West Wind Drift Part 3

"Pardon me, Captain," broke in the young man, his smile no longer in evidence; "I am asking no favours. I expect to be treated as an ordinary stowaway. Set me to work at anything you like and I will make as good a job of it as possible."

"I was about to suggest that you serve as a sort of a.s.sistant to Mr.

Codge, the purser. I've no doubt he could find something for you to do and--"

"If that is your way of punishing me, Captain Trigger, of course there is nothing for me to do but to submit."

"Eh? I am sure you will not find Mr. Codge a hard taskmaster. He is quite a good-natured man."

"Extremely kind and considerate," hastily added Mr. Mott, rea.s.suringly.

"But I don't want to loaf my pa.s.sage home," protested Percival. "I want to be sentenced to the hardest sort of labour, if you don't mind. I don't want to owe this steamship company a penny when I step ash.o.r.e. It is your duty, sir, as master of this ship, to put me on the meanest job you've got."

"My word!" exclaimed Captain Trigger.

"I'm blessed!" said Mr. Mott.

"Up where I've been running things and c.o.c.k-walking like a foreman in a shirt-waist factory, I made the rules and I enforced them. I want to say to you that no favours were shown. If the Prince of Wales had drifted in there, dead broke, and asked for something to eat, he would have got it, but you bet your life he'd have had to work for it. A tramp's a tramp, no matter how much purple he's been used to, and you can say the same for a stowaway. What's the matter with me taking the place of one of those deck-hands, or whatever you call 'em, you lost last night?"

"What's that?"

"Swabbers, maybe you call 'em. Men that mop up the decks after everybody else has turned in."

"What are you talking about?" demanded the Captain, sitting up very straight. Percival stared at him in astonishment.

"I thought you knew about it, of course. Good Lord, sir, don't you know that a couple of your men jumped overboard last night,--or early this morning, rather? Just as the ship was rounding that big headland--"

"Good G.o.d, man, are you in earnest?" cried Mr. Mott, starting toward the door.

"I certainly am. I took them for deserters, of course,--not suicides, because they didn't forget to put on life preservers before they jumped.

I haven't a doubt they were picked up, so there's no use worrying. A minute or two after they went over,--from the bottom deck or whatever you call it,--I heard a motor boat popping away like a gatling-gun not far,--"

But he was alone. Captain Trigger had dashed out of the cabin in the wake of the First Officer.

Algernon Adonis Percival stared blankly at the open door.

"Good Lord, why all this excitement over a couple of b.u.ms?" he said, addressing s.p.a.ce. "If they were working for me, I'd thank the Lord to be rid of 'em so cheaply. They--h.e.l.lo!"

The Second Officer popped into the room.

"Come along with me," he snapped. "Lively, now. Just where and when did you see a couple of men go overboard? Quietly, now. We don't want to alarm the pa.s.sengers."

Within five minutes after Percival's disturbing report, the officers of the Doraine, with set faces, were employed in a swift but silent investigation. Before many more minutes had pa.s.sed, at least a portion of the stowaway's story had been verified. Two men were found to be missing, although, strange to say, they had not been missed up to the time that noses were counted. They were down on the ship's roster as Norwegians, New York registry, and had come down with the Doraine on her trip from the north.

Percival repeated his story, but had little to add in the way of detail.

He had stolen on deck some time after midnight for a breath of air, risking detection, and from the shelter of a secluded corner well aft had heard the two men swabbing the deck below. Suddenly they ceased work, and he prepared to creep back to a place of safety, concluding that they were on their way to the upper deck.

He went to the rail to listen. The two men were almost directly below him, and he could see the upper portions of their figures as they leaned far out over the rail, apparently looking into the swirling waters below. Quite distinctly he heard one of them say, in English: "We got to do it now or never." The other mumbled something he could not distinguish. He was only mildly interested, not antic.i.p.ating what was to follow. For a few seconds he heard them scrambling and puffing and then he saw them quite plainly on the rail, their figures bulky with what he identified as life buoys, a faint light from somewhere falling directly upon the grayish-white objects in which they were swathed.

One of them uttered the word "Now!" and to his amazement they shot out, as one man, into the black-ness below. There was a single splash. For a moment or two he stood spell-bound. Then he heard some one running along the deck below. Convinced that the incident had been witnessed by others, he darted into the companion-way and made his way back to the stateroom of the sick pa.s.senger. Through the lightless porthole he listened for the terrifying shout, "Man overboard!" It did not come, but his ear caught the staccato beat of a motor near by, striking up abruptly out of the swish of rushing waters. In his ignorance, he decided that it was a boat from the ship going to the rescue of the daring deserters, and calmly waited for the engines of the mighty Doraine to cease their rhythmic pulsing. He fell asleep.

When he awoke, he concluded that he had dreamed the whole thing. This conclusion was justified when he asked his wretched "bunkie" if he had observed him leaving the room during the night. The answer was a mournful negative, followed by the sufferer's more or less positive declaration that he was staring wide awake the whole d.a.m.ned night long.

Percival, unconvinced, boldly made his way to the lower deck and discovered that two life buoys were missing from their supports, a circ.u.mstance that put an end to the hope that he had dreamed it all. His own affairs however now loomed large, taking precedence over the plight of the men who had deliberately abandoned the ship. In any case, the ship's officers had done everything that could be done in the matter.

He was genuinely astonished to learn that the act of the two men was unknown to the Captain.

A hurried conference of the ship's officers and the commander of the gun-crew resulted in a single but definite conclusion. The desperate, even suicidal manner in which the men left the ship signified but one thing: the absolute necessity of flight before an even more sinister peril confronted them. Not a man on board doubted for an instant that they had taken their chance in the waters as a part of a preconceived plan, and they had taken it with all the devilish hardihood of fanatics.

The presence of the motor craft, so far out from port, lurking with silent engine in the path of the steamship, could have but one significance. It represented one of the carefully thought-out details in a stupendous, far-reaching plot.

If there were signals between the motor boat and the two men aboard the steamship, they were not observed by the lookouts. In all probability no signals were given. The little craft was to be at a certain place at a certain hour,--and she was there! The men who jumped knew that she would be there. A black, tiny speck on the broad expanse of water, sheltered by a night of almost stygian darkness, she lay outside the narrow radius to which visual observation was confined, patiently waiting for the Doraine to pa.s.s a designated point. There was to be no miscalculation on the part of either the boat or the men who went over the side of the big steamship into the seething waters.

The closest inquiry among the members of the crew failed to reveal any one who had witnessed the leap of the men. Percival was positive, however, that some one ran along the lower deck, but whether toward or away from the spot where the men went over he had no means of knowing.

He offered the suggestion that there were three persons actually involved, and that one of them, more than likely the victim of a coin-flipping decision, had remained on board to complete the work the trio had been chosen to perform, even though death was to be his lot.

The Second Officer had been regarding Percival with ever-growing suspicion.

"Is there anything to prove, young man, that you are not the one who stayed behind to complete the job?" he demanded at last.

"Nothing," said Percival promptly, and somewhat scathingly, "nothing at all, except the trifling fact that I am here talking it over with you gentlemen instead of attending to my business, as any honest conspirator should be doing. You may be quite sure of one thing: if there is a man on board this ship whose business it is to finish the job, he isn't idle. He's getting on with the job at this minute, gentlemen. If you'll take my advice you will inst.i.tute two investigations. First, search the ship from stem to stern, from keel to bridge, for bombs or infernal machines. Second, ask your rich pa.s.sengers if they have lost anything in the shape of pearls, diamonds, coin of the realm, or anything else worth jumping into the ocean for."

Captain Trigger looked at him over the top of his eye-gla.s.ses.

"You are not in Copperhead Camp at present, Mr. Percival," he said stiffly.

The young man flushed. "I beg your pardon, Captain Trigger," he said simply.

"All you have to do," said the Second Officer, fixing him with an inimical eye, "is to answer questions and not to tell us how to run this ship."

Percival did his best to hold back the retort, but, failing, released it with considerable sharpness:

"Well, if I was running this ship I'd head her for sh.o.r.e pretty d.a.m.ned quick."

The American in command of the gun-crew was the only one who smiled, and he did it openly. Captain Trigger's face darkened redly.

"Take this man in charge, Mr. Shannon. He wants work. Give it him. Under guard."

"Am I suspected, Captain Trigger, of being in league--"

"Every man, every woman on board this ship is suspected," said the Captain with decision. "Every one, sir, from myself down. The rest of us grasp that fact, even if you do not."

And so it was that while Algernon Adonis Percival, under the watchful eye of a burly seaman, fell to work sc.r.a.ping the scuppers on the boat deck, the stern business of searching the ship went forward with a thoroughness that left no room for doubt as to the fears and apprehensions of the men who had her in charge. Despite the fact that intensive, anxious hours of delving revealed no hidden, sinister agent of destruction, there was no relaxation on the part of the officers and crew. One by one the pa.s.sengers were examined; their rooms and their luggage were systematically overhauled. No one resented these drastic operations, for by midday the whole ship's company knew what had transpired during the night. Eagerly they answered the questions, cheerfully they submitted to the examination of their effects, and then fell silent and subdued, oppressed by the suspense that hung over the ship like a cloud. Crew and pa.s.sengers alike underwent the most rigid questioning, the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the young and the old.

Early that morning, in fact some time prior to the time that Percival told his story, the wireless operator reported that his transmitter was out of order. While he was satisfied that the apparatus had not been tampered with, he was plainly affected by the rather grim coincidence.

He was an old and trusted man in the service, competent, efficient and loyal.

His a.s.sistant, the night operator, however, had made less than half a dozen voyages on the Doraine. He was an Englishman, a cripple; twice he had been rescued after vessels on which he sailed were sent to the bottom by German submarines. His credentials were flawless. He was on duty during the night just past, and had picked up several indistinct, incomplete radio messages. There was nothing wrong with the receiving or transmitting apparatus when he went off duty at six in the morning, and as his superior came on at the same hour,--they exchanged greetings at the door of the wireless house,--it was absolutely impossible for any one to have entered the well-guarded room without attracting attention.

Cruise, the chief radio-man, had his a.s.sistant routed out of bed and together they worked like beavers over the disabled mechanism.