Kitabı oku: «The Ocean Wireless Boys on War Swept Seas», sayfa 4
CHAPTER XII
THE ARMED CRUISER
The next morning, when Jack and Bill turned out, there was quite a flutter among the passengers. A large ship had been sighted in the distance, coming rapidly westward. As she drew nearer it could be seen that she was a monster craft of four immense funnels painted a sombre black without colored bands to relieve the effect. Her upper works were a dull brown and her hull, black.
Speculation was rife concerning her identity, but it soon became noised about that the craft was the Ruritania of the Anglican Line, which had, apparently, been converted into an auxiliary cruiser by the English Government on the outbreak of the war. The sight of guns mounted on her fore and aft decks confirmed this.
On she came, a fine, grim spectacle in her dull paint. An absorbed shipload watched her, leaning over the rails as she drew abreast.
“Lie to!”
The signals fluttered from her halliards and the same order was flashed by wireless.
For the second time the St. Mark’s engines revolved more and more slowly. The two big vessels lay opposite each other on the swells, nodding solemnly. Before long a boat came bobbing over the seas from the Ruritania.
“Now’s your chance to give that fellow Earwig up,” declared Raynor to Jack, as, leaning in the door of the wireless room, they watched the scene.
“Somehow it seems to me that would be a shabby trick,” said Jack, after a moment’s thought. “I’ll confess, though, that when the Ruritania hove in sight such a thought came into my mind. But – oh, well, I guess we’ll let him get by this time.”
“Maybe you’ll be sorry for it later on,” said Raynor, little guessing that those words were prophetic. There was to come a time when Jack was to bitterly regret having let Radwig escape capture by the British.
The inspection by the naval reserve officer of the Ruritania did not vary from that which the St. Mark had already undergone at the hands of the Berwick. Naturally, the German reservists having been already given up, there was little to do but to overhaul the ship’s papers. This did not take long, and before half an hour had passed, the two steamships saluted each other and parted company.
That afternoon Jack had a visitor in the wireless room. It was Mr. Johnson. He opened the conversation ingratiatingly.
“I’m afraid I rather lost my temper the other afternoon,” he said. “I want to apologize.”
“That’s all right,” said Jack briefly, choking back a longing to tell Mr. Johnson that he was perfectly aware of his identity.
“I – er – perhaps what I offered was not enough,” he continued. “I may tell you now that I will double or triple the amount if you will send a message for me, – using a code, of course.”
Jack jumped to his feet, his eyes ablaze.
“See here, sir,” he shot out, “you might offer me all the money there is in Germany but it would not be of the slightest interest to me. Now if you have nothing more to say, I’ll ask you to leave this cabin before I – ”
The angry boy checked himself with his hands clenched and his eyes flashing. A murderous look came into Mr. Johnson’s bearded face, but he appeared to be determined to keep himself in check.
“Do not be foolish,” he urged; “have an eye to your own interests. As for your reference to Germany – ”
“You are going to say that you don’t understand it,” cut in Jack.
“Well, I must say I – ”
“Don’t go any further,” interrupted the angry young wireless boy, “and now ‘Mr. Johnson,’ or Herr Radwig, I’ll ask you to leave.”
Radwig looked for a moment as if he was about to choke. His face turned purple and his hands clenched and unclenched nervously. The sweat stood out in tiny beads on his forehead.
“What do you mean – ?” he began.
Jack leaned forward and looked at him significantly.
“Just this, Herr Professor, that in spite of that fake beard and your dyed mustache, I know you. Your reason for being disguised and going under a false name is no business of mine now. See that you don’t make it so.”
“You – you – ” sputtered the man who was startled in the extreme.
“And furthermore,” continued Jack, “we are likely to run across some more British ships. If you annoy me any more, I shall point you out for what you are. That will be all. Now go.”
Utterly bereft of words, Radwig turned heavily and half fell out of the cabin. He collided with Bill Raynor, who was just coming in. He fairly snarled at Jack’s chum, who airily remarked:
“Don’t slam the door when you’re going out!”
“You young whipper snapper, I – I – ” choked out Radwig, and being too discomfited to find words, ended the sentence by shaking his fist at the two boys.
“Well,” said Raynor, as Radwig vanished, muttering angrily to himself, “it would appear as if you’d spilled the beans, Jack.”
“It does look that way, doesn’t it?” said Jack with a smile. “I rather fancy our Teutonic friend will be good for a while now.”
CHAPTER XIII
A MESSAGE IN CODE
“What happened?” was Raynor’s next question.
“Oh, he came in here and offered me untold gold to send a code message for him. I fancy that it was about the Ruritania, telling her whereabouts and so on.”
“So that was his game, eh?”
“Well, he didn’t work it. I got mad and told him that he needn’t bother to conceal his identity from me, and that if he bothered me any more I’d show him up to the first British officer that again boarded us.”
“Phew! Going some. How did he take it?”
“I thought he was going up like a balloon for a minute,” laughed Jack. “Now, if we only could identify Schultz, we’d have both of them where we want them.”
“That’s going to be a hard job,” declared Bill. “They don’t go about together. At least, I’ve watched closely, but never saw Radwig talking with anyone on board.”
“No, I guess they keep pretty well under cover for fear of accident. I wish I could have gotten a look at them that night I overheard them talking.”
“Yes, it would have simplified matters a good deal,” Bill admitted, “but, as you say, I don’t think either of them will try to bother us again.”
The day passed uneventfully. In the afternoon they sighted a small British freighter making her way west, and later on overtook a French oil ship bound for Holland. Jack flashed them the latest war news, for they had a small wireless outfit, and in return received the information that two German cruisers were somewhere in the vicinity and that the French ship was in fear of capture at any time.
That evening the wind blew rather hard. A high sea was whipped up by the gale and the St. Mark, big as she was, rolled and pitched violently. It was what sea-faring men would have called “a fresh breeze,” but to the passengers, that is, such of them as were unseasoned travelers, it was a veritable storm.
Jack and Bill rather enjoyed the rough weather, coming as it did after a monotonous calm. After dinner they ascended to the boat deck and paced up and down, chatting for some time. Inside the wireless room Muller was at the key. Now and then, as they passed and repassed, they would exchange a word with him. It was on one of these occasions that Muller hailed them excitedly.
“There’s a ship just wirelessed the S. O. S.!” he exclaimed.
“Great Scott,” cried Jack, “and on a night like this. What’s the trouble?”’
“Don’t know yet. I’m trying to get them again. Notify the captain, will you?”
“On the jump,” cried Jack.
He despatched his errand in a few minutes, and was back in the wireless room with instructions to “stand by” and get further information as soon as possible.
“Anything new?” he asked Muller.
The wireless man shook his head.
“Nothing but that first S. O. S.,” he said.
Suddenly there came a shout from Bill, who was standing in the door.
“Look, Jack, what’s that off there?” he exclaimed, pointing to the horizon.
A dull glow was reflected against the night sky in the direction he indicated. Now it flashed bright as a blown furnace, and again it sank to a faint glare. Jack was not long in deciding what it was.
“It’s a ship on fire,” he declared.
At almost the same moment a hoarse shout from the forward lookout and a shouted reply from the bridge told that the glare had been observed from there, too.
Possibly there is nothing at sea that thrills like the sight of a vessel on fire. Jack, it will be recalled, had witnessed such a spectacle before, but yet his heart bounded as he watched the distant glare now bright and glowing, now dull and flickering.
“Hullo, the old man has rung for full speed ahead!” exclaimed Bill, as the next moment the St. Mark’s speed was perceptibly quickened and her course changed.
Several seamen in charge of the third officer, a Mr. Smallwood, came trampling aft. They busied themselves loosening the fastenings of one of the boats and getting it ready for launching. Presently they were joined, and three additional craft were made ready for the work of life saving.
All this time the glow had been getting brighter as the St. Mark approached the burning ship. But the distance was as yet too great to make out what manner of vessel she was.
“I’d give anything to get in one of those boats,” observed Jack to Bill, as the two lads watched the preparations for lowering away.
“So would I,” agreed Bill. “Do you think there’s a chance?”
“I don’t know. I ‘deadheaded’ a radio for Mr. Smallwood to his sick mother the day we sailed. That might have some influence with him. I’ll ask him anyhow.”
Jack vainly pleaded with the at first obdurate officer, but after a long interval, he returned to Bill with a smile on his face.
“It’s all right,” he announced. “It was a hard job to get him to consent. I won him over at last. We go.”
“Hurray!” cried Bill. “Now for some oilskins! It’s not the sort of night to be without them.”
“I’ve got mine in the cabin,” said Jack. “I’ll borrow Muller’s for you.”
“Good for you. Gosh! Look at those flames. Seems to be a big steamer.”
Both boys paused a moment to look at the awe-inspiring spectacle of the blazing ship.
As they did so, something occurred which chilled the hot blood in their veins and caused them to exchange startled, bewildered looks.
Over the dark, heaving waters that divided them from the blazing vessel there was borne to their ears what sounded like an awful concerted groan of agony. Again and again it came, rising and falling in a terrible rhythm. It was not human. It sounded like the sufferings of demons.
“Wow! But that’s fearful!” exclaimed Bill, paling. “What under the sun can it be?”
CHAPTER XIV
THE CATTLE SHIP
The awesome sound continued while the boats were being lowered. The weird nature of the uproar and its mystery made even the rough seamen apprehensive. The more religious among them crossed themselves fervently.
“Bad cess to it, if it don’t sound like the howling of poor sowls in purgathory,” muttered one of them.
As the boat in which he and Bill were sitting beside Mr. Smallwood was lowered, Jack glanced upward and had a view of the lighted decks, the rails being lined with the heads of curious and excited passengers. Then came a sickening swing outward as the ship rolled.
“Let go all or we’ll be smashed!” shouted Mr. Smallwood.
For a moment, as the ship heaved back, it seemed indeed, as if the boat was doomed to be dashed against her steel sides and smashed into splinters. But in the nick of time the “falls” were let go “all standing.” The boat rushed downward and struck the top of a great wave with a force that shook her. The next instant, the patent blocks opened and on the crest of the great comber Mr. Smallwood’s boat, and the others, were swept off into the darkness.
Behind them arose a mighty cheer, but they hardly noticed it in the excitement and danger of the launching.
“A bad night for this work,” muttered Mr. Smallwood as the boat was lifted heavenward and then rushed down into a dark profundity from which it seemed impossible she could emerge. A blood red glow from the leaping flames enveloping the stern of the doomed craft, which was a large, single funneled steamer, lay on the roughened sea.
“Are there passengers on board, do you think?” asked Jack, rather tremulously, as the blood-chilling uproar from the burning vessel continued.
“Looks to me more like a freighter – hard there on the bow-oars, – meet that sea, – she has no upper decks,” replied the third officer.
“I don’t see anybody on board her, either,” said Bill, after an interval, during which the boat escaped swamping, as it seemed to the boys, by a miracle only.
“Let’s hope they got away,” said the third officer, “but that devil’s concert on board beats me. It’s not human, that’s one sure thing. What in blazes is it?”
“It gives me the shivers,” confessed Bill.
The noise grew positively deafening as they got closer. The intense heat of the blaze and the shower of falling embers that enveloped them added to their discomfort.
“Row toward the bow,” roared Mr. Smallwood, cupping his hands, “or we’ll have the boats afire next.”
Already several of the seamen had hastily extinguished portions of their clothing that had caught, and burns on hands and faces were plentiful. But as they pulled toward the blazing craft’s bow, this annoyance was avoided, the wind blowing the heat and embers from them.
All at once, as they swung upward on the crest of an immense comber, Jack uttered a shout:
“The mystery’s solved.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Mr. Smallwood.
“The mystery of that horrible noise. That’s a cattle ship yonder, and the poor beasts are mad with fear.”
The next wave gave them a clear view of tossing horns and heads as the unfortunate cattle, penned on the burning craft, rushed madly about the decks, in vain seeking some means of relief. It was a piteous sight, for there was no way of saving them from being burned alive unless the ship sank first.
“Oh, but that’s awful!” gasped Jack, with a shudder.
“Look, look up on the bow!” cried Bill suddenly. “There’s a man. He’s seen us.”
“He’s waving,” cried Mr. Smallwood. “Hurrah! Give way, men! There’s a poor beggar roasting on that ship.”
But the boat’s crew needed no urging. In the lee of the burning cattle ship the water was smoother and they could make better time. Silhouetted against the glare, too, every man of them could see, by a twist of his head, that solitary marooned figure on the bow of the fire ship.
As the first boat, – Mr. Smallwood’s, – ranged in alongside the high steel prow, Jack’s quick eye caught sight of a rope dangling from the great steel anchor chains. By what impulse he did it he could not have explained, but as the boat ranged close alongside he poised for an instant on the heaving gunwale and then launched his body forward into space.
“Come back, boy!” shouted Mr. Smallwood. But by the time the words had left his mouth, Jack was scrambling up the rope amidst the cheers of the men in the tossing boats now far below him. It was the work of a few moments only to gain the anchor chain, and to climb up them was, for a lad of Jack’s brawn and activity, an easy task.
“Thank heaven you came before it was too late,” cried the solitary man on the fore deck, staggering toward the boy with outstretched arms.
“Are you the only man on board?” demanded the boy, deciding to leave explanations till later.
“No, Dick Sanders is sick in his bunk below.”
“Where, down this hatchway? In the forecastle?” asked Jack quickly.
“Yes, I was too weak to carry him up, heaven help me,” muttered the other reeling weakly.
Jack did not stop to listen. He knew that within a few minutes his shipmates would be on board and would rescue the half-crazed man on the bow. It was his duty to go after the sick man below. Into the ill-smelling darkness of the forecastle of the cattle ship he plunged, clawing his way down an iron ladder. At the bottom he struck a match. As its light flared up he heard a groan, and looking in the direction from which it came he espied the emaciated form of a boy lying in a bunk.
“Have you come to save me?” gasped out the sick lad, who was almost a skeleton and whose eyes glowed with unnatural brightness in his parchment-like face.
“Yes, but you must do exactly what I tell you,” instructed Jack.
“I will, oh, I will,” choked out the other. “Only save me. I was afraid I was going to be left here to die alone.”
“Don’t talk about dying now,” ordered Jack. “Now clasp your arms round my neck and hold on tight. Do you think you can keep your grip till we get to the top of that ladder?”
“Yes – that is, I think so,” returned the sick lad, who had been cabin boy on the doomed ship.
“Then, hold on,” ordered Jack as, having carried his pitifully light burden across the forecastle to the foot of the ladder, he prepared to ascend the rounds. Once or twice he had to stop on the way up, and holding on with one hand, grasp Dick Sanders with his other arm to allow the lad to recruit his strength. At last they reached the deck and Jack, who was almost exhausted, laid his frail burden down with a sigh of relief.
He looked about for his companions, who he fully expected to see on the forecastle. There was no sign of them.
The lone man who had waved to them from the bow had also vanished. A rope ladder, one end of which was secured inboard, showed the way they had gone.
“Queer that they didn’t wait for me,” muttered Jack. “They must have known I was below. I wonder – ”
There was a sudden warning shout from somewhere.
“Look out for your life!” came in Mr. Smallwood’s voice.
Jack looked up, startled. The burning ship was a flush-decked craft. That is, her forecastle was not raised, but was on a level with the main deck where the cattle pens were. The terrified creatures, in their frenzy of fear, had broken loose from the flimsy timber structure, and now, urged on by the flames behind them, were charging down in a wild stampede upon Jack and the half-conscious form of the sick boy at his feet.
It was not possible to effect a retreat down the forecastle hatch, for his efforts to support himself on the journey up had been too much for Dick Sanders’ strength.
Jack looked about him. It was imperative to act with desperate swiftness.
Now, not fifty feet from him was the advance guard of the maddened, fear-crazed steers. In a few seconds, if he did not act swiftly, both he and the lad he had rescued would be pounded by their sharp hoofs into an unrecognizable mass.
Suddenly he formed a resolution. With desperate eagerness he stripped off his oilskins and kicked off the light deck shoes he had not thought to change in the hurry of embarkment. Then, picking up the fragile form of Dick in his arms, he sped for the side of the forecastle.
As the long-horned steers swept down so close to him that he could feel their breaths and see the whites of their frenzied eyes, the boy leaped up and outward into the night.
CHAPTER XV
JACK’S BRAVE LEAP
What happened after the leap, Jack never knew clearly. He felt a wild, half-suffocating rush through the air and then a sensation of choking and strangling as a cold, stifling weight of water pressed in on him. Down, down, down he plunged. It seemed as if he would never rise. In his ears was an intolerable drumming. Everything was blood-red before his eyes.
Then came a sudden blast of blessed air, following a swift upward rush, and he found himself struggling in the wild sea with Dick Sanders clinging desperately to him and almost making him go under again.
Luckily Jack, without conscious thought, had chosen the lee side of the burning ship, where the boats hovered, for his leap for two lives. As his head appeared above the surface, the bright glare of the flames showed his form clearly to the anxious watchers who had witnessed his daring dive.
“There he is! Hurrah!” shouted Bill Raynor, who was the first to see him. “Hold on, Jack, old boy, we’ll be with you in just a second.”
“Keep up your heart! We’ll get you!” bellowed Mr. Smallwood.
Jack essayed a feeble wave in response, with the result that he was once more engulfed. But in a few moments he was safe and a dozen pairs of strong arms had drawn him and Dick Sanders into Mr. Smallwood’s boat.
“Heavens, lad, what a dive,” cried the third mate admiringly, when Jack was somewhat recovered and Dick lay covered with seamen’s coats on the floor of the boat.
“Gracious, we thought you were a goner!” exclaimed Raynor, “when the cattle made the first charge. I guess you didn’t hear it, being below. We all came close to being caught. The man on the forecastle, who was unconscious by the time we got on board, was reached in time to be lowered into one of the boats. In the confusion, we thought you were among us. It was not till we reached the boats again that we found our mistake.”
“In the meantime,” said Mr. Smallwood, “those poor devils of steers had reached the rail and not liking the look of the water any better than the fire, charged back again. It was just as the second ‘wave,’ as you might call it, was coming for you that we saw you weren’t with us. Suddenly we sighted you with that poor kid there,” he nodded to the bottom of the boat, “right in the line of their charge.”
“If it hadn’t been for your warning shout, I might not have been here now,” said Jack.
“I saw that and so I yelled with all my power,” said the third officer, “but lad,” he went on, slapping Jack on the back, “when I saw what you were going to do, I regretted having warned you.”
“It was the only thing to do,” said Jack. “We wouldn’t have stood a chance if we had remained where we were,” and he explained that it was impossible to find shelter on the flush deck or to retreat back into the forecastle.
“Well, all’s well that ends well,” said Mr. Smallwood, “but it gave me a turn when I saw you come sky-hottling off that bow. But, – great Christmas, – look yonder.”
He pointed back at the burning ship. By her own light they saw her pitch heavily forward, hesitate an instant and then, without further warning, and amidst a piteous bellowing that sounded like a death-wail, shoot downward to the depths of the ocean. In an instant the light she had spread across the rough sea had vanished, and by contrast, the night appeared to have suddenly solidified about them in velvety blackness. A moment later a blinding white light groped across the waste of tossing waters and enveloped them in its glow. It was the searchlight of the St. Mark and it accompanied them with its cheering light till they reached the ship’s side.
They were greeted amid acclamation, and Dick Sanders was at once taken charge of by the ship’s doctor and some lady passengers. The man who had been rescued had, by this time, however, sufficiently recovered to accompany Mr. Smallwood, Bill and Jack to Captain Jameson’s cabin, where that officer was eagerly waiting to hear the details of the rescue.
The rescued sailor, whose name was Mark Cherry, soon told them the story of the disaster to the Buffalonian, a British cattle ship which had left New York for London several days previously. Early that evening the craft had been overtaken by a German cruiser and ordered to surrender. Every one on board was made prisoner, and some of the cattle taken, when the British captain, seized by a sudden fit of anger, struck the German commander in the face. He was instantly ironed, as were his officers, Mark Cherry observing all this from under the cover of a boat where he had been working when the cruiser took the cattle craft, and in which he had remained hidden.
In revenge, apparently, for the British captain’s attack on him, the German commander had, on his return to his own ship, ordered the Buffalonian fired upon by the big guns. The hidden sailor crouched in terror in his place of concealment while the cannon boomed. He thought his last hour had come. The projectiles shrieked through the sternworks of the ship and one, he thought, had struck amidships (which accounted for the vessel’s foundering).
At length, appearing to tire of this, the German cruiser put about and steamed away. Cherry crept from his hiding place where he had remained paralyzed with fright throughout the bombardment, and making for the wireless room sent out the only signal he knew, the S. O. S., which he had learned from a friendly wireless man, in case there ever came a time when it would be a matter of life and death to him to use it. This explained why no answer came to Muller’s frantic calls after the first distress signal.
It was only a few moments after this call that flames burst from the shattered stern, and Cherry knew that unless help came, his hours were numbered. So confused and terrified was he by his desperate situation, that it was not till Jack’s appearance on the scene, he remembered little Dick Sanders, the cabin boy, lying sick in his bunk below. (It may be said here that with care and good treatment the lad quickly recovered his health, and he and Mark Cherry were put to work with the crew of the St. Mark.) Thus, without further incident, the English Channel was reached and Jack began busily to try to communicate with the firm’s London agents for instructions as to docking orders.
