Part 15

“I can believe all that,” irritably interrupted Jenkins P. Chase. “Now that the damnable piracy has succeeded, it is easy enough to see how a gang with a capable leader can take possession of any Atlantic liner. Do you think these scoundrels can be bribed?”

“’Tis not probable. Vonderholtz is a fanatic with his wild ideas about society, and he has recruited men of his own stamp. Besides, they have the two millions in gold in the strong-room to divide ‘for the good of humanity.’”

“How will they get away with the gold? The whole thing is preposterous,” snorted the millionaire.

“I have read in the newspapers that Mr. Jenkins P. Chase once stole a railroad,” pleasantly returned O’Shea. “Maybe you can figure it out better than us two sailormen how Vonderholtz stole a steamship.”

“A good hit! You’re not so slow yourself,” cried the other, not in the least offended.

“The steamer is steering into southern waters,” resumed O’Shea, “and ’tis likely that it was arranged beforehand for another vessel to meet her and take the treasure and the men aboard. What will they do with the _Alsatian_? I misdoubt they will sink her with all hands of us, though Vonderholtz would lose no sleep over it, but he will want the world to know about his great blow against the capitalists and the parasites and the likes of us. It is a joke to class Johnny Kent and me as enemies of the poor, could ye look into our pockets.”

“It certainly makes me swell up and feel rich to be lumped with the plutocrats,” cheerfully observed Johnny Kent.

Jenkins P. Chase let his small bright eyes rove for a moment, and his wise, wizened features were sardonically amused as he said:

“We’re in a floating lunatic asylum, where my money is no good. God knows what the crack-brained anarchist in command will do with the ship. He has handed out a jolt to capital, all right. Of course, if you two men can concoct any scheme to win, you’re welcome to fill in a blank check for any sum you like and I’ll see that it is cashed the day we land in New York.”

Captain O’Shea clapped a strong hand on the rich man’s bony little shoulder and exclaimed, as though admonishing a foolish child:

“Tut, tut! ’Tis nonsense ye talk. We are all in the same boat, and there are women and children amongst us. You must put it out of your head that your life has any special gilt-edged value out here at sea. We sink or swim together. And I am not anxious to chop off me own existence to please this madman of a Professor Ernst Wilhelm Vonderholtz.”

“He said something about chucking me overboard,” sighed Jenkins P. Chase.

“And he looked as if he meant it,” amiably observed Johnny Kent.

With this, the twain bade the millionaire take heart and left him to his unhappy meditations. An idea had come to Johnny Kent and he wished to thrash it over with his comrade in the seclusion of their own room. For a long time they argued it, testing every detail, O’Shea dissuading, but convinced against his will that the thing should be attempted. It was a desperate hazard, a forlorn hope, and gray-haired, honest old Johnny Kent must stake his life. Success meant the recapture of the ship, and the engineer was obstinately determined to undertake it.

“You will have to go it alone, Johnny,” said O’Shea, “and I cannot help if things break wrong for you. It will worry the heart out of me to let ye do it.”

“Pshaw, Cap’n Mike! A battered old sot like me ain’t worth much to anybody. If I slip up, and they put out my lights, I want to ask one favor of you. Shoot that blankety-blank chemical son of a sea-cook for me, will you? It’ll be my last wish.”

“I promise to fill him full of holes, if his gang pots me next minute,” simply replied O’Shea, and they shook hands on it.

After dark that night Johnny Kent rummaged in his steamer trunk and fished out an oil-stained suit of blue overalls, his working uniform when in active service. From another bundle he selected two powerful adjustable wrenches which could be concealed in his clothing. While he was thus engaged O’Shea squeezed into the room, affectionately punched him in the ribs, and exclaimed:

“To look the part ye must blacken your face and hands. We have no coal-dust, but there are two long drinks in that bottle of Scotch yonder. Let us hurl them into our systems, and I will make good use of the cork.”

“And burnt-cork me same as I used to do when we boys played nigger minstrels, Cap’n Mike? You’re wiser than Daniel Webster.”

When the job was finished, Johnny Kent would have passed anywhere as the grimiest, most unrecognizable stoker that ever handled slice-bar or shovel. Peering into the small mirror, he chuckled:

“I feel like cussin’ myself from force of habit. Well, I’ll just sit here and wait for you to give me the word.”

“Aye, aye, Johnny. I will start things moving right away. This is _au revoir_. Good-luck and God bless ye!”

“’Til we meet again, Cap’n Mike. Don’t fret about me.”

Leaving the stout-hearted old adventurer to pore over a dog-eared copy of the _American Poultry Journal_ by way of passing the time, Captain O’Shea returned to the library and called together a dozen of the men passengers whom he knew to be dependable. He had already explained what they were to do, and without attracting the notice of the sentries posted at the outside doorways, they heaped in a corner of the library all the combustible material they could lay their hands on, mostly newspapers and magazines. Several contributed empty cigar boxes, another a crate in which fruit had been brought aboard, and Jenkins P. Chase appeared with a large bottle of alcohol used for massage.

The stuff was placed close to the wooden bookshelves, which, with their contents, were likely to blaze and smoulder and make a great deal of smoke.

While the men were thus engaged Captain O’Shea chanced to notice the school-teacher, Miss Jenness, who halted while passing the library door. She moved nearer, listened intently to the talk, and then turned away to walk rapidly in the direction of the starboard exit to the deck.

Suspecting her purpose, O’Shea followed and overtook her. Between her and Vonderholtz some sort of an understanding existed, some relation more intimate than she was willing to reveal. O’Shea was alert to prevent her from spoiling his plans. She might not intend to play the part of a spy, but her behavior had been mysterious and she was not to be trusted.

O’Shea called her name sharply, and the girl paused. He moved to her side and said in low tones:

“Are you going on deck, Miss Jenness? I advise ye not to just now.”

“Why? I--I--yes. I am going on deck.”

She was manifestly startled, unable to hold herself in hand.

“You will give me your word of honor that ye propose to hold no communication with Vonderholtz and to send him no message?”

She hesitated, at a loss for words, and O’Shea felt certain that he had guessed her motive aright. His decision was instant and ruthless. Standing close to her, he said:

“You will be good enough to go to your state-room for the rest of this night, Miss Jenness, and ye will go at once, moving no nearer the sentries or the deck, and making no outcry. ’Tis a most impolite speech to make to a handsome girl like yourself, but I have no time for courtesy.”

Miss Jenness glanced aside. Captain O’Shea stood between her and the passage to the deck. Then she looked at him, and knew that he meant what he said. Her lips parted, her breath was short and quick, and she moved not for a long moment. It was a clash of strong wills, but the woman realized that she was beaten.

It meant death to O’Shea should he be discovered in the act of setting fire to the ship, but he was fighting for more than his own skin. The issue appealed to him as curiously impersonal. His own safety had become a trifling matter. He was merely an instrument in the hands of fate, an agent commissioned to help thwart the tragic destiny that overhung the vessel and her people. The girl was an episode; not so much a personality as a cog of the mysterious, evil mechanism devised by the blond beast Vonderholtz.

“I think I will go to my room,” said Miss Jenness.

“Thank you. ’Tis wiser,” softly replied O’Shea.

So fatuously confident was Vonderholtz that his plans were invulnerable that he had taken no precautions to have the first-cabin quarters patrolled and inspected beyond the exits. He had herded the passengers like a flock of sheep and concerned himself no further about them. They could start no uprising by themselves, and unarmed.

Captain O’Shea felt confident that the men in possession of the ship could get the fire under control. At any rate, it must burn itself out within the steel walls of the deck-house. State-rooms and halls might be gutted, but he quoted his favorite adage that one cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs. For his part, he would rather burn and sink the ship than meekly to surrender to this mob of pirates.

Thereupon he scratched a match and touched off the fire. Wetted down with alcohol, the newspapers blazed up fiercely and the flames licked the paintwork of shelves and panels. Smoke drove into the halls in thick gusts. The passengers, some of them genuinely frightened, shouted lustily, and there was much confusion.

O’Shea was delighted. His conflagration was a success. The sentries at the doorways and the men on deck ran in pell-mell and dashed out again to find hose and buckets. They bawled orders to one another and were bewildered by the smoke which billowed into the passages.

Before the hose lines had been dragged in and while the fire was unchecked, a bulky figure in blue overalls, his face blackened as with coal-dust, emerged from a state-room, peered cautiously into the smoke, and with tread surprisingly agile for his weight and years, ran straight toward the crowd of men in the large hall outside the blazing library. The smoke effectually curtained his dash for the deck. The doorways had been left unguarded. Those whom he shoved out of his way mistook him for one of Vonderholtz’s crew.

The stratagem of the fire enabled Johnny Kent to escape from the steel-walled prison and to run the gauntlet of the guards on deck. At top speed he clattered down a ladder to the next deck below, slowed his gait, and stood puffing to regain his breath, for he was a short-winded hero and ample of girth.

In the printed matter advertising the International Line he had discovered a plan of the _Alsatian_, drawn with much detail. He knew it by heart, and was confident that he would not go astray in the labyrinth of her many decks and bulkhead passages. Moreover, he was a man with a lively interest in his calling, and when the _Alsatian_ was launched he had studied the descriptions of her machinery and the like with a keen professional eye.

Without hesitation he stepped nimbly through an iron door amidships and entered a narrow alley lighted by an electric bulb. A man, also clad in the overalls of a fireman or machinist, brushed past him, and said, without looking up:

“Fire amount to anything?”

“A stream of water will douse it,” gruffly answered Johnny Kent as he emerged from the alley into the great, clangorous open space above the engine-room. Below him ran iron ladders and platforms, flight after flight, past the huge, shining cylinders, down to the toiling piston-rods and the whirling crank-shafts. Dynamos purred and auxiliary engines hummed in shadowy corners and the pumps beat time to this titanic anthem.

Johnny Kent wiped the dripping sweat from his face and the burnt cork smeared itself in grotesque streaks and blotches. He had reasoned it out that among a hundred and fifty men sailing together for the first time he could pass unchallenged long enough to serve his purpose. And now that he had gained the engine-room his very presence there would safeguard him against suspicion. Men were coming and going, and several of the fire-room gang chatted with the engineers on watch. It would be easier to mingle with them because of this fraternal slackness of discipline.

His stout heart thumping against his ribs, but his spirit undaunted, Johnny Kent stepped from the lowest ladder to the grating of the engine-room floor. Pulling the greasy black cap low over his eyes, he dodged behind a steam-pipe and made for the entrance to the nearest fire-room. Stripped to the waist in the red glare, the stokers were rattling coal into furnace doors. Johnny Kent said never a word, but picked up a shovel and took his station in front of a boiler. An officer of some sort shouted at him:

“Who sent you down?”

“I was ordered to shift my watch,” bellowed Johnny Kent.

“Good enough. We are short-handed,” was the reply.

The heat and the arduous exertion made Johnny Kent grunt, but he had been a mighty man with a shovel in his time, and he would show these scoundrels how to feed a furnace. He observed that armed guards were stationed in this compartment, and concluded that some of the steamer’s regular crew had been set to work under compulsion.

Thus far he had made no blunders. There had been no flaw in his plans. His greatest fear was that Vonderholtz might come below and recognize him. But the conflagration conducted by Captain O’Shea was likely to keep the leader on deck.

Painstakingly Johnny Kent sought to recall every scrap of information he had read in technical journals concerning the under-water specifications of the _Alsatian_. His memory was tenacious and he believed that he could trust it now.

He had entered the fire-room in the middle of a watch, and therefore had not long to serve as a stoker before the men were relieved and another gang took their places. When the next watch came trooping in, there was much passing to and fro, and as one of the crowd Johnny Kent felt much safer against discovery. He knew where to find dark corners and tortuous passageways in this complex, noisy part of the ship, far below the water-line.

When the firemen of his watch began to climb the ladders to their living quarters, he was not among them. Two hours later, a bulky gray-headed person in blue overalls might have been seen crawling on hands and knees or wriggling on his stomach in the bilge of the _Alsatian’s_ hull, beneath the floor.

From the state-room wall he had unscrewed the small candle lamp provided for use when the electric-lighting system was turned off. With this feeble light he was searching for the sea-cocks, those massive valves set into the bottom of a steamer’s hull for the purpose of letting in the ocean and flooding her in the emergency of fire in the cargo holds and coal-bunkers. A steamer is sometimes saved from total destruction by beaching her in shoal water and opening the sea-cocks.

To open these valves in the bottom of the _Alsatian_ was to admit a rush of water which would soon rise to the furnaces and engine-room in greater volume than the steam-pumps could hold in check. It was not Johnny Kent’s mad intention to sink the liner in mid-ocean, although this was a possible consequence.

After prodigious exertion, he found what he sought and bent his burly strength to releasing the gate-valves constructed to withstand the pressure of the sea. He heard the water pour in with sobbing gush and murmur and splash against the steel plates and beams. With a healthy prejudice against being drowned in a cataract of his own devising, Johnny Kent scrambled in retreat and regained the engine-room compartment, bruised and exhausted.

Thus far he had succeeded because of the sheer audacity of the enterprise. It was a seemingly impossible thing to do, but the process of reasoning which inspired it was particularly sane and cool-headed. He had been unchallenged because it never entered the minds of his foes that any one would dare such a stratagem. They had gained the upper hand by means of force. In a game of wits they were out-manœuvred. Johnny Kent showed the superior intelligence.

“It looks as if my job as Daniel in the lions’ den was about done,” he said to himself.

He became a stowaway until the next watch was changed in the fire-room. Then he mingled with the crowd of sooty men who went off duty. Unmolested, he clambered up the ladders, slipped into an alley-way, and came to the promenade deck with the blessed open sky above him. Ostentatiously swinging a wrench, he ambled aft and reconnoitred the entrance to the first-cabin quarters. Men were dragging out lines of hose, others chopping away charred woodwork and pitching it overboard. One of them paused to look at the large grimy person in overalls, but he displayed the wrench and casually explained:

“Orders from the engine-room. The heat warped the skylight fittings. Hot work, wasn’t it?”

Once inside the doorway, Johnny Kent made for his state-room, which had been untouched by fire. O’Shea saw him pass, but made no sign of recognition. A few minutes later the comrades twain were holding a glad reunion behind the bolted door. The engineer collapsed on the transom berth and sat in a ponderous heap, holding his head in his hands.

“My legs are trembly and I feel all gone in the pit of my stummick, Cap’n Mike,” he huskily croaked. “I was plumb near scared to death. This easy livin’ has made me soft, and I ain’t as young as I was. But I got away with it.”

“How? ’Tis a miracle ye have performed this night, Johnny, me boy.”

“I let in the water and she’ll flood herself,” was the weary reply. “It was easy after I once ran the blockade. What about your bonfire? She was a corker by the looks of things.”

“She was that,” laughed O’Shea. “Vonderholtz came boilin’ in with his men and put it out after a tussle. He suspected we touched it off, but he could not prove it. It was the stump of a cigar that some careless gentleman tossed into the library waste-basket, ye understand. Let me help you get your clothes off. Lie down and rest yourself.”

Kicking off the overalls, Johnny Kent lighted his pipe, stretched himself in his bunk, and exclaimed:

“I’ll turn in with my duds on. We are liable to be roused out between now and morning.”

“Are ye sure the ship will not go to the bottom?” anxiously asked O’Shea.

“I won’t swear to it, Cap’n Mike, but this is a well-built steamer, and she was new a year ago. Her bulkheads will stand up under a lot of pressure. The engine and fire room compartments will fill to the water-line, but she’ll float, or I’ve made a darn bad blunder.”

“You know your business, Johnny. If the blackguards think she is sinking under them, ’tis all we ask.”

“Tuck me in and wash my face,” murmured the engineer. “I’m too doggoned tired to worry about it.”

O’Shea made him comfortable and withdrew to keep an eye on events. Order had been restored. The passengers were once more closely guarded, and as a new precaution sentries were stationed in the halls. O’Shea waited until the men with revolvers were relieved at midnight and another squad took their places. Then he heard one of them say to another that there was serious trouble below. The ship had run over a bit of submerged wreckage or somehow damaged her bottom plates. She was leaking. The water was making into the midship compartments.

To O’Shea this was the best news in the world. With an easier mind, he went to his room. The hateful inaction, the humiliating imprisonment, were almost over. God helping him, he would whip this crew of outlaws on the morrow and win the mastery of the _Alsatian_.

Before daybreak Johnny Kent turned over in his bunk and growled:

“She’s slowed down, Cap’n Mike. The engines are no more than turnin’ over. That means the water is almost up to the furnaces and the men are desertin’ their posts. You can’t keep firemen below when the black water is sloshin’ under their feet. It gets their nerve.”

“The whole crew will go to pieces if the panicky feeling once takes hold of them, Johnny. They have never worked together. A lot of them are no seamen at all. And Vonderholtz will not be able to hold them.”

The _Alsatian_ moved more and more sluggishly, like a dying ship. The water was pouring into her faster than the pumps could lift it overside. It was only a question of hours before the fires would be extinguished, the machinery stilled, and the liner no more than a sodden hulk rolling aimlessly in the Atlantic.

The passengers were no longer under guard. They walked the decks as they pleased. The communal brethren, who had found it so easy to capture the ship, were now at their wits’ ends. Once or twice their leader passed hastily between the bridge and the engine-room. The confident, sneering egotism no longer marked the demeanor of the man. Nervously twisting his blond beard, he moved as one without definite purpose. His elaborate enterprise was in a bad way. The war against society had suffered an unexpected reverse.

O’Shea and Johnny Kent watched him gloatingly. The advantage was all theirs. They were waiting for the right moment to strike, and to strike hard. They saw Vonderholtz halt to speak to Miss Jenness, who stood apart and alone. He argued with fiery gestures. She protested earnestly, her face sad and tragic. It was as though they had come to the parting of the ways.

At length the _Alsatian_ ceased to forge ahead. The water conquered her. The long, black hull rode low, sagging wearily to starboard. The bulkheads still held firm, but it seemed inevitable that she must shortly plunge to the bottom.

Vonderholtz and his men were between the devil and the deep sea in more ways than one. They dared signal no passing vessel and ask assistance, for the gallows awaited them ashore. Many of them were for abandoning the liner at once. It was useless, they argued, to wait until she foundered under their feet. The _Alsatian_ had become untenable.

Refusing to acknowledge that ruin had overtaken his splendid conspiracy, Vonderholtz stormed like a madman at the cowards who would take to the boats. He swore he would stand by the ship until she went down. Were they to abandon the two millions in gold? It was impossible to save it in the boats. Castaways could not explain the possession of a fortune in treasure.

The mutineers, who had openly broken away from their leader, replied that they would quit the ship and take chances of being picked up or of making a landing at the Azores. Let the crew and passengers drown in the ship, and good riddance to them.

The dissension increased, the bravest of the rascals resolutely standing by Vonderholtz. Those who were for deserting the liner began to crowd to the boats and swing them out, ready for lowering. Discipline had vanished.