MARTIN USES HIS WITS
Both the boys were panting a little, as much from excitement as from exertion. For a few moments they remained, silent and still, in the shadowy recess. Martin’s thoughts were busy with the new problem, how to make good their escape. They were free, but they were not at large.
“Shall we wait until the loading is finished?” Martin asked himself. “There are only a few more loads to come down, then the barge will put off. No doubt these men will leave, too, and we shall be able to get away at leisure.”
But as he pondered the matter he decided for immediate action. Convinced that the goods now being removed were stolen property, he was bent on saving it if that were possible, and the only obvious means of saving it was to inform someone in authority who would send officers of the law to arrest both goods and men. There was very little time. To win complete freedom was a matter of urgency.
“Come along,” Martin whispered when the man was once more busy at the jetty.
They crept along by the wall to the door of the warehouse. It was shut and bolted. On each side of it was a window, but the shutters were up, and heavily barred. It would be impossible even to attempt to force an entrance without making a noise that would bring the man hot-foot upon them.
Martin glanced this way and that. The quay on the landward side was entirely enclosed. It seemed that there was no exit from it except through the warehouse, and that was shut. They were trapped after all.
But there was the river. Could they escape by that? Was there, below the jetty, a wherry or any kind of row-boat in addition to the barge that was being loaded? Martin could not see one. Nor could they seize an opportunity and dive into the river, for beneath the shore end of the jetty there was nothing at low tide but liquid mud, probably deep enough to engulf them.
All at once the man’s remark about pulling the barge up recurred to Martin. An idea struck him that made his heart bound and his nerves tingle. He whispered a few words to Gundra, and anyone who could have observed them would have noticed how they braced themselves up.
The result of Martin’s inspiration showed itself when the man next left the barge and wheeled the truck back along the jetty and across the quay. As soon as his back was turned, they quitted their hiding-place and, stooping low, made a dash for the jetty, the sound of their movements being drowned by the noise of the rumbling wheels.
At the place where the jetty sprang from the quay they stopped, lowered themselves over the side, and slipped on to one of the cross-beams that supported the planking. There they crouched breathlessly. It was a perilous position, for the timber was slippery with slime, and they had to hug it closely to prevent their sliding off. There, clinging and crouching, they remained until the man had again come and gone.
As soon as the man was at a safe distance, they clambered up to the jetty, and crept along it on all fours until they came just above the barge. This was now well afloat, but it was moored stem and stern to posts on the jetty, as they saw by the light of a small oil-lamp standing on a tub amidships. Boxes were piled fore and aft.
The two boys slid down on to the barge by the rope by which the man had lowered the goods. Martin ran to the stern and tried to cast the aft mooring rope loose; but the knot was firm and the rope hard, and he had not succeeded when he heard the rumbling of the truck wheels along the quay. There was not time to complete the job before the man arrived. The urgent necessity at the moment was to hide and hope that he would not see them.
Together they crouched down in the narrow space between the piled boxes and the gunwale. With beating hearts they heard the rumbling draw nearer; the heavy tramp of the man; his mutterings as he heaved his load from the truck and lowered it to the deck of the barge. They held their breath. Would the man follow it? No; he swung it almost over their heads, and it settled with a bump a few feet short of them.
The moment the man retreated, Martin dashed back to the aft rope, struggled with the knot until he managed to cast it off, hastened forward and cast off the rope there likewise. The barge swung free. Against its gunwale lay the long heavy sweeps with which it was propelled. Martin attempted to lift one of these, but found it impossible to do so without Gundra’s help.
The barge was already lurching shoreward on the tide. In a few moments, unless its motion was checked, it would strike the mud, and then all hope of escape was lost. Holding the sweep between them, the boys drove it against the beams that supported the jetty, and tried to push off.
Unused to the handling of so clumsy an implement, the boys were unable to prevent its end from glancing off the slimy timber, and it plunged with a splash into the water. But they had not let it go. Levering it up across the gunwale, they once more made the attempt, and by exerting all possible pressure were able to force the barge a yard or two from the jetty. Then they were almost undone by their own vigour, for the sweep slipped again as the barge sheered away, and they fell forward, striking against the gunwale, and dropping the sweep with a loud clatter.
They seized it just in time to save it from being carried overboard. Meanwhile the barge had lost the impetus they had given it, and was again drifting shoreward. It was clear that the noise they had made had been heard by the men. There was a shout and hurried footsteps on the quay, and Martin, looking up, could just see in the starlight the man at the upper door leaning out and making wild movements with his arms, evidently to urge on his mate below.
In a moment this man came in sight, running along the quay to the spot where he expected the barge to strike if it escaped the mud. Martin saw that the next few minutes would decide his fate.
“Catch hold!” he cried to the Indian boy. “Shove when I tell you.”
He pointed the sweep at the angle between two supporting beams, and with Gundra’s help drove it into the notch, and brought all his weight and strength to bear upon it. The barge sidled outward, slowly, too slowly. Martin realised that if the man had run on to the jetty, he could have jumped on board before the heavy vessel was out of range.
“Don’t let go,” Martin called, as the sweep dropped from its resting-place into the water.
Keeping a tight grasp on the pole, the boys pulled it slowly through the water. The barge swung about a little, and Martin saw with joy that the gap between it and the quay was wider. It was now too late for the man to attempt the leap. He stood on the quayside, shouting, cursing, gesticulating to his companions, two men who were running to join him. The second of them, lumbering along in the rear, Martin recognised as Sebastian the fat cook.
Unwieldy though the sweep was, Martin was learning under the stress of necessity how to manipulate it, his knowledge of oarsmanship assisting. Laboriously he and Gundra dragged it through the water, and at every stroke the barge forged a little farther from the quay.
The men there were in all the agitation of helpless rage. There was a flash, a crack; one of them had fired a pistol.
“You fool!” shouted one of his companions. “Do you want to bring all Deptford down upon us!”
The answer was inaudible on the barge. There the boys, panting and sweating from their exertions in the hot night, did not relax their efforts until the heavy vessel was clear of the jetty and had begun to drift upstream on the tide. Then, as they paused, they heard the same voice apparently giving an order, though the words could not be distinguished. Dimly they saw the three figures run along the quay, then they were lost to sight in the darkness. A few moments later there came the sound of rusty hinges creaking; somewhere a gate was opening.
“What are they about now?” thought Martin; and he noticed for the first time that Gundra’s eyes were wide with amazement and fright as they gazed upon the ruddy glow of the Fire.