THE BOYS ESCAPE
The two boys groped across the room to find the second door. Suddenly Martin tripped and almost fell; he had stepped into a hole where the floor-boards were rotted away.
“Take care, Gundra,” he said, recovering himself.
He felt on the floor to ascertain the size of the gap, then led the Indian boy cautiously across it, and almost immediately touched a wall. Passing his hand along it, he came upon an iron bar.
“I think this is it,” he said.
Feeling along the bar and the wall behind it, he discovered a vertical crack.
“A folding door,” he thought. “Now to lift the bar and see if we can open the door and find out where it leads to.”
The bar was thick and heavy, and so well settled down into its sockets that it had evidently not been used for some time. Martin’s efforts to lift it at first had no success, but after much pulling and pushing it shifted upward suddenly with a loud squeaking noise.
The boys held their breath, wondering whether the sound had been heard in the room above. But the slow creaking still went on, and Martin ventured to raise the bar from its place and lay it gently on the floor.
There was an iron ring in one of the panels of the double door. Inserting his finger in this Martin pulled, and the panel, sticking at first, presently came inward with a squeak; clearly its hinges needed oiling. Inch by inch he drew it towards him. A strong breeze blew into the room, carrying with it a salt tang. The clear sky eastward was studded with stars, which kindled reflections in the river. Nearer at hand a reddish glow suffused the sky.
While they were gazing out there was a creak above them, much louder than they had heard before, and a large object dangling at the end of a rope passed slowly downward within a yard of their faces. It was plain that goods were being let down from the store-room above with some care to avoid noise, for there was no shouting, no giving and receiving directions, no cries of “Are you ready?” “Lower away!” such as were usual in operations of the kind.
Holding on by the door, Martin bent down and peered over the edge, careful to keep out of sight. The package that had been lowered rested on a sort of quay between the wall of the warehouse and the shored-up bank of the river. A man was disengaging it from the rope. When it was free he shook the rope as a signal that it might be drawn up, then hoisted the package on to a truck and wheeled it along the quay until he came to a short jetty. There he halted and lowered it over the side; evidently a boat was moored below. Apparently the tide was too low to allow of the boat’s drawing in nearer to the bank.
Meanwhile a second load came slowly down over the pulley, and reached the ground with a slight jolt. The man had not yet returned from the jetty with the truck. Martin wondered whether it would be possible to slide down the rope without attracting attention. The stars gave very little light, and the glow from the Fire was intercepted by the angle of the warehouse. The distance from the door to the ground was less than twenty feet.
Leaning out he cautiously tried the rope. It gave under a slight pull, showing that the man above was no longer holding it firmly. But he must have noticed the movement, for Martin heard a hoarse voice whisper, “Don’t pull the rope through the block, you fool!”
He shrank back into the room.
“Are you there?” whispered the voice again.
At this moment the man below reached the package on the ground.
“What’s the matter?” he growled.
“I said, don’t pull on the rope!” repeated the man above.
“Didn’t touch it!” responded the other gruffly.
There was an inaudible reply from the upper storey. The second load was discharged and trundled away, the rope again wound up, and by the time the man returned from the jetty a third package had been lowered.
By this time Martin had arrived at a conclusion. If he and Gundra were to escape by the rope, they must cling to it while it was descending weighted with a load, and while the man below was still absent at the jetty. There was the risk of their being discovered through the man at the pulley feeling the extra drag on the rope, or through the return of the other man while they were still suspended in the air. Even should they reach the ground safely, there was the further risk of their being intercepted, for they would have to pass the jetty on their left, and go through the lower floor of the warehouse, the quay on the right apparently ending at a high blank wall.
But it was clear that they must either face these risks, with a chance, however slight, of escaping, or remain as prisoners in the room, with the certainty that the breaking of their bonds would be discovered as soon as fat Sebastian paid them his next visit.
In rapid whispers Martin explained his plan to the Indian boy. Timid as Gundra had hitherto appeared, it was plain that ill-usage had not utterly broken his spirit, for he agreed eagerly to make the attempt, and promised to follow Martin’s instructions faithfully.
“I will go first,” said Martin, with the idea of giving Gundra confidence. “We can’t both go down with the same load. You must wait for the next, but don’t come down till you see I am safe.”
They waited, tingling with impatience and excitement, until once more a heavy package came swaying past the open door. As soon as it had descended below the sill, Martin took a firm hold of the rope and swung off. There was a louder creaking of the pulley above, a more violent oscillation of the load, a sudden quickening of the rate of descent; then the slow, even movement was resumed.
Martin glanced up. The pulley block hung from the wall above a similar door some twelve feet above. The man who operated the machine was not visible.
Martin slid down until his feet touched the package. The moment this reached the ground he slipped off and glided along the wall until he came to a shaded corner beyond the shore end of the jetty. There he drew back as far as possible into the shadow and waited.
“Are you there?” he heard the man in the upper room whisper huskily, and saw him lean over, holding on to the rope.
There was no answer. His mate was at that moment half-way back from the jetty, pushing the truck before him. A minute or so later, when he began to loose the package, the man above noticed the movement of the rope, and said:
“You there, Bob?”
“Ay! What’s up? In a hurry, ain’t you? You’ve got the easy job.”
“No call to be nasty! Have a care to stand from under when the loads are coming down. These old blocks are sticking. There was a mighty bad jolt just now. I don’t trust ’em.”
“All right; be there much more?”
“Half a dozen boxes or so.”
“I’m not sorry. The tide is making. I might as well wait a few minutes, then I can pull the barge up a bit and save all this hiking with the truck.”
Martin’s heart sank. If the man did as he suggested, Gundra would have no opportunity of escaping. But next moment he was reassured.
“ ’Tain’t safe,” said the man above. “Barge might stick in the mud, and tide take an hour or more to lift her. The sooner we get these things on board the better.”
While the men were talking the rope had been drawn up, and another load was fastened to it almost as soon as the man below had started to wheel the previous one away.
The pulley creaked, the package descended. Martin watched anxiously, wondering whether Gundra’s nerve would fail, whether the addition of his weight to the rope would cause the man this time to look over. He saw the slight form issue from the doorway and clutch the rope. Gundra was much lighter than Martin; the extra weight made scarcely any difference to the rate at which the rope descended. But Martin did not feel secure until the load bumped on the ground, and the Indian boy, running as lightly as a wild animal, reached his side.