CHAPTER V A German Agent
"I've been thinking," said Bill, on the fifth evening after the three friends had left New York on their journey to Europe.
"Aye," said Larry in his slow way. "Thinking of what, Bill?"
"Wonder," said Bill, "what a man would want out here in the middle of the ocean to be slinking along the deck at night as if he was afraid of meeting people."
Jim and Larry looked at him in some astonishment, a little puzzled to know what he meant.
"A man slinking along at night out here?—Where?—on this vessel?" asked Jim.
"Yep," came the abrupt answer. "What 'ud he want to do? Who'd he be afraid of meeting?"
"Meeting?" said Larry. "Is this one of the crew? Course he must be, though, 'cos there ain't anyone else aboard the ship; we ain't carryin' passengers. What do a man want to be slinkin' along at night-time for, Jim? It was at night-time, wasn't it, Bill?"
"Yep," again came the curt answer.
"And what else did he do?" asked Jim, beginning to get interested. "Tell us all about it."
"I was on watch," said Bill, "and Tom had sent me down from the fo'c'sle to the waist to get him a drink of water. The ship was rolling about fairly well, and so I had to hang on to a stanchion as I was crossing. I was just by the donkey engine when I saw a man on the far side passing me. He was hanging on too, going along almost on all-fours."
"Yes, yes," said Jim, "looks as though he was afraid of falling, same as you were. Perhaps he's a new hand, same as us, only——"
"Not that," said Bill sharply. "Someone shouted an order just then from the bridge, which was above us; the man squeezed himself in close to the donkey engine, and I could see him turn his face to look up at the bridge. He lay there two or three minutes and then slunk off. At the far end he disappeared, and I went on my errand. I did not think much of it then, but I have been thinking since. It was queer."
It was so queer that, after discussing the matter, the three decided to set a watch to see whether they could gather further information, and that night once more as Jim and Bill, who lay together in the waist, were about to return to their bunks, inclined to pooh-pooh the importance of the whole incident, a man's figure appeared, dimly seen under the light shed by the thin crescent of the moon, a man who slunk across the deck, sheltering behind the engine, the mast, and the hatchway. Then he was gone, only to reappear a little later, and then disappear once more just after an order had been called from the bridge and the man on watch on the forecastle had responded to the hail.
"It's mighty queer," said Larry when the three were closeted together in the cabin in which they were quartered.
It should be explained that the bunks usually handed over to the crew had, on this particular ship and on this particular voyage, been vacated for a special reason, and the space thus left free was filled with war material of an important nature. The ship herself, in pre-war days one of the ocean greyhounds which conveyed passengers between the United States and England, provided ample accommodation elsewhere for the crew as well as a 'tween-decks space for cargo—in this case, as has been hinted, of unusual value.
"Mighty queer," repeated Larry, as he thrust the stump end of a cigar into the corner of his mouth, American-wise, and chewed it savagely. "You're sure you're right, you young chaps. This feller, who is he?—one of the officers, crew, or what?"
Bill shook his head.
"Oh!" gulped Larry, drawing at his cigar and then regarding it severely when he found it had gone out.
"Couldn't say. Might be anything," said Jim reflectively. "It was too dark to be sure, but——"
"Yep, but——" Larry flicked the ash off the end of his smoke. "Yep," he repeated encouragingly, "but——"
"But he went for'ard."
"Oh, he went for'ard!" said Larry.
"For'ard!" ejaculated Bill; "but that's where——" and then he stopped in the midst of his sentence.
"That's where things of importance are carried," said Larry significantly, "things that if they was lost might hamper the troops in France, things what Uncle Sam's been hard at work makin' so as to down the Kaiser; now if——"
All three looked in succession at one another, their suspicions clearly written on their faces.
"If," said Bill at last, "he wanted—this fellow we've caught a sight of—to break up the ship to sink the cargo—well, isn't he the sort of man that would slink about and not want to be seen, and disappear when there was a hail from the bridge? Should he look sideways at everyone and want to keep himself to himself? As to whether he's one of the crew or not, who knows?"
Finally they came to the conclusion that no one could guess, and that positive evidence was required before they could proceed further with the matter.
"Only," said Jim in his quiet reflective way, "it's up to us to give a hint to the old man. Supposing now we set a watch and the fellow eludes us and really does a mischief, who'd be blamed? Who'd blame themselves most? You would Larry—you and I and Bill."
"But supposing it's a mare's nest, what about it?" asked Larry, pulling hard at his cigar. "The old man would point at us, the officers would smile, the men would smirk and have a few things to say that wasn't altogether complimentary. I'm a quiet sort of chap I am, Jim, but when fellers gets sarcastic it gets my goat up. I can stand fun—lots of it—skylarkin' don't come amiss to me nor to Bill either, and I dare say you can enjoy a little of it; but downright contempt, nasty sort of sarcasm, that gets me every time, and I find myself fingering my gun, that is, I should if I carried one, which I don't now, seeing it's against the rules of shipboard."
In the end they approached Tom, the huge sailor who had befriended them in getting their berths on board the ship, and with his approval took the first opportunity of having a clandestine meeting with the Skipper.
"You've done quite rightly," the latter told them. "This may be a mare's nest, as Larry here says. In that case it doesn't go any further, not another man aboard the ship will know; though, as a matter of precaution, I shall tell my officers. They have all sailed with me for years and I can vouch for their honesty and patriotism, they are either British or American to the backbone—and that's something in these days."
"Guess it is," Larry ejaculated. "Well then?"
"Forewarned is forearmed," the Skipper said. "I'll not interfere further. You three, with Tom here, will take the matter into your own hands. One of you had best feign illness—serious illness I mean; and the other two can be put on duty night and day to watch him. Tom can be the sympathetic friend. We'll give it out that it's pneumonia or some other ailment which will account for two of the men—two friends that is—attending to him. After that you will make your own plans. Carry on, as they say in the army."
And "carry on" Bill and Jim and Larry did, with Tom's connivance.
"And you've give it out that it's pneumonia?" asked Larry in subdued tones that very evening, as Bill stood at the door of his cabin with a jug of milk in his hand, while Jim stood at the foot of his resting-place. "Every soul aboard knows as Larry, new hand—what we'd call a 'tenderfoot' way west—is down with a go of bronchitis and a cough what 'ud make his worst enemy sorry for him. Listen to it!"
The impertinent fellow coughed and coughed and coughed till Jim really felt anxious about him, while Bill, seeing the fun of the thing, laughed so heartily that the milk spilt from the jug, and Jim brought him up with an "about-turn".
"That's the sort of thing you'd do at the door of a sick-room?" he asked severely. "Here's Larry coughing his heart out, and you laughing in that heartless way. Put the milk down and go!"
If any one of the crew had been in the neighbourhood they would have seen the youthful Bill slinking away with his tail between his legs; for he recognized how injudicious his behaviour had been, though indeed Larry was to blame, since he was the cause of it. But a few hours' experience of this new plan caused all to settle down, and their hilarity to give place to essential seriousness. Indeed that night all realized that their quest meant much, not only to themselves and their shipmates, but to the British army, which was looking for the delivery of the goods which they were carrying.
However, they had yet to prove that their suspicions were well founded. It might, as Larry had said and repeated more than once with a sheepish grin, be "but a mare's nest", in which case all three friends, and the burly Tom in addition, felt—though they took care not to tell one another—that the position would be a little trying.
"You can take it from me," said Larry, when he had given up coughing violently, and he and Bill and Jim sat with their heads close together discussing the matter, "you can put it right like this: ef there's a chap aboard what's slinking about, he's either crazy or he's got something to slink for. What's a man want to slink about in the darkness for—eh?"
"Stealing," suggested Jim.
"Ho! stealing!" growled Larry; "as ef there was any one of us aboard worth robbing! No, that don't appeal to me; it's something wus."
"Worse," Bill also thought it. He stood for a while silent and thoughtful and then crept out of the cabin. Yet though he watched from the waist of the ship for an hour, and Jim, who relieved him, sat there for a similar period, nothing occurred to arouse their suspicions. A little later, Larry, with a blanket wrapped round him, groped his way along the deck and lay down at the doorway which led into the forecastle.
"If the feller's on the roam, he's got to roam over me," he thought, as he made himself comfortable. "Of course it may be as he wants to get down one of the hatchways. Ef so, Tom, watching back there, will spot him."
Yet the night passed without incident, and on the following day the three friends continued with their plan, though now doubting more than ever the justice of their suspicions. As to the imposition they were practising, it was never suspected by any of the crew of the steamer.
"That there young Larry's ill," said a stoker, as he pushed his head up from the engine companion and wiped the sweat from his brow with a dirty rag, which had been clean that morning, and which he removed from his neck, as is the habit of the fraternity, "he's just the look of a man what 'ud go down. Pneumonia, eh?" he remarked, as he casually plugged tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. "Huh! shouldn't wonder!" he nodded wisely. "Thin, delicate sort of a chap what 'ud break up easy. That sort doesn't make old bones. Perhaps dead afore morning! You never know! So long, sonny!"
The beaming face, the smoking clay pipe, the black head of tousled hair disappeared; the stoker dived down into the bowels of the ship, and the man to whom he had addressed his somewhat lugubrious remarks heard the rattle of his stoking shovel a few moments later. If the stoker himself could have seen Larry his exclamations might well have been varied.
"Never felt better in all my life," said the invalid, as he sat in the corner of the cabin, smoking a cigar, which, as was his wont, was tucked into the corner of his mouth alongside his teeth, and caused a bulge in one cheek. "Never! Only I'm puzzled about this matter, and don't I want to catch this fellow?—that is," he added, "ef there is a feller, ef young Bill didn't imagine him. He's young is Bill, and there's no saying ef he's grown out of all his youthful imaginings yit."
Whereat Bill flared up, and became even more determined to discover the culprit.
"For I'm sure," he told himself, as he walked up and down the deck, "that I saw someone—someone who was slinking about—a suspicious someone. Well, we shall see. We are more than half-way across to England now, and in a couple of nights we shall make the north coast of Ireland. If anything is going to happen, it's got to happen pretty soon. We shall see!"
It was in fact precisely two nights later, when the ship had drawn within twenty miles of the Irish coast, and was making a direct run for her English port, that Bill, creeping along the deck, sighted a flitting figure.
"Come along," he whispered, running back to the cabin and beckoning Larry and Jim. "I've seen someone—he's down in the waist. Don't wait for anything, and be as quiet as you know how. I reckon we'll discover who he is this time."
They followed instantly, and, sneaking down the ladder, hid themselves beside the windlass, with a mast towering quite close to them, and there, breathless with their haste, their hearts thumping with excitement and expectation, they waited, peering this way and that, seeing nothing for the moment. A little later Bill stretched out a hand and touched Larry on the shoulder.
"There!" he whispered. "There!" and, swinging round, Larry, too, caught a faint impression of a head and shoulders against the star-lit sky. He waited while Jim drew closer and also saw the figure.
Then all three crept along the deck, one behind another, as a man on the far side of it drew away from them.
"Bound for the fo'c'sle," Larry said hoarsely. "It's locked ain't it?"
"Locked," answered Jim laconically. "But he'll have a key. Listen to it!"
There came to their ears the faint click of an instrument being used in the lock of the forecastle door—a gentle, grinding sound, and then silence.
"Come on," whispered Bill; "perhaps he's gone in. Got your flash lamps?"
All three had, and, making their way swiftly along the deck, they soon reached the bulkhead behind which lay the forecastle. The door, previously shut fast and locked, stood ajar. Bill pushed it open without hesitation, Larry pressed up beside him, and Jim peered over their shoulders. Then Bill switched on the beam of his electric torch.
The light flooded the forecastle, fell upon that material so valuable to our fighting forces which the vessel was carrying at full speed to Britain en route for the battle-fields, swept over a space of empty deck, hugged other material, and glancing from it went on to the depths beyond, almost to the bows of the vessel. There it was brought up, as it were, abruptly by the figure of a man, half-bent, facing the doorway, a man at whose feet stood a square iron box, in the lid of which was a metal plunger, a man who stared at them with wide-open eyes, startled yet full of hate, which blinked in the electric beams.
"It's—it's Heinrich!" roared Larry, darting forward and slipping a hand on his empty holster pocket. "It's the German that shot Charlie back there in the camp by the copper-mine. It's the same ugly phiz as was in the picture found in his lodgings. It's——"
With a hasty movement the man banged a fist on the metal plunger. A brilliant flash of light followed the movement, and then a hissing, sizzling noise, while smoke filled the forecastle. Steps were heard, and the door above banged as the rascal, too much concerned for his own safety to think of any further need for caution, clambered up the companion and emerged on the deck, then came a blinding flash, and Jim, seizing Bill and Larry, dragged them through the doorway.
"Back!" he shouted. "Lie down on your faces! Hi there, on the bridge!" he bellowed. "Look out for yourselves! we've come upon our man, but it's too late; he's fired his detonator, his bomb's on the point of bursting."
Before a return hail could come, almost before the three could fling themselves upon the deck, so as to escape the effects of the impending explosion, the deck above the forecastle soared into the air, there came a shattering, tearing roar of breaking woodwork, a deafening detonation, while bolts and masses of wood and iron thudded upon the decks around or splashed into the water—water made clearly visible by the flare which burst from the fore part of the vessel. As for the latter, she trembled in every timber and plate, her decks shook and rolled, she heaved and thrust her bows upward; then they came down with a souse, and for a moment it looked as though she were going under. But not yet! She lay with her stern high in the air and her forecastle slowly submerging; and as she lay there helpless, changed in one moment from a controllable dependable unit of efficiency to a shattered wreck, of a sudden a beam broke the blackness all about her—an electric beam projected from some surface vessel. This beam flooded the ship, flooded the water all about her, and threw a streak of brilliant light from a point perhaps half a mile from her.
Somewhere in that streak there appeared a tiny object, a tiny boat in which a single man rowed furiously—doubtless he was the German.