  When Don let go of the edge of the flooring in the old house and dropped into space he had no idea of how far he would fall or how he would land. His teeth gripped together firmly, he felt himself shooting through a black void, to land suddenly on something wet and soft. The fall had not been long, and he was not even shaken up. By feeling about him he soon came to the conclusion that he had landed on a heap of ashes, long ago soaked down by the dampness of the cellar. Don stood up and slowly moved his arms around in circles to gauge his distance, and then, finding that he was not near any wall or partition, began a careful advance. The place was pitch dark, and he had no idea what terrible holes or traps might exist in the loathsome place. After traveling slowly in one direction he found that his hands encountered a wall, and with that as a guide he began a systematic journey around the place, seeking some sort of an opening. He had traveled around three of the four walls when his groping hands felt an iron door. He ran his hand up and down it from top to bottom and found that it was only five feet high and about three feet wide. The iron, much to his surprise, did not feel badly rusted. He wondered how that could be, and concluded that it had not been there for any length of time. Continuing his explorations with his fingers he found a sliding bolt on the door which he had no difficulty in working. The bolt slipped back without protest, and the door opened inward, toward him. But when Don had opened the door, he felt rather disappointed. He had hoped to feel a rush of cold air, but there was none. Only a drier odor and one heavily tinctured with canvas. It was evidently good dry canvas, too, and that fact surprised him. He stepped over the sill into the blackness and nearly pitched headlong. Only a good hold on the door frame saved him from going down, and he realized that this room was a few steps below the main cellar. So he lowered his foot until he felt the top step, and then found the second, and so on, until he had walked down four of them. Then he had made the level of the floor. He felt a table to one side of him, and found that the top was covered with miscellaneous articles. Fortunately, he found a candle among the odds and ends which lay there. “Now to find some matches,” he thought, and with increasing care he felt around the table until he came across a small box of safety matches. With an inward whoop of joy he scratched a match and lighted the candle. When the glow was steady he held the light above his head and looked around. He was in a storage room that was quite large, and it was evident that some things were kept here with care. Several shelves ranged along the walls and these shelves seemed to be loaded with articles, all of which were covered with canvas. Don approached a bottom shelf and lifted a piece of canvas. What he saw made his eyes bulge out. Quickly he lifted other coverings and examined the articles under them. In each case the same conviction was forced upon him. “Jeepers!” he breathed. “These fellows are the marine bandits all right!” Each piece of canvas covered some stolen object from a boat or a boathouse. Here there was a clock, there a sextant, there a binnacle, under another cover a compass and in a corner a telescope. There must have been almost a hundred pieces of ships’ goods there, and Jim’s clock was there, too. “So,” decided Don, “this is where they store the stuff and then afterward they run it down the shore and sell it to cheap ship chandlers. No wonder they were never caught. It was easy for them to run out here and hide the stuff, and no one thought that they were so near home.” He was trying to make up his mind just what to do when a sound outside startled him. Someone was walking around, and had gone into the room where he had been confined. With a swift movement Don blew out the light and waited, his heart pounding furiously. He knew that if they caught him in that room his life might be in grave danger, for they would realize that he controlled their secret. The man in the room uttered a startled cry and then ran from the room. Don heard him running about the house, and then he heard other voices raised in excited talking. He also heard Jim fall through the porch, without knowing what it was, however. But when he heard a patter of feet returning to the room above he knew that he must seek safety at once. His first impulse was to leave the storage room, but on second thought he dismissed it. Out in the dark cellar he would be at a distinct loss, and he dared not go out there with a light. No, he remembered that there was some extra canvas piled on the floor at the end of the storage room, and it was under this that he hid himself, hoping against hope that he was fully concealed. He heard the man drop through the opening that he had made earlier in the evening and he could follow his progress as the man cautiously made his way around the cellar. It was not long before he heard the iron door open and a light, evidently from a lantern, flashed into the storage room. From a split in the canvas Don could gain a fairly good view of what was going on. He saw the shaggy individual that Jim had seen come into the room and look about him carefully. Don could not understand why Benito and Frank were not with this man. Sizing him up, Don felt quite capable of handling him if it became necessary for him to try, but he hoped that it would not. Meanwhile, the man looked in each corner of the room, ducking his lantern down into the dark places. At last, apparently satisfied that Don was not in there, the man turned and started for the steps. But as his foot touched the first one he paused and looked fully at the canvas under which Don lay. There was something burning in his glance, and Don felt his skin grow tight. Then, placing the lantern on the lowest step, the man headed straight for the heap of canvas. Don gritted his teeth and clinched his fists, prepared to carry his adversary off of his feet in the first rush. But just as the man was about to lean down to pick up a strip of the covering Benito’s voice hailed him from above. “Hey! Did you find that kid?” “No!” the man shouted. “He’s got away.” “Well, then come on up. What are you doing down there now?” “Just gettin’ a strip of canvas to cover that hole with.” Benito snorted. “Never mind that now. I want you to go down to the cove and row those kids’ dinghy around to the creek. Frank and me are going out and capture the sloop.” The man went out, taking the lantern with him, and the room was in absolute darkness. Don heard them all go out, and as soon as he knew that he had the place to himself he sprang from his place of concealment. Lighting the candle, whose light he did not fear, since there were no cellar windows in the house, he went to the door, hoping to find a way upstairs. But to his intense disappointment he found that the man had slipped the bolt into place as he went out. Don was once more a prisoner. The realization at first staggered him, and then made him angry. He realized that if he did not get out of here at once he would probably never have a chance to get out. He hoped fervently that Terry and Jim would not fall into the hands of the men, and groaned as he realized that he could not help them any. But the one fact remained: he must get out. A thought occurred to him that made him pause. Suppose the men were ever trapped down in that room by someone entering the house above, how would they get out? Was it possible that they had made no provision for that? He could not believe it, and he felt certain that there was an opening somewhere in that very room. So, holding the dripping candle in front of him, he made his way back of the shelves, which were built out a bit from the walls, and began to search thoroughly. He almost uttered a cry of triumph at what he found. Right back of the main section of the shelves he found a square piece of canvas hung up, and when he pushed it back a doorway, leading to a flight of iron stairs, was disclosed. These iron stairs ran upward at an abrupt angle and terminated at a small door. Don stepped through the canvas and walked up the steps, until he stood on the tiny platform before the door. Not knowing where the door might lead, he blew out the candle and opened it. He was astonished to hear the sound of a loud ticking burst on his ears. Thrusting his hand forward, he encountered wood, and at last, sure that he was not yet in the old house, itself, he relighted the candle and looked at the object before him. It was the back of a big, redwood grandfather clock, and Don was further amazed to see that a hook held one side of it to the doorway. Undoing this hook he found that the big clock swung outward on hinges, and then it came to him. The clock was a real one, but it was a clever disguise. If anyone raided the house the men would open the concealed doorway by pushing forward their clock, and if they happened to be in the storage room at the time they could make their escape into the house by way of the clock. The clock, for all its works and its ticking, was in reality a door, leading either into the storage room or into the house from the storage room. Don now found himself on the landing of the stairway and alone in the house, unless the old woman was about. Fearful that she was, and not wishing to meet her, Don was at a complete loss as to what to do. He might find his way to the cove in the darkness, overpower the man who had been sent for the dinghy, and then make his way out to the sloop. He made his way down the stairs, which creaked loudly under his feet, and got as far as the front door. This he could not open, but a full length window on the other side was much easier. After raising the window, he threw one leg over the sill, which was about a foot high. Suddenly a thin old voice shrilled out from upstairs. “Who is it? Who is it?” Don knew that it was the old woman, and so he lost no time in getting away. He found that he was lost in the intense blackness of the night, and was almost as hopelessly mixed up as he had been in the dark cellar. But he had a general idea of the direction of the cove, and he made his way in that direction rapidly. It took him longer to get there than it had taken him to get to the house earlier in the day, but when he did get there he found he was doomed to disappointment. The dinghy was gone, and there was no sign of the men. Thinking that they might have gone somewhere along the shore he followed it, puzzled by another circumstance. The Lassie was nowhere to be seen. But that in itself was not hopeless, for he thought that Jim might have moved it purposely. Continuing on around the shore he was in time to witness the battle aboard the sloop. He saw it all, from the appearance of Terry to the victory for his side. He exulted gleefully, mourning the fact that he could not be in on it, but he dared not swim out, for the distance was great and it was possible that they might weigh anchor and sail, leaving him to swim back to shore. He missed the scene of the escape and the chase because of the darkness. He would not have seen the fight, except that vivid light poured up from the companionway of the Lassie. Realizing that he must stay there until morning, he sat down in the wet undergrowth to wait. But when the storm came up he was forced to go back to the old house. He knew that he must find some kind of shelter, and so he followed the beach around to the cove and went back over the trail to the house. The place was absolutely black, without a light of any sort, but fearing a trap, he took refuge in a well-built henhouse until morning. It was a long, dreary night, and he was glad to see the gray dawn. He watched the house for a full hour, and at last, convinced that there was no one around the place, he boldly entered the back door and roamed around. No one was in the place, and only one bed had been occupied, that of the old woman. They had fled somewhere during the storm and had taken her with them. It was as he was coming down the front stairs that he heard two men tramp up on the front porch. Quickly he slipped in back of the clock and waited. In another moment the door was kicked off its hinges and the two entered. Don listened intently, and then, to his joy, he discovered that one of them was Terry. |
|
