Kitabı oku: «Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound; A Red Cross Worker's Ocean Perils», sayfa 9
CHAPTER XXI – THE WRECK
Youth is fain to be reckless, but there was no lack of reasoning behind Tom Cameron’s intention.
He was a prisoner on this airship which was bound on a raid over London. If the Zeppelin was not brought down and wrecked on English soil, she would return to her base and Tom would be sent to a German internment camp for the duration of the war.
Imprisonment by the Hun was not a desirable fate to contemplate. If the Zeppelin was brought down during the raid over London, he would very likely be killed in its fall. He might as well risk death now, and perhaps in doing so deliver a stroke that would make this raid impossible.
He slipped out of the closet in which he had been confined and closed the door behind him. He ran quickly to the after door of the long cabin, which he had previously seen could be fastened upon the inside by a bolt. He shot this bolt, and then ran forward again and opened the door to the deck.
The wind almost took his breath. He was obliged to force the door shut again with his shoulder, and stood panting to recover himself. There was some considerable risk in facing the gale outside there.
It was impressed upon his mind more clearly now what it would mean if the Zeppelin could no longer be steered. This gale would sweep the airship down the English Channel and directly out into the Atlantic!
As this thought smoldered in his mind, others took fire from it. He faced a desperate venture.
If he carried through his purpose, with the Germans manning this airship he would be swept to a lingering but almost certain death.
The airship could not keep afloat for many hours. It took a deal of petrol to drive the huge machine from its base to England and back again. The store of fuel must be exhausted in a comparatively short time, and the Zeppelin would slowly settle to the surface of the sea.
Under these conditions he was pretty sure to be drowned, even if the Germans did not kill him immediately. He thought of his sister Helen – of his father – of Ruth Fielding. Already, perhaps, the loss of Ralph Stillinger and the airplane was known behind the French and British lines. Helen must learn of the catastrophe in time. Ruth might hear of the wreck of the airplane before she sailed for home.
Thought of the girl of the Red Mill well nigh unmanned Tom Cameron for a moment. To attempt to carry through the scheme he had plotted in his mind was, very likely, hastening his own death. Had he a right to do this?
It was a hard question to decide. Personal fear did not enter into the matter at all. The question was whether he owed his first duty to his family and Ruth or to the cause which he and every other right-thinking American had subscribed to when the United States got into this World War.
That was the point! Tom Cameron sighed, shrugged his shoulders, and again opened the door which gave egress to the forward deck of the German airship.
He pulled the door shut and breasted the cutting wind that rocked the airship as though she were in a heavy sea. He scrambled somehow along the deck to the pilot-house. There was a square of the same clouded glass in the door of this room. Through it he saw the shadow of a man with a row of instruments before him as well as several levers under his hand.
Tom had very little idea regarding the exact use of either the levers or the instruments. But he knew that he could put the Zeppelin out of commission with a few smashing blows if once he could get this man out of the way.
This whole forward part of the ship seemed deserted save for the man inside the room. Of course, the helmsman, or whatever he was called, must be in communication with all other parts of the great aircraft. If Tom would put his determination into practice he must overcome this man – and that quickly.
He opened the door. The man was aware of his presence, for the roar of the wind and the throbbing of the motors immediately reached the German’s ears more acutely. Tom saw him turn his head to look over his shoulder.
The young American had gripped his pistol by the barrel. He raised it and with all his force brought the weapon’s butt down on the padded helmet the man wore. Again and again he struck, while the fellow wheeled about and tried to grapple with him.
Tom broke the German’s goggles and the face before him was at once bathed in blood. Again and again he struck. The man sunk to his knees – then supinely to the deck, lying across the threshold of the room.
The American strode over him and looked swiftly about the hut. In a corner was fastened an iron bar. He seized it, and with repeated blows smashed the clock-faces and more delicate instruments, as well as beating the levers into a twisted wreck.
The Zeppelin lurched sideways, rolled, and then righted itself. But it lost headway and Tom felt sure that it would drift now at the mercy of the furious gale. He had accomplished his purpose.
But he had the result of his act to face. The other members of the crew of the Zeppelin would be warned of the catastrophe almost immediately. They would soon break through the door of the cabin and reach the forward deck.
He stepped out of the wrecked hut and glanced back. Already the roar of the motors was subsiding. He surely had put the whole works out of commission.
Tom scrambled around the pilot-house into the extreme bow of the craft. Here was a waist-high bin, or storage box, with a hinged cover. He opened it and looked in. It seemed roomy, and there were only some cans and boxes in the receptacle. In a flash he jumped in, lowered the cover, and crouched there in the darkness.
What went on after that he could neither see nor hear. But he could feel the pitching and rolling of the damaged Zeppelin! He knew, too, by that peculiar sinking feeling at the pit of the stomach that attends such a swift passage downward, that the ship was rapidly falling.
This lasted only for a few moments. Then the airship found a steadier keel. It had not begun to spin as a biplane or a monoplane would have done. In some way her descent had been stopped and her balance recovered. But her motors had stopped entirely, and that meant that the wind was driving her as it pleased.
With the cessation of the motors his ear became tuned to other sounds – the shrieking of the wind through the stays and the thumping of its blasts upon the elephant-like envelope. Nor was the passage the craft made a smooth one.
Now and again it pitched as though about to dive into the sea. This sea was roaring, too – a monotone of sound that could not be mistaken. The aircraft was at the mercy of the elements.
He crouched in the box, quite ready to spring up and empty his pistol into the faces of any of his enemies who lifted the cover. But for some reason they did not track him here.
It could not be possible that they were long mystified as to who had done the deed. The figure he had laid upon the bench in the little room at the end of the closet would not have long led them astray. He had brought about the disaster and the thought of it delighted him.
No matter what finally became of him, he had stopped this Zeppelin from ever reaching the English shore! There was one cruel raid over London halted in the very beginning. He could have shouted aloud in his delight.
He thrust up the heavy cover of the box and cocked his ear to listen for near-by sounds. There was considerable hammering and boisterous talk going on, the sound of which he caught from moment to moment. But it was mostly smothered in the roar of the waves and the shrieking of the wind.
They were very near the surface of the boisterous sea. He heard the bursting of a wave below the airship and the spray of it, tossed high in the air, swept across the structure and showered him as he crouched under the open box lid. In a minute or two now, the Zeppelin would be a hopeless wreck.
It came, indeed, more quickly than he had apprehended. There was a sudden dip, and the craft was swerved half around with a mighty wrench of parting stays and superstructure. A wave dashed completely over the platform. He shut the cover of the box to keep out the water.
The next few minutes were indeed disastrous ones. He was in a sorry situation. He did not know what was happening to the other castaways, but he felt and heard the frame of the great airship being wrenched to pieces by the ravenous sea.
The envelope boomed and tore at the frame for freedom. At last it must have been wrenched free by the wind, and the sound of its booming and clashing gradually drifted away. The box he was in rocked and pitched like a small boat in the sea. He ventured to look out again, clearing his eyes of the salt spray.
It was already evening. There was a lurid light upon the tossing waves. Near him was a mass of twisted framework and a barge-like hulk that rode high. Upon it he saw clinging several wind-swept figures.
Then the sea tore the bow of the forward deck of the Zeppelin entirely free from the rest of the structure. Tom Cameron went drifting off to leeward in his uncertain refuge.
The tumbling sea separated him from the Germans. Perhaps it was as well.
As his raft rose upon a wave he looked back into the deep trough and saw the remains of the airship turning slowly, around and around, as though being drawn down into the vortex of a whirlpool. His lighter craft shot downward into the next valley, and that was the last glimpse Tom had of the wrecked Zeppelin and its crew.
CHAPTER XXII – ADRIFT
Ruth Fielding did not close her eyes all that trying night. Morning found her as wakeful in her stateroom as when she had been nailed into it by Boldig, the leader of the German mutineers.
The situation of the Admiral Pekhard was not difficult; and although she was without steerage-way she was in no danger. There was a heavy swell on from a storm that had passed somewhere to the northward; but the night remained quite calm, if dark.
The thumping of the pumps continued until dawn. Then the water was evidently cleared from the fireroom, and the men could go to work cleaning the grates and making ready to lay new fires in all but the damaged boiler.
There was much to do about the engine, however, to delay the putting of the ship under steam. The water, rising as high as it had, had seeped into the machinery and must be wiped out and the parts thoroughly oiled.
Thus far the signals by radio had not been answered by the approach of the submarine that Boldig had reason to expect. As Ruth had heard him boast, the big German submarine, No. 714, must be lurking near, awaiting news of the British steamship from Brest.
The Germans had taken a big chance. Of course, the ship and the submersible might not meet at all. Instead, a patrol boat might hail the Admiral Pekhard, or catch her wireless calls. The Germans would be in trouble then without doubt.
Of course they had the motor boat in which they had got away from the ship in the first place. They could pile into that and make for some port where they knew they had friends. There were such ports to the south, for Spain was not as successfully neutral as her government would have liked to be. German propaganda was active in that country.
Ruth was not in much fear at present as to her own treatment. The mutineers had their hands full. What would finally happen to her if the Germans carried their plans to fulfilment, was a question she dared not contemplate.
Dowd and Rollife she presumed would be removed to the submarine and taken back to Germany – if the submarine ever reached her base again. But there were no provisions on submarines, she very well knew, for women – prisoners or otherwise.
This uncertainty, although she tried to crowd the thought down, brought her to the verge of despair when she allowed the topic to get possession of her mind. And she despaired of Tom Cameron, as well. What had become of him – if he was the passenger the unfortunate Ralph Stillinger had taken up into the air with him on his last flight?
Had Tom really been killed? Had Helen learned his fate by this time? Ruth wished she was back in Paris with her chum that they might institute a search for Tom Cameron.
Nor was the girl of the Red Mill free from worry regarding those at home. Uncle Jabez’s letter, which she had received before leaving the hospital, had filled her heart with forebodings. She had written at once to assure him and Aunt Alvirah that she was returning soon.
But now the time of that return seemed very doubtful indeed. If she was sent to Germany as a prisoner – or kept aboard this steamship which the Germans intended to make into a “mother ship” for U-boats – it might be long months, even years, before she reached home.
Tom had said the war would soon be over; but there was no surety of that. It was only a hope. Ruth might never again see the dear little old woman whose murmured complaint of, “Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!” had become the familiar quotation of Ruth and her young friends.
Aunt Alvirah was dear to Ruth. The girl desired more strongly than ever before in her life to be with the poor old woman again.
She could no longer hear the snapping of the radio, now that daylight had come. Either Krueger, the assistant and traitorous radio operator, had managed to communicate with the commander of the German U-boat 714, or further effort to this end was considered useless now. Another attempt might be made again when night came. Ruth knew it to be a fact that the German submersibles seldom rose to the surface of the sea and put up their radio masts except at night.
It was during the dark hours that those sharks of the sea received orders from Nauen, the great German radio station, and communicated with each other, as well as with such supply ships as might be working in conjunction with the submarines.
If these mutineers were successful in carrying out their plan, and made a junction with the U-boat that carried a crew to supplement those Germans already aboard the Admiral Pekhard, the enemy might succeed in putting into commission a craft that would greatly aid in the submarine warfare.
Thus far it had been so daringly conceived and well carried through that the conspiracy promised to rise to one of the very greatest German intrigues of the war. Its final success, however, rested on time and place. The submarine and the stolen steamer must come together soon, or the latter would surely run across one of the innumerable patrol ships with which the Allies were scouring this part of the Atlantic.
It was noon before the beat of the Admiral Pekhard’s propellers announced that she was again under control. The rolling motion that had finally become nauseating to even as good a sailor as Ruth, was now overcome. The ship plowed through the sea steadily, if slowly.
Occasionally the girl heard a footstep pass her stateroom window; but she kept the port nearly closed so that nobody could peer in. Some time after the screw had started a man came and knocked on the pane.
She smelled coffee and heard the rattle of dishes; so she opened the window.
The man thrust in to her a pot of coffee and a platter of ham and eggs – coarse fare, but welcome, for Ruth found she had a robust appetite. She placed a piece of silver in the man’s palm and heard a muttered “Thank you!” in German.
She felt that it might be well to make a friend among the mutineers if she could do so.
It was not long after she was fed that another footstep halted at her open port. The voice of Boldig, the recreant officer of the ship came to her ear.
“Do you want anything, Miss Fielding?” he asked.
At first she would not speak; but when he repeated his question, adding:
“You know, I can draw those nails in your door as well as I could hammer them in,” she hastened to reply:
“I want nothing.”
He laughed most disagreeably. “You might as well be good natured about it, my dear,” he said. “No knowing how long we shall be shipmates. I am quite sure the commander of the submersible will not take you aboard his craft; so I fear you are apt to remain with us.”
She said nothing. The threat was only what she had feared. What could she do or say? She was adrift on a sea of circumstances more terrifying than the ocean itself.
Boldig went away laughing; she threw herself upon her berth, trembling and weeping. All her spirit was broken now; she could not control the fears that possessed her.
CHAPTER XXIII – AT THE MOMENT OF NEED
The bravest and most cheerful person will come after a time to a point where he or she can bear no more with high courage. Nerves and will had both given way in Ruth Fielding’s case. For an hour or more she was merely a very ill, very much frightened young woman.
The injury she had suffered when the Clair hospital was bombed – that injury which still troubled her physically – had naturally helped undermine her wonderful courage and self-possession. The news from Charlie Bragg of Tom Cameron’s possible disaster had likewise shaken her. What had happened aboard this steamship during the past twenty-four hours had completed her undoing.
Ruth Fielding had an unwavering trust in a Higher Power that guides and guards; but she was no supine believer in what one preacher of a robust doctrine has termed “leaving and loafing.” She considered it eminently fit, while leaving results with the Almighty, to do all that she could to bring things out right herself.
Therefore she did not wholly give way to either aches or pains or to the feeling of helplessness that had come over her. Not for long did she lose courage.
She got off her bed, closed the window, and proceeded to make a fresh toilet. Meanwhile she considered how she might barricade her door if Boldig removed the nails and attempted to enter the stateroom against her will. Of course, the lock could easily be smashed.
She finally saw how she might move the bed between the door and the washstand, so that the latter would brace the bed in such a way that the door could not be forced inward. She could sleep in the bed in that position, and she decided to take this precaution.
That was in case Boldig removed the spikes holding fast her door. Now that she had considered the matter from every side, she was not sure but she desired to have the German officer release her – no matter what his reason might be for so doing.
She must, however, gain something else first. Her wit must win what her physical force might not. She bided her time till evening.
Again the man came to her window with food. It proved to be another platter of ham and eggs, flanked this time with a pot of wretched tea.
“Goodness!” exclaimed Ruth, “is ham and eggs all you know how to cook? I shall be squealing, or clucking pretty soon. Is there nothing else to eat aboard?”
“Ain’t no cook, Miss,” the man said. “We’re all so busy, anyway, that we just have to get what we can quickly. I’m sorry,” for she had dropped another half-dollar into his palm.
“Is there nobody to cook for you hard-working men?” repeated Ruth briskly. “How many of you are there?”
“Eleven, Miss, counting Mr. Boldig.”
“Why, that’s not so many. And you feed Mr. Dowd and Mr. Rollife, of course?”
“They haven’t had as much as you, Miss. Mr. Boldig said they could stand a little fasting, anyway. We haven’t had any decent grub ourselves.”
“I could cook for you!” Ruth cried eagerly. “I’ll do it, too, if you men want me to. I’d rather do that than be shut up here all the time. And – then – I’d like a change from ham and eggs,” and she laughed.
“Yes, ma’am. I s’pected you would. But I don’t see – ”
“You tell the other men what I say – that I would cook for you all if I were let out of here. But I must be guaranteed that you will not harm me if I do this.”
“Who’d want to harm you, Miss?” returned the man, with some sharpness.
“I don’t know that anybody would. I am sure if I worked for you, and cooked for you, you would not see any of your mates hurt me?”
“No, indeed, Miss,” said the fellow warmly. “Nor anybody else. I’ll tell the other boys. And I’ll speak to Mr. Boldig – ”
“Send him here,” interrupted Ruth quickly. “Tell him I want to speak to him. But you speak to your mates and tell them what I am willing to do. If I cook for you I want ‘safe conduct.’”
“Of course, ma’am. Nobody shall hurt you. And I’ll tell Mr. Boldig to come.”
Within half an hour she heard Boldig’s quick step upon the deck. He barked in at the open window:
“What’s this you are up to, Miss Fielding? You’ll set my men all by the ears. You are a dangerous character, I believe. What do you mean by telling them you will cook for them if I let you out of your room?”
Ruth thought he was not so angry as he made out to be. She said boldly:
“I am willing to earn the good will of the men in that way, Mr. Boldig. You know why I do it. I shall appeal to them if you undertake to treat me in any way unbecoming your position as a gentleman and an officer.”
“You have a small opinion of me, Miss Fielding!” he exclaimed.
“That is your fault, not mine,” she told him coolly. “And I hope you will show me that I am wrong.”
He went away without further word, and in a little while she heard somebody drawing the nails from the doorframe.
“Who is that?” she asked before she unlocked the door.
“It’s me, ma’am,” said the rather drawling voice of the man Boldig called “Fritz.”
He did not seem to be a typical German at least. When Ruth opened her door she found the man to be rather a simple-looking fellow. He grinned and touched his forelock.
“I’m to show you where they cook, Miss, and how to find the mess tins and all. There’s a good fire in one of the galley ranges. The boys is all your friends, Miss. You needn’t be afraid of us.”
“I am not at all afraid of you, Fritz,” she said, smiling at him. “I count you as my friend aboard here, if nobody else is.”
“Sure you can count on me, Miss. You know,” he added confidentially, “I ain’t a reg’lar German. Not like Mr. Boldig and these other fellers. I was born in Boston, and I’d rather be right there now than over on this side of the pond. But you needn’t tell anybody I said so.”
“I won’t say anything about it,” she told him, following him through the passages toward the steward’s and cook’s quarters. “But why, then, if your heart is not in this business, why did you join in the expedition to take charge of the Admiral Pekhard?”
“Their money, Miss,” Fritz told her. “There’s a heap of money in it. When I finish the voyage, though, I’m going to get back to the States. I’m through with all this then. I’ll have money enough to open a shop of my own.”
“And do you suppose you will be welcome at home, when people know of your treachery?” asked Ruth indignantly.
“No, Miss. I won’t be welcome if they know it. But they won’t. I ain’t fool enough to tell ’em.”
In ten minutes Ruth had learned all that was necessary for her to know about the cooking quarters and the tools she had to work with. There was a good fire, as Fritz had said, and she at once went to work on baking powder biscuit – and she made a heap of them. She knew that thirteen men (counting the two prisoners aft) could eat a lot of bread. In the cold storage room was fresh meat and plenty of bacon and ham. She had to work alone, for the Germans had all they could do to steer the ship, keep lookout, stoke the fires and run the engines properly. She wondered that they got any sleep at all, and Fritz admitted to her that they were only allowed two hours’ relief at a time.
Boldig was a driver; but he was just the sort of man to head such a piratical expedition as this. He worked hard himself, and knew how to get every ounce of work possible out of those under him.
He looked in at Ruth working in the kitchen, and spoke quite nicely to her. Perhaps the great plate of biscuits, pork chops, and French fried potatoes she gave him to take up to the wheelhouse, caused him to consider her wishes to a degree.
Later she insisted that Mr. Dowd and Rollife, the radio man, should have their share. She made one of the men go to Boldig for the keys to their rooms, and she piled a tray high with good things for the prisoners to eat. Boldig would not let her go herself to the men in durance. He would not trust her to talk with them.
She washed her dishes, banked her fire, and laid out what she purposed to cook for breakfast. Then, very tired indeed and with the lame shoulder fairly “jumping,” she retired to her stateroom. It was then ten o’clock, and having had no sleep at all the night before Ruth was desperately tired.
She entered her room, locked the door, and pushed the bed as she had planned between the door and the stationary washstand. Then she went to bed, feeling that she would be safe.
But nobody had to wake her in the morning. The sea had become rough over night, and at the slow pace she was traveling the Admiral Pekhard rolled a good deal in the roughening waves.
Ruth awoke with a bright idea in her head, and she proceeded to put it into execution as soon as she got the men’s breakfast out of the way. For Boldig and the chief officer and radio man, as well as herself, she had some of Aunt Alvirah’s griddle cakes with eggs and bacon. Between two of the cakes she put on one of the plates for the imprisoned men, she slipped a paper on which she had written before leaving her stateroom:
“I am free while I do the cooking. I can get to your rooms if I only had keys to free you. Tell me what to do. R. F.”
She had given her word to Boldig to do no harm; but she did not think this was breaking her word. It might be possible for Mr. Dowd, Rollife and herself to get free – even free of the ship. The motor boat was still trailing the steamship, although if the sea became much rougher she presumed the mutineers would have to find some means of getting the launch inboard.
Half an hour later Boldig came into the galley, his face aflame. He slapped down the piece of paper she had written her note on before Ruth, and glared at her.
“It is impossible to trust a woman!” he growled. “Did you suppose I would let you send food to those fellows without examining it myself? I am not so foolish. Now, my lady, you shall keep on cooking; but your friends aft there can go without anything fancy. I’ll take them what I please hereafter.”
He turned on his heel and whipped out of the place. Ruth was almost in tears. And they were not inspired by terror, although she had been startled by the man’s words and look. It seemed that she was not to be able to aid her friends – or herself – to escape.
Yet, even in her grief and in the midst of her worry, a gleam of amusement came to her at Boldig’s, “It is impossible to trust a woman.” This from a traitor – a person impossible to trust!
But even Fritz had not much to say to her when he came to help peel vegetables for the men’s dinner. He admitted to her that thus far Krueger had not been able to pick up any word from the submersible that had been engaged to meet the pirates if they accomplished their part of the plot – which they had. The radio was crackling most of the day, showing that the leaders of the mutineers were getting anxious.
After she had cleared up the dinner dishes (and that was no easy work, because of her lame shoulder) Ruth went and lay down. She took the trouble to brace the bedstead against the washstand as before. Some time after she had fallen asleep she was awakened by a noise at the door. She awoke with her gaze fastened on the knob, and was sure it was being turned. But the door was locked as well as barricaded.
Before she could be positive that anybody was there who meant her harm, there was a sudden hail from the open deck. She heard several men running. Then a shout in German:
“Mr. Boldig! It is a man afloat! Man overboard!”
Ruth thought she heard somebody run from her door.
She arose and tremblingly put on her dress. Then she hastened to pull aside the bed and open her door. She felt that she was safer out upon deck. Besides, she was curious to know what the cry had meant.
