Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound Part 17

"Oh, well, maybe I lost myself for a moment," confessed Rollife.

"Anyhow, I made up my mind I was done for when I could make n.o.body listen to me after my door was nailed. They certainly had it in for me."

"Where was your a.s.sistant?" Dowd asked.

"That fellow is a squarehead," growled the radio man. "I suspected him from the start. Why, he couldn't talk American without saying 'already yet.' A Hun, sure as shooting."

That Rollife himself came from the United States there could be no doubt. His speech fully betrayed his nationality.

"He never came near me," he went on, speaking of his a.s.sistant. "He was some 'ham,' anyway! Graduate of one of these correspondence schools of telegraphy, I guess. His Morse was enough to drive one mad. Let me out, Dowd. I'll fix up those aerials and call somebody to our help in short order."

The first officer had accomplished his purpose. The screws were out of the hinges. Rollife was a big, strong fellow, and he drove his shoulder against the door with sufficient force the first time to push it outward at the back.

Then Mr. Dowd took hold of the edge of the door, and together they worked out the long nails and threw the useless door on the deck.

Rollife came out into the light of the lantern which Ruth held at one side. He was a big, fresh-faced man with a square jaw and a direct glance.

Ruth was glad to see him. He was such another man as the first officer of the steamship. If she had to be aboard an abandoned craft in such an emergency as this, she was glad that her companions were just such men as these two. She felt that they were resourceful and trustworthy.

Her mind, however, was by no means at ease. Mr. Dowd and Mr. Rollife were much more cheerful than Ruth. And it was not because they were any more courageous than the girl of the Red Mill. But Ruth thought of something that did not seem to have made any impression on the men's minds.

What had been the intention of the conspirators in abandoning the ship with the innocent members of her company? What would naturally be their expectation regarding the _Admiral Pekhard_, if she had not been put in condition to sink? If it was a German plot, surely the plotters did not intend to leave the steamship to drift, unharmed, until some patrol boat picked her up.

And the plotters knew the three castaways were on the vessel. What of the chief officer, the radio man, and Ruth herself? They had all been left for some purpose, that was sure. What was it?

Mr. Dowd and she had been allowed their freedom. Only Rollife had been locked up. And the plotters must have known that in time Ruth or Dowd would have found means of releasing the radio man. Once released, it was more than probable Rollife would be able to discover what had been done to the aerials and repair them. It was quite sure that, before morning, those abandoned on the _Admiral Pekhard_ would be able to send into the air an S O S for help.

There was something that she could not understand-something back of, and deeper, than the surface-work of the plotters. Perhaps that explosion in the fireroom had not been meant to injure the ship seriously. It was merely meant (as it did) to create panic.

It caused a situation serious enough to alarm the captain and all aboard. It seemed that all they could do was to flee from a ship that threatened to sink.

This situation might have been just what the plotters intended to create; because they would not wish to remain on the steamship when actual destruction was coming upon her!

They had escaped with the other members of the ship's company. Yet the steamship drifted in apparent safety. Was there something much more tragic threatening the _Admiral Pekhard_?

CHAPTER XVII-BOARDED

Rollife was busy with his repairs on the aerials. Dowd was down in the engine room, or so Ruth supposed, and neither seemed suspicious of any further happening that would injure them. Rather, they considered themselves in full charge of a steamship that was in no actual or present danger.

Ruth Fielding's mental vision saw more clearly. There was something else coming-something far more tragic than anything that had thus far occurred.

There might be, hidden somewhere in the cargo-holds, time-bombs set to explode at a given moment. Her imagination was by no means running away with her when she visioned such a possibility.

Surely there was something still to happen to the _Admiral Pekhard._ If not, why then all the scurry to get away from the ship, the conspirators themselves included in the stampede?

Or had the ship's position been made known to a German submarine and would the U-boat soon appear to torpedo the British craft? This was not so far-fetched an idea. Only, the young woman was pretty sure that the explosion aboard the _Admiral Pekhard_ had been advanced in time because of her own suspicions and the attempt she had made to get Mr. Dowd to investigate matters which the conspirators did not wish revealed.

Rollife had taken the lantern and Dowd had gone in search of another, Ruth presumed. By and by she began to wonder what was engaging the first officer's attention for so long, and she went to the engine-room hatch.

Her small electric torch showed her the way.

To her amazement-and not a little to her fear at first-Ruth found the first officer lying upon the engine-room ladder. He was wet from head to foot, his turban of bandages had come off, displaying a bleeding scalp wound, and he was panting for breath.

"What has happened to you, Mr. Dowd?" she cried. "Did you fall into the water?"

"I dived into it," explained Dowd, grinning faintly. "That water in the fireroom didn't look right to me. I found the seac.o.c.ks below, there. Two were open, as I suspected."

"Oh!"

"It was a deliberate attempt to scare us-and it succeeded. I shut off the c.o.c.ks. This compartment could be pumped out if we had the men. Of course, the steam pumps can't be used. We have no donkey engine on deck.

All the machinery is down there, half under water.

"There must have been more than Dykman and that man you saw talking to Miss Lentz, in the plot. Another man in the stoker-crew, perhaps. He flung a bomb into one of the furnaces after opening the seac.o.c.ks. It was a well laid plot, Miss Fielding."

"Yes, I know," she said hastily. "But to what end?"

"How's that?"

"What was the final consideration? Why was this done? They must have known the ship would not sink. Then, what did they do all this for?"

"Why-by Jove!" gasped Dowd, "I had not thought of that, Miss Fielding."

He crept up the ladder and stood upon the deck, the water running from the garments that clung closely to his limbs and body.

"Doesn't it seem reasonable," she asked, "that the conspirators, whoever they were, should have some object rather than the simple desertion of a vessel that was not likely to sink?"

"It would seem so," he admitted, and his tone betrayed as much anxiety as she felt herself.

At the moment a shout from Rollife, the radio man, aroused them.

"I've found it!" he cried.

They went toward the radio room. He was busy in the light of the lantern on the roof of the house. He had tools and a small plumber's stove that he had found. He turned on the blast of the stove and began to weld certain wires.

"Can you fix it?" Dowd asked quietly.

"You bet I can, Mr. Dowd!" declared Rollife. "In half an hour I'll have the sparks shooting from those points up there. You watch."

Ruth looked at Mr. Dowd. Her unspoken question was: "Shall we take him into our confidence? Shall we tell him our fears?"

Before the first officer could answer her unspoken inquiry Ruth's sharp eyes glimpsed a light over his shoulder. It was an intermittent sparkle, and it was low down on the water. She remembered then the light she had seen for a moment when she had first come on deck after learning that the ship was abandoned.

"What is that?" she whispered, pointing.

Dowd wheeled to look. Instantly she saw by the light of her torch that he stiffened and his head came up. He gazed off across the water for quite two minutes. Then he said:

"It is a light in a small boat I believe. At first I thought it might be a submarine. But I do not believe a submarine would show anything less than a searchlight in traveling on the surface at night."