  When Sandy came to, the first thing he was aware of was a terrific headache. This was accompanied by such severe dizziness that when he tried to sit up he sank back immediately, holding his head. Gingerly, he ran his hand over his skull as if to make sure that it was still all in one piece. Then he lay still for a while, afraid to try moving anything else, and looked at the ceiling above him. Slowly, the dizziness ebbed away and the pain lurking behind his eyes settled down to a more bearable level. When he felt it was safe to try, he moved more cautiously than the first time, sat up and swung his long legs over the edge of the bunk. For a moment, he simply sat there with his elbows on his knees and his head propped in his hands, and looked at the decking. He had to think hard, as if he were remembering a dream that was fast fading away. Why was he in this bunk below? How was Jerry handling the boat alone? He frowned, pushed back his cowlick and raised his head. As he did so, he caught sight of the brass flare gun clipped to its bracket on the opposite bulkhead, and suddenly he remembered everything that had happened. Of course! This was not his boat at all, and Jerry wasn’t sailing it alone—or in any other way, for that matter! Jerry lay on the opposite bunk below the flare gun, propped up on one elbow and looking at him with a grin. “I guess it isn’t funny,” he said, “but you sure took an awful long time to wake up and figure out what had happened to you! I’ve been lying here awake for five minutes now, just watching you come up from under!” Ruefully rubbing a hand across his black crew-cut, he added, “I guess I must have taken the same length of time doing it when I woke up, but there wasn’t anybody here to time me!” “I saw Jones hit you,” Sandy said, “and he sure wasn’t making any special effort to be gentle. I guess that Bull, the big sailor, got me from behind when I turned to go after Jones.” Still rubbing his head, Jerry sat up in his bunk and faced his friend. “Sandy,” he asked, “what made you take a swing at Bull like that? You sure must have known that the two of us didn’t stand much of a chance in a fight against three men with guns!” “I don’t suppose I was really thinking at all,” Sandy answered. “I know it was a pretty foolish thing to do, but there was just something about Bull’s laugh.... Anyway, I’m sorry. It could have got us killed right then and there, I guess. As it is, I think we’re lucky to have got away with nothing more than a couple of headaches.” “What do you mean, a couple?” Jerry said. “I’ve got two myself!” Both boys laughed, but as their laughter died down, they became more serious than they had been before. “Look, we can sit here and make jokes about the situation until they get us out to that freighter,” Sandy said, “but that isn’t going to help us to figure out a way to escape and get to the police.” “You’re perfectly right,” Jerry agreed. “We’d better scout around and size things up while we’ve got a chance.” “And we’d better do it fast,” Sandy added. “We don’t know how long we’ve been knocked out, so we haven’t any idea how much time we have left before we arrive at the freighter. And by then, it might very well be too late to do anything for ourselves at all.” Half rising from their bunks, for the cabin roof was too low to allow them full standing headroom, they moved aft to the sliding doors that separated them from the cockpit. Gently testing the doors, Sandy found that they were locked, as he had assumed they would be. A crack of light showed where the two halves of the door met, and he placed his eye to it. With a frown, he turned around to look at Jerry. “Boy, they’re not taking any chances this time,” he whispered. “Both of the sailors are out there in the cockpit, and the one called Turk has his pistol in his hand, and it’s pointed right at this door!” Moving back to the bunks, Sandy and Jerry knelt to look through the small windows above them. On both sides of the sloop, there was nothing to see but water—not so much as a buoy or another boat in sight. Far off to the starboard side, they made out a low smudge that was the shore. “We must be almost there!” Sandy said. “Do you think there’s any use trying the forward hatch?” asked Jerry. “Or do you suppose that they have that one locked tight, too?” “I don’t know if it matters much one way or the other,” Sandy sighed. “Even if it is open, I wouldn’t care to stick my head out—not with Turk sitting back there with his pistol ready! I think I’ve had enough of rushing into pistols for one day!” Putting his hand to his head, he felt the lump that was forming above his right ear. Moving with the most extreme caution, so as to attract no attention from their guards, they started to explore the cabin for whatever possibilities it had to offer. Coming to the two tiny forward portholes, barely large enough to put a hand through, Sandy paused to take a look forward. Before their bow, perhaps fifty yards away, was a boat sailing calmly along as if the whole world were on a holiday. For one short instant, Sandy thought that this might be their chance—perhaps a signal with the flare gun might bring aid from the passing sailor! But his hopes were shattered in no time as he realized that the sloop sailing ahead was his own, sailed by Jones who was leading the way to the freighter that waited, like doom, not far off. Even in his hopelessness, Sandy could not help pausing to admire his boat, graceful and trim, making good time beating into a steady breeze. He thought for a moment of the preceding day when he had learned to take the tiller and had first felt the happy pride of ownership and accomplishment that comes to every boat owner. What a change in fortunes this new day had brought! Now his boat was no longer his and, instead of carrying him to pleasure, was leading him to what looked like certain disaster! As he watched, his boat suddenly put about on a new tack. He saw Jones skillfully handling both the tiller and the sheets. The jib was swiftly brought over to fill and, together with the mainsail, was trimmed and drawing in no time. Whatever else you could say about Jones, Sandy thought, the man sure knew how to handle a boat! The new tack set by Jones was followed by their sailor-guards. With a creak of tackle and rigging and a shifting of weight to the opposite side, the little sloop came about. Still at his lookout post at the forward port, Sandy saw the head of the boat swing about. As it did so, he caught sight of their destination. “Jerry! Look!” he whispered, motioning his friend to join him at the other porthole. There, high in the water, perhaps a mile away, was the dark shape of the freighter. Wisps of gray-white smoke curled from its stack and drifted off in the breeze. It was an ordinary-looking freight cargo ship, such as you would see in any port of the world. It had a black hull, a white deckhouse and a black stack marked with green stripes. All perfectly ordinary, perhaps, but to Sandy and Jerry it looked sinister and piratical. They stared at it for a few minutes, trying to judge their rate of progress from the lessening distance between themselves and the black-hulled ship. Then Sandy tore himself away from the porthole and grabbed Jerry’s arm. “Jerry, we’ve got to start acting fast,” he said. “There’s hardly any time left!” “Act how?” Jerry said. “What can we do but sit here and wait like a couple of chickens in a crate being taken to market? If you can think of anything to do, I’m game, but I haven’t got an idea in my head.” “I don’t think there’s anything we can do about the situation now,” Sandy said, “but I have an idea that might work later on. It may not be worth much, but anything’s worth trying.” He cast his eyes about the small cabin. “Did you by any chance come across a first-aid kit while you were searching?” he asked. “Yes, I did,” Jerry answered. “It’s in that locker next to the money. But what do you want it for?” “Bring it over and I’ll show you,” Sandy answered. While Jerry went for the first-aid kit, Sandy took the brass flare pistol from its bracket above the bunk. Then he sat down on the bunk and rolled up his pants leg. “Here,” he said. “Give me some tape. I’m going to strap this bulky thing to my leg if we have enough.” “What for?” Jerry asked in surprise. “It’s not a real gun, you know. All it does is fire a flare. Besides, there’s only one flare in here, and I don’t know if that can do us very much good.” “I don’t care about the flares,” Sandy answered. “It’s the gun itself that I’m interested in. It fooled me when I saw it and it just might possibly fool someone else who might not be familiar with these things. I’m hoping that if we get a chance to pull it on someone after dark, we can fool him long enough to get hold of a real gun that will help us escape!” “That’s not a bad idea,” Jerry admitted. “That is, if we’re still alive by dark!” “That’s about all I’m hoping for now,” Sandy answered. “I don’t know whether we can do any good with this flare gun or not, but it’s pretty clear that we can’t escape from this boat. So I’m doing what I can to let us be able to take advantage of any chance we get on board the freighter. If we’re lucky enough to get a chance.” As he spoke, Sandy was fastening the bulky flare pistol to the inside of his calf, making it as secure as he could with the tape from the first-aid kit. Finished at last, he stood up as well as he could in the low-ceilinged cabin, and tried to walk around. “Does it show too much?” he asked Jerry, shaking his leg a little. “It shows,” Jerry said, without much encouragement. “But maybe if you move around carefully, and if they don’t take a sudden interest in your legs, you might get away with it. Anyway, what can we lose by trying?” Sandy looked down at the bulge which so obviously distorted the leg of his blue jeans. He was afraid that he would never get away with it. He remembered the bell-bottom pants that the Navy enlisted men wear and that all sailors once wore, and he wondered if their original purpose had been to carry concealed weapons. Whatever they were for, he sure wished he were wearing a pair now! “I guess this is about as good as we can get it,” Sandy said. “If one of us only had a jacket on, we could probably hide the gun under an arm, but these sweat shirts just don’t leave enough room.” “No, I think the leg is a better place anyway,” Jerry said. “If they search us for weapons, they’re apt to miss your leg, but they’d never miss patting you under the arm. Anyway, we don’t have a jacket, and as far as I can see there’s no place else to hide the thing.” The boys took a last look around the cabin to see if there was anything else to help them, but there was not even a small kitchen knife or a can opener in the little galley. It seemed that Mr. Jones kept only counterfeit money in that area. As they were carefully exploring every possible nook and cranny in the cabin, they felt the sloop heel to the other side as it once more came about to go on a new tack. From the vantage point of the two forward ports they saw the reason for this latest maneuver. They were coming up to the wind alongside the freighter, preparing to stop. The high sides of the big ship loomed above them like the walls of a fortress, but chipped and scarred with streaks of rust. As the sloop swung completely into the wind, losing headway, they caught sight of Jones making a line fast to the bow of Sandy’s boat. Then, with a rattle of slides and a clumping of heavy steps on the cabin roof overhead, the counterfeiters’ craft came to a halt and was made fast alongside the freighter. Whatever was to happen, it would happen now! |
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