  Stepping over the high sill of the door that led from the deck to the passageway, Sandy and Jerry were plunged at once into gloom and near-darkness. The throb of the freighter’s engines, barely noticeable on deck, became a roar, and the passage was thick with the smells and heat from the engine room below. They were pushed and shoved along the passage, past a number of doors which Sandy presumed were the crew’s quarters. On the other side of the passage, an occasional door opened onto the engine room, a great cavern of heat and noise, brightly illuminated by lights on all sides, and crisscrossed by catwalks and ladders. Without a word, their guides stopped before a door opposite the main opening to the engine room. One of them produced a large key ring and, after a moment’s searching for the right key, unlocked the door. Motioning them to enter, the guard stood aside as Sandy and Jerry stepped into the gloom of a small cabin. Then the door slammed behind them, the key clicked in the lock, and they were alone. Through the ventilating slits cut in the top and bottom of the door, they heard one of their captors. “You take the first watch while I go for chow. I’ll bring the kids something to eat when I come back, then you can get yours.” The other said something in agreement, and the speaker’s footsteps in the passageway were soon drowned out in the roar of the engines. Sinking to a seat on the bare springs of a bunk with no mattress, Jerry looked up at Sandy and asked, “What now?” “I don’t know,” Sandy admitted. “But at least we got away with the flare gun, and we may figure out a way to use it.” He lowered himself to the bare bunk opposite the one Jerry occupied, and surveyed their floating prison. The cabin offered very little promise of help. There were the two double bunks, both bare of mattresses, four lockers, a sink in one corner and a single porthole. Going to the porthole, Sandy tried to open it, but with no success. The “dogs” that secured it, heavy steel latches, were welded in place, and the glass of the porthole looked too heavy to break. Obviously, the place had been used as a prison before. Outside of the porthole, there was nothing but the sea. Even if the glass could be broken, Sandy didn’t like the idea of dropping down into the black waters below. That seemed as unpromising a position as the one they were in now! The lockers were the next subject of their exploration but, as they expected, these proved as empty and bare as the cabin itself. The sink, the only remaining thing in the room, was the source of no inspiration. Settling himself on the bunk once more, Sandy began to roll up his pants leg. “I guess this flare gun is our only hope at that,” he said. “We might as well have it ready.” He quickly undid the adhesive tape, then stuck the gun in his belt. As he did so, an idea came to him. “Jerry, I think I have it!” he whispered. The plan was a simple one—almost too simple to work. But it seemed the only chance they had. Sandy proposed to wait until the guard came with their food, then, threatening him with the flare pistol, they would try to overcome him, tie him up, and make their way to the deck. Once there, they would have to find a way out. It seemed a slim hope, but what else could they do? Jerry agreed, and whispering quietly, they worked out the best positions to take to make their attack good. Meanwhile, one more stroke of good fortune came to them. Jerry found that he still had the roll of adhesive tape in his pocket, undiscovered in Bull’s quick inspection. It would come in handy for binding and gagging the guards, if they could once overcome them. Now there was nothing to do but wait. Through the porthole, they could see the sky growing dark, and the gathering gloom in the cabin raised their spirits. It was one more bit of aid that might fool their jailer into thinking the flare gun was a real weapon. The last glow of day was dying on the horizon when they once more heard voices in the passageway. Jerry took his position by the door while Sandy readied the flare gun, then sat on one of the bunks. The door swung open and their guards entered, the lead man carrying a tray and his companion behind him. As they stepped over the sill, Sandy stood up suddenly, upsetting the tray. Hot coffee spilled over the lead man, who stepped backward with a cry. As he did so, Jerry, from his position behind the door, reached out and knocked the second man to the deck. At the same moment, Sandy raised his flare gun and aimed. “All right,” he said. “I have you covered!” “Do what he says,” one of the sailors said. “Do you see that gun? It’s a flare!” Sandy was startled. If they knew it was not a real pistol, why didn’t they charge him? Why were they cowering away? Then he realized for the first time that the flare pistol, used as a weapon, must be an awful thing. Anything that could send a stream of flame hundreds of feet into the air could surely inflict a terrible wound when used against a man. He shuddered, knowing he could never use it in this way. But as long as the sailors didn’t know it.... It was short work to silence the men with adhesive-tape gags, and to tape their hands firmly behind their backs. When this was done, the boys pushed the sailors into the lockers, taped their ankles together, and shut them in. The locker doors secured firmly with a latch. Leaving the cabin silently, Sandy and Jerry locked its door behind them. That certainly took care of two of their captors. Now, if the rest would just prove this easy! As they stepped away from the door, Sandy whispered, “Let’s get out of this passage fast. There are too many doors here, and one might pop open at any minute!” They swiftly moved down the length of the passage until they reached the bulkhead door. Outside, the deck was dark, with the complete blackness of a night at sea, pierced only by the shaft of light that came from the passage. Moving now as quickly as they could, they slipped out onto the deck, and stepped back out of the light. Their shadows had been outlined boldly against the passage light for only a second. They crouched in the darkness and waited to be sure they had not been observed. So far, so good. Now that they had gotten this far, Sandy realized, their problems were just beginning. How were they to get off the ship? And how could they prevent being followed? “Jerry,” he whispered, “we’ve got to see to it that we get away from here in the fastest boat they have! I wonder if there’s a power boat around?” “There has to be,” Jerry answered. “Every ship carries lifeboats, and one of them always has power so it can be used as a captain’s launch when necessary.” “Well, let’s find it!” Sandy whispered. Gazing over the side, they could see no boat tied up at all. They had to work their way to the other side of the freighter, without once more crossing the telltale path of light from the passageway. To do this, they had to work their way forward to the bow, and then around to the other side of the ship. Slowly, with as much care as they could muster, they dropped to their knees and began to crawl. They reached the forepeak with no trouble, except the minor difficulties of crawling over the mess of rope and ship’s gear scattered around the disordered deck. As they started back, though, two dark forms appeared in the light of the passage! “Down!” Sandy whispered, and he and Jerry dropped flat on the deck behind the protection of the windlass. Peering around the corner of the huge machine, with its coil of giant anchor chain, they watched the figures come nearer. Halfway between them and the deckhouse, the shadows stopped, leaning against the bulwark, and lit cigarettes. In the brief flare of the match, the boys recognized the grim face of Turk. The other man with him was a sailor they had seen on deck with the rest of the crew when they had been taken aboard the freighter. He spoke in a thin, flat, whining voice, with a trace of a foreign accent that might have had its origin in any country in the world, but which by now was simply international. The first words the boys could make out came from Turk. “This waiting is getting on my nerves,” he rumbled. “What’s keeping us from shoving off?” “It’s the big businessmen up there,” the sailor whined, jerking his thumb toward the Captain’s quarters. “Jones wants more for the phony dough than he got last time, and the Skipper wants to give him less. The Skipper says he rates a break in the price for getting rid of those kids for Jones. Jones says he’s taking as much risk as the Skipper.” “And how about us?” Turk asked. “Ain’t we in this as much as them? Where’s the payoff for us?” “I don’t know about you,” the sailor answered. “But the Skipper never let us down yet. He says he’s gotta have better terms so’s to pay us a bonus. And we’ll get it,” he continued, his voice taking on a mean, determined tone. “We’ll get it, or else!” Sandy and Jerry, scarcely daring to breathe, lay still in the shadow of the windlass, listening to this exchange. At each word, the black freighter seemed less and less like a place where they wanted to stay. Something had to be done, and fast! As each moment wore on, Jones and the Captain were coming closer to an agreement, and when that agreement was reached, the ship would sail. And if it sailed with them still aboard, Sandy thought, their chance of escape would slim down almost to the vanishing point! For a few minutes, Turk and his friend stood silently at the rail and smoked their cigarettes. The stillness of the scene was marked only by the glow of coals against the black sea and sky. Then one of the cigarettes made an arch through the night as it was flipped over the side. The figures straightened. “I’m going back up there,” Turk announced, “and see if I can get any better idea what’s going on. I’ll listen at the porthole, and you stay back on the boat deck and cover for me. If anyone comes along, start to whistle.” The two dark figures walked back to the deckhouse and disappeared for a moment in the shadows. A few minutes later, Sandy saw their forms outlined briefly against the light from a porthole on the boat deck; then they passed once more from sight. Turning to Jerry, Sandy whispered, “We’d better get going! If they wind up that business talk before we’re out of here, I don’t give us much of a chance!” Once more, they crept in the shadows, moving with painful care over the tangled equipment that seemed to cover the decks everywhere. At last, reaching the ladder from the main deck to the boat deck, they paused and took stock. Above them, showing only as a dark shape against the dark sky, loomed the bow of the nearest of the freighter’s four lifeboats. Slowly, and with the greatest of care, they slipped up the ladder until Sandy’s head was at a level with the deck above. He waited and watched to be sure the deck was uninhabited. When he was reasonably certain, he moved ahead, slower now than before, and slid his body up onto the deck. Jerry followed suit, and soon the two, pulling themselves forward on the deck by the flats of their hands and the toes of their sneakers, were sheltered by a life-jacket box below the lifeboat. Turning over, Sandy scanned the bottom of the lifeboat, until, with a sigh of relief, he saw what he was hoping to see—the screw of a power boat protruding from the stern. This was the object of their search! As he pointed excitedly to the screw, Jerry whispered with puzzlement, “Now that we’ve found their power gig, what are we going to do with it? It takes four men to launch these things, and even if we could launch it, it would make such a noise that we’d have the whole crew on our necks before it ever hit the water!” “I didn’t figure on launching it,” Sandy said. “What I want to do is fix it so they won’t be able to follow us in it when we make our getaway on the sloop!” “Smart thinking!” Jerry whispered. “There’s very little danger that they can chase us with the freighter itself. In the first place, by the time they could turn it around, we’d be out of sight. And if they don’t catch up with us out here, they won’t dare come too near the harbor. The water there isn’t deep enough for a ship this size and it would be too risky for them. But I don’t know too much about engines. How are you going to disable this one?” “I know a few ways,” Sandy answered, “and I’m going to use them all! If I just put one thing out of order, they might fix it right away. But, with the mess I’m going to make of that engine, it’ll take them a half hour or better to get it going. And by then, I hope, we’ll have sailed out of sight!” Working with the greatest of care, the boys unlaced the canvas cover on the outboard side of the lifeboat. Standing on the rail of the ship, Sandy swung up and slid in beneath the cover, into a pitch-blackness that made the night outside seem bright in comparison. As Jerry joined Sandy, his added weight made the lifeboat lurch to one side, and brought a creak from the davits in which the boat was hung. To the boys under the canvas, it sounded as loud as a scream! Motionless in the dark, they waited for the thud of running feet, the tearing back of the boat cover, the glare of flashlights—but none came. The only answer to the noise was a thin, tuneless whistle from the deck above them. It was Turk’s fellow sailor, keeping watch for his spying friend, and he was as afraid of passing noises as the boys were! Not daring to move, Sandy and Jerry waited for what seemed hours until the slight swaying of the lifeboat stopped. As cautiously as they could, so as not to start it moving again, they changed their positions in such a way as to balance the boat better. At last they were stationed one on each side of what Sandy could only hope was the engine compartment. “How can you work in the dark?” Jerry whispered. “How will you know what’s what in there?” “It shouldn’t be too hard,” Sandy replied. “Almost all engines have a lot in common. If I can just get my hands on the engine, I think I’ll know what to do.” Working only by touch, it was not easy to find out how the lid to the engine compartment was removed. Slowly moving his hands around the surfaces of the box, Sandy found two hook-eyes, which he carefully unfastened. On the opposite side of the box, he found two more, which he also undid. “We’re in luck,” he whispered to Jerry. “If this had been a hinged top, I don’t think we could have opened it. There isn’t enough headroom below this canvas to raise a boxtop this size.” With the greatest of care, making only the smallest of scraping noises, they removed the heavy lid and placed it across two of the lifeboat’s seats. “I’m ready,” Sandy said. “I’m going to be handing you some parts, Jerry. I want you to put them in your shirt. We can’t leave them in here, and if we threw them overboard, the splash would surely be heard. Just be sure they don’t clank around!” Working noiselessly, Sandy ran his hands over the engine, starting from the top of the block. He touched and counted the spark plugs—four of them. His own experience with assorted jalopies would come in handy here, he thought. Carefully, he slipped the wires off the tops of the spark plugs. Following the wires to their source, he came to the distributor cap. Two clips held it in place. These were easily removed. Following the wire that came from the center of the distributor cap, he came to its end at the spark coil. A small pull removed it. Then he handed the whole thing, which felt like a mechanical octopus, to Jerry, who slipped it into his shirt. A little more probing brought out two more parts from the distributor, both quite small. One was the rotor, the other the condenser. “With any one of these things gone,” Sandy whispered, “they won’t be able to run this boat!” “Great!” Jerry breathed. “Now let’s get going!” “Not yet,” Sandy said. “We still have some more to do. I don’t want to make it too easy for them!” The next thing to go was the fuel pump, as Sandy unscrewed from it the glass bowl through which the gasoline had to pass. This was followed by a small collection of springs from the choke, the accelerator and the carburetor. “I think that ought to do it,” Sandy said. “Now let’s put this engine lid back on, so they can’t tell right away that somebody’s been in here!” It took even more care to replace the lid than it had to take it off. It was a tight fit, and really needed a blow on the top to make it fit properly on the casing, but this could not be done without making far too much noise. Finally, they decided to leave it unhooked, rather than run the risk of giving away their presence in the lifeboat. Getting out and dropping soundlessly to the deck was not easy either, especially for Jerry, with the hardware stored in his bulging shirt front. Sandy, who had gone first, helped him down, and Jerry landed beside him with a muted clinking of metal and hard plastic. The slight noise brought no warning whistle from Turk’s lookout. A glance at the deck below showed them why. Their eyes, grown accustomed to complete darkness, were now able to see quite clearly about the freighter’s deck. Up forward, near where they had hidden below the windlass, stood Jones and the white-uniformed little Captain, together with Turk, Bull, and several other sailors. Apparently the business talk was concluded and, much more to the boys’ concern, the freighter was making ready to hoist anchor and set off for ports unknown! |
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