudden, she remembered the pocketlamp that must be in this very toilet-bag she carried. She always tried to have such a thing by her, especially when she traveled. She opened the bag and searched among its contents.

Her hand touched and then brought forth the electric torch. She pressed the switch and the spotlight of the bulb shot right into the face of the great chronometer in its gla.s.s case, hanging above the companionway steps.

It was half after nine, and she heard the faint chime of the clock on the instant-three bells. Why! she must have been more than two hours unconscious below. Of course the boats, if they had been rowed at once away from the supposedly sinking ship, would be now quite out of sight.

Their lamps were hidden from her sight; and as there were no outside lights on the ship, she would, of course, be invisible to the crews of the small boats.

If the order had been given to make for the nearest point of land, the people who had abandoned the _Admiral Pekhard_ might easily believe the steamship under the sea long since.

This thought was but a flash through her troubled mind. The keener supposition that had urged her below still inspired her. By aid of the hand lamp she could make her path through the cabins. She crossed the dining room and the writing room and library. This way was the opening of the pa.s.sage on which were the doors of the officers' cabins.

She reached Dowd's door. She had been here before; it was she, indeed, who had roused him to the knowledge that the ship was being abandoned.

Could it be possible--

She pushed open the door without opposition, for it was unlatched. She shot the spotlight of the hand lamp into the small room. The bed was empty.

Of course, it could not be possible that Mr. Dowd, chief officer of the ship, had been left behind as she had been.

Yet, she could open the door only half way. There was something behind it that acted as a stopper. Ruth peered around the door and at the floor. Her lamp shone upon the unbooted feet of a man. She shot the ray of light along his limbs and body. At the far end, almost against the outside wall of the stateroom, was the turbanned head of First Officer Dowd!

Ruth could scarcely gasp the officer's name, and in her amazement she removed her thumb from the switch. Her lamp went out. In the darkness she heard Mr. Dowd breathing stertorously. He was, then, not dead!

Ruth Fielding was far too sensible and acute in understanding to be long overwhelmed by any such discovery. Indeed, she felt a certain satisfaction in finding the man here. Even Mr. Dowd, ill and helpless, was better than no companion at all upon the steamship. One fear, at least, immediately rolled off her mind.

Used as she had become to hospital work, she went at once to work upon the victim of this outrage. For at first she thought he must have been injured a second time. Perhaps the man who had stretched that cord to trip her and had shouted to her down the pa.s.sage, had first overpowered Mr. Dowd.

It proved to be that the man was merely asleep. But he was sleeping very heavily, very unnaturally. Ruth had seen people under the effect of opiates before, and she knew what this meant. The chief officer of the _Admiral Pekhard_ had been drugged.

When she had previously spoken to him and roused him after he was hurt, she remembered now that he had not seemed himself. It was something besides the blow on his head that troubled him. Ruth wondered who had given him the opiate, and in what form.

But of a surety, both the chief officer and she had been deliberately placed in such condition that they could not answer the call to abandon ship! Evil people had been at work here. The conspirators feared that Ruth and Mr. Dowd knew more than they really did know, and they had planned that the two should sink with the _Admiral Pekhard_.

Only, by the mercy of Providence, or by a vital mistake on the part of the plotters, the steamship did not seem to be on the point of sinking.

Ruth believed that that danger was not immediate.

She gave her attention to Mr. Dowd while she was thinking of these facts. She bathed his head and face, slapped his hands, and finally put to his nose strong smelling-salts which she found in her bag. The man stirred, and groaned, and finally opened his eyes.

He seemed to recognize Ruth at once. But the power of the opiate was still upon his brain. He could not quickly shake it off. He struggled to his feet by her aid and by clinging to his berth. He stared at her, groping in his mind for the reason for his situation.

"Miss Fielding!" he muttered. "Yes, yes. I am coming at once. The ship is sinking, you say?"

"Oh, Mr. Dowd! everybody has gone now and left us. We are too late to go in any of the boats. But I do not believe the ship is sinking, after all."

"They-did they blow it up?" questioned the man, striving to pull himself together. "I-I--Why, Miss Fielding, what is the matter with me? I must have neglected my duty shamefully. Captain Hastings--"

"He has gone without us. Certainly he did not strive to be sure that everybody was off the ship before he left. He evidently must have left it to his subordinates to do that. And I am sure they were not all trustworthy."

She swiftly repeated her own experience. The bruise gained by her fall over the taut cord was quite visible on her forehead. But the smart of it Ruth did not mind now. There were many other things of more importance.

"It looks like treachery all the way through," groaned Mr. Dowd. "I remember now. I fell down the companionway-and I could not understand why, for the ship was not rolling. You say you suspect Dykman? So do I.

He was right there when I fell, and it seemed to me afterward that I was tripped by something at the top of the steps.

"But I was so confused-why, yes, you came and aroused me once, did you not, Miss Fielding?"

"Yes. Somebody must have given you an opiate. Who bandaged your head, Mr. Dowd?" she asked.

"The surgeon. He was here and fixed me up. He-he gave me a drink that he said would fix me all right."

"It did," the girl returned grimly. "It may have been he meant you no harm. Possibly he thought a long sleep was what you needed. But, then, why did he not remember you when the ship was abandoned? He must have known you would be helpless."

"It seems strange," admitted Mr. Dowd. "Kreuger is the surgeon's name.

Of course, the name smacks of Germany. But-but if we are going to distrust everybody with a German name, where shall we be?"

"Safer, perhaps," Ruth said, with rather grim lips. "In this case, at least, the doctor seems to have done quite as the conspirators would have had him. They plainly feared that both you and I suspected too much, and they did not intend that we should escape from this ship."

"Come!" he said, having struggled into his vest and coat and seized his uniform cap. "Let us go up on deck and see what the promise is. Here! I will light this lantern; that will give us a steadier light than your torch.

"I am glad you are such a plucky young woman, Miss Fielding," he added, as he lit his lantern. "One need not be afraid of being wrecked in mid-ocean with you. We'll find some way of escape from this old barge, never fear."