Kitabı oku: «Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound; A Red Cross Worker's Ocean Perils», sayfa 10
CHAPTER XXIV – COUNTERPLOT
To one who had been more than forty-eight hours drifting in a scuttle-butt in mid-Atlantic, the sight of almost any kind of craft would have been welcome. Tom Cameron hailed first the plume of drifting smoke, then the mast and stacks, and then the high, camouflaged bow of the Admiral Pekhard with a joy that increased deliriously as he became assured that the ship was steaming head-on to his poor raft.
The steamship was moving very slowly, and it was hours before, waving his coat frantically as he stood in his bobbing craft, he knew he had been sighted by the lookout. The latter had not expected to see anything like Tom and the remains of the wrecked Zeppelin in these waters. The lookout had been straining his eyes to catch sight of a periscope.
It was providential that the course of the Admiral Pekhard was bringing her almost directly toward the drifting bit of wreckage. She was almost on top of Tom before the lookout hailed and Boldig ran up to the bridge to get a better look at the object which had caused the excitement.
“That is no part of an underseas boat!” cried Boldig to the lookout. “What is it?”
“There is a man in it – see! He waves his coat. It looks like a boat – no! It is one mystery, Herr Boldig.”
But the latter now had his glasses fixed on the drifting raft. He saw the broken stays, the slipper-shaped bow of the Zeppelin, and he suddenly understood. It was not the first wreck of a Zeppelin’s frame work that he had seen floating in the sea; but it was the first in which he had seen a living man.
Boldig himself hailed – hailed in German. And fortunately for Tom Cameron he replied in the same language. His accent was irreproachable. Had it not been, the German officer might have thought twice about attempting to rescue the lone castaway.
The young American had no idea at first that this was a German-manned steamship – that she had been boldly taken over on the high seas by a gang of German pirates. Yet he was sharp enough to realize almost at once that there was something wrong with her.
No passengers on her decks, no officers on her bridge until this one hailed him, and no crew along her waist watching him. Besides she was coming along at such a crippled gait.
He knew she must be a passenger ship, and the Union Jack at her masthead showed her nationality. But where was she going and why was she not convoyed?
Tom had already seen the smoke of several destroyers or converted trawlers, but had not been himself sighted by their lookouts. This was his first chance of rescue, and he was not at all particular just then who the people were aboard the Admiral Pekhard, as he saw she was named. With that name and under that flag she must be a British ship. As he was drifting in a part of a German Zeppelin, he naturally expected to be taken aboard as a prisoner. Yet he did or said nothing to reveal his true identity for the time being. If they wished to think him a German at first, all right; explanations could come later.
Boldig called three men to man the motor boat that trailed astern. He had to stop the ship’s engines to do this, for steam could not be kept up without the small force of stokers at his command working at top speed through their entire watch. The whole crew were almost exhausted. Those whose watch it was below at this time must be allowed to sleep to recover their strength. It was a ticklish situation in more ways than one.
The Admiral Pekhard began to roll in the trough of the sea. As she rolled toward him Tom could better see her deck and upperworks. He marked a woman’s figure come out of the after companion on the upper deck. She stood there alone and shaded her eyes with her hand as she looked off at him.
The siege Tom Cameron had been through since the Zeppelin was wrecked had racked his body a good deal, but by no means had it weakened his mind. He was sure there was something wrong with this craft. The three men were an hour in tuning up the motor-boat engine and getting that craft near enough to his raft to take Tom aboard.
The latter saw that neither of the three men was an officer. One was Fritz, and he spoke to the castaway in English. But Tom was wary. There was a flaxen-haired, big-bodied fellow who glowered at him and spoke nothing but German.
“You fell with an airship – yes?” this man asked, and Tom nodded.
The American had done secret service work behind the German lines on one occasion. There he had assumed the character of a Prussian military officer, and gradually he took on the attitude that he had used familiarly at that time. His speech and appearance bore out the claim he meant to make if these people proved to be Germans, as he more than half suspected. How the Germans ever got control of a British ship was a mystery!
Boldig met Tom Cameron at the rail when he came up the captain’s ladder. He offered a hand that the American was forced to accept.
“You have the good fortune to escape both peril by air and sea, Mein Herr?” said Boldig. “Your companions?”
“Are gone,” Tom replied in German, shaking his head. “I am of all, the lone fortunate. ‘The survival of the fit’ – is it not so? We were bound for London. Because I had lived there much, I was to pilot Herr Leutnant-Commander over the city!”
“Ah!” said Boldig. “I thought you did not seem entirely German.”
“It is the heart that counts, is it not?” Tom returned.
He knew this arrogant-looking man must be a German through and through. The British flag flying over the ship did not reassure him. He had ventured his story of being the Zeppelin pilot as a bit of camouflage. If he was mistaken – if this was an honest vessel and crew – he carried papers in his money belt that would explain who he really was.
“And you, Mein Herr?” Tom asked with a gesture indicating the Admiral Pekhard’s empty decks.
“Our story you shall learn later,” said Boldig. “But rest assured. You are among friends.”
He hastened to show the flaxen-haired man and Fritz how properly to pay off the line holding the motor boat in trail. The engines started again, and the ship began to pull ahead.
Tom, standing upon the after deck, gazed quietly around him. He felt that the situation was strained. There was something threatening in the pose of Boldig after all. This was no tramp steam freighter with half a crew. No, indeed! She was a well found and well furnished passenger craft. Where were the crew and passengers that should be aboard of her?
And just then he saw a white hand beckoning at the after cabin companionway. He remembered the woman he had observed from the wreck of the Zeppelin standing at that doorway. Swiftly Tom crossed the deck behind Boldig’s back and reached the door which was open more than a crack.
The hand seized his own. The touch thrilled him before he heard her voice or caught a glimpse of Ruth Fielding’s face.
“Tom! Tom Cameron!” she murmured. “You are saved and have been sent to me.”
“Ruth!” He almost fell down the stairway to reach her. He took her in his arms with such ardor that she could not escape. In that moment of reunion and relief she met his lips with as frank and warm a kiss as though she had really been his sister.
“Tom! Dear Tom!” she murmured.
“Great heavens, Ruth! how did you come here? What is the meaning of this business? Those Germans out there – ?”
“And there are only two faithful men aboard – the first officer and the radio chief. Both locked in their rooms, Tom. We are four against eleven of these pirates!”
“Pirates!”
“No less,” the girl hastened to say. “I cannot tell you all now. The others escaped in the small boats; but Mr. Dowd, Mr. Rollife, and I were left. Then the German members of the crew, and this officer, Boldig, came back and took the ship. They expect a big submarine with an extra crew to pick them up.”
“What under the sun – ”
“Oh!” gasped Ruth, hearing Boldig outside. “Here he comes! He has been so brutal – so disgusting! Oh, Tom!”
Her friend wheeled and leaped up the stair again. As he went he drew the automatic pistol from his bosom where he had hidden it and kept it dry. As Boldig thrust back the door Tom pushed the muzzle of his weapon against the man’s breast.
“Up with your hands!” Tom commanded. “Quick!”
Boldig fell back a pace. Tom followed him out on the open deck. He reached quickly and snatched the pistol from the German’s holster with his left hand.
Then, his eye flickering to the men at the rail and seeing the flaxen-haired man trying to draw his pistol, Tom sent one bullet in that direction. The man, Guelph, sank, groaning, to the deck.
“Pick up that pistol, muzzle first, and bring it here!” commanded Tom to Fritz, and the latter obeyed quite meekly. Neither he nor the third seaman was armed. After all, Boldig did not trust his underlings.
“How shall we get your two friends out of their rooms?” Tom asked Ruth without looking around at her, for he kept his gaze upon Boldig and the others.
“That man has the keys to their staterooms.”
“Come and search his pockets,” said Tom. “Don’t stand between me and him. Understand?” he added to Boldig. “I will shoot to kill if you try any tricks. Keep your hands up!”
Was this Tom Cameron, Ruth thought? She had never seen Tom assume such a character before. She had forgotten what army training had done for her childhood’s friend. When he had come to see her on his leaves-of-absence from the front he had seemed all boy as usual. But now!
She found the keys, and in five minutes Mr. Dowd and Mr. Rollife, armed from the right collection of weapons in the captain’s room this time, joined the wonderfully arrived castaway on the open deck.
Dowd had handcuffs, too, and Boldig, Fritz, and the other unwounded seamen were quickly manacled and shut into separate rooms below.
Ruth tried to make the wounded Guelph more comfortable, although he was not seriously hurt. While she was doing this, and her three friends were searching the rest of the crew for arms and separating them so that they could do no harm, the girl chanced to glance over the rail and saw a sight that called forth a cry of rejoicing from her very heart.
There was a gray, swiftly steaming ship, a warship, bearing down upon the Admiral Pekhard, and the Stars and Stripes was at her masthead!
CHAPTER XXV – HOME AS FOUND
To clear up all the mysteries about their adventures – about Tom’s wonderful flight in the airplane, his capture by the Zeppelin’s commander, his wrecking of the Hun machine, his providential escape from the sea; as well, the trials and dangers through which Ruth had passed – to clear up all these things certainly took much time. It was not until the excitement was over that they really could talk it all out.
For at first came happenings almost as exciting as those that had already taken place. The Seattle had more to do than merely to take the Germans aboard as prisoners and Ruth and her friends as honored passengers, while they put a prize crew on the Admiral Pekhard.
For the German plot had been so far-reaching, and it had come so near being carried through to a successful finish, that the commander of the Seattle, of the fast cruiser type, bound home for orders, felt an attempt must be made to punish the Germans connected with the plot.
That U-boat 714 must be caught. They made the assistant wireless operator, Krueger, admit that within the hour he had caught a message from the U-boat and had sent one in reply. The submarine would arrive about nightfall, Krueger said.
The commander of the American cruiser made his plans quickly. He sent a large crew aboard the Admiral Pekhard. Then the cruiser steamed away to a distance. But she was a very fast ship and she did not remain far out of sight of the British steamship.
Mr. Rollife had insisted on remaining at his post. The chatter of the Admiral Pekhard’s radio kept the American commander in touch with all that went on. When the submarine appeared on the surface, not many hundred yards away from the ship that was supposed to be in the hands of German plotters, the Seattle started for the spot at top-speed.
It was a great race! Tom was as excited as any sailor aboard, and until it was all over he was not content to remain with Ruth below decks.
Four of the cruiser’s prize crew, masquerading as Germans, manned the motor boat and shot over to the gray side of the huge submarine. They could all speak German. They fooled the U-boat commander, Herr Kapitan-Leutnant Scheiner, nicely. He sent his first in command and the special crew brought from the submarine base at Kiel to the passenger ship, crowding the small launch to the very guards.
When these men went, one by one, up the ladder, they were met behind the shelter of the rail by a number of determined American blue jackets, who disarmed them and knocked them down promptly if they ventured to offer resistance.
Before the smoke of the Seattle was sighted the two deck guns of the Admiral Pekhard, their breechlocks replaced, were trained upon the open hatch of the U-714. Through a trumpet the officer in command of the crew from the Seattle ordered Kapitan-Leutnant Scheiner to surrender his boat and crew.
When he made a dive for the open hatch, the forward gun of the British ship, manned by American gunners, put a shell right down that hatchway – and Scheiner was instantly killed.
The Admiral Pekhard was sent to Plymouth, as that port was nearer than Brest. Besides, the Seattle’s commander had learned already by radio that the entire ship’s company of the British ship had safely reached that port.
Mr. Dowd and Rollife went with the Admiral Pekhard; but after due consideration, and listening to the pleadings of Ruth Fielding and Tom Cameron, the latter pair were allowed to remain aboard the American cruiser.
“You are due to reach New York anyway, Miss Fielding,” said the commander. “And from what he tells me of his experience, I believe Captain Cameron has earned a furlough. Although I presume he will first have to be reported as being absent without leave.”
All this is in the past, now. It seemed to Ruth Fielding, standing on the porch of the old farmhouse attached to the Red Mill and looking down the rutted highway, that many, many of her experiences during the months of war must have been dreams.
Even the injured shoulder troubled her no more. She was her old vigorous, cheerful self again. Yet there was a difference. There was a poise of mind and a seriousness about the girl of the Red Mill that would never again wear off. No soul that has been seared in any way by the awful flame of the Great War will ever recover from it. The scar must remain till death.
The war was well nigh over. Tom’s prophecy was to be fulfilled. The Hun, driven to madness by his own sins, could fight no more. The actual fighting might end any day. On a ship coming homeward were Helen and Jennie – the latter with a tall and handsome French colonel at her side, who had been given special leave of absence from the French Intelligence Department.
Ruth saw an automobile swing into the road a couple of miles away and grow larger and larger very rapidly as it rushed down toward her. She wound a chiffon veil about her head as she called back into the open doorway of the farmhouse kitchen:
“Tom is coming, Aunty. I sha’n’t be long away.”
“All right, my pretty! All right!” returned the voice of Aunt Alvirah, quite strong and cheerful again. “Oh, my back! and oh, my bones! All right!”
She hobbled to the door on her cane. Her apple-withered cheeks had a little color after all. The little old woman began to mend the moment she set eyes on “her pretty” again.
When the automobile pulled down at the gate for Ruth to step in beside the begoggled Tom and the engine was shut off, they could hear the grinding of the mill-stones. Times had improved. Uncle Jabez, as dusty and solemn of visage as ever, but with a springier step than was his wont, came to the door and waved a be-floured hand to them.
“All right, Ruthie?” asked Tom, smiling at her.
“Quite all right, Tom.”
“Got the whole day free, have you?”
“Until supper time. We can take a nice, long jaunt.”
“I wish it was going to continue forever – just for you and me, Ruth!” he murmured longingly, as he slipped in the clutch and the engine began to purr. “A life trip, dear!”
“Well,” returned Ruth Fielding, looking at him with shining eyes, “who knows?”
