Rollife had taken the lantern and Dowd had gone in search of another, Ruth presumed. By and by she began to wonder what was engaging the first officer’s attention for so long, and she went to the engine-room hatch. Her small electric torch showed her the way.
To her amazement—and not a little to her fear at first—Ruth found the first officer lying upon the engine-room ladder. He was wet from head to foot, his turban of bandages had come off, displaying a bleeding scalp wound, and he was panting for breath.
“What has happened to you, Mr. Dowd?” she cried. “Did you fall into the water?”
“I dived into it,” explained Dowd, grinning faintly. “That water in the fireroom didn’t look right to me. I found the seacocks below, there. Two were open, as I suspected.”
“It was a deliberate attempt to scare us—and it succeeded. I shut off the cocks. This compartment could be pumped out if we had the men. Of course, the steam pumps can’t be used. We have no donkey engine on deck. All the machinery is down there, half under water.
“There must have been more than Dykman and that man you saw talking to Miss Lentz, in the plot. Another man in the stoker-crew, perhaps. He flung a bomb into one of the furnaces after opening the seacocks. It was a well laid plot, Miss Fielding.”
“Yes, I know,” she said hastily. “But to what end?”
“How’s that?”
“What was the final consideration? Why was this done? They must have known the ship would not sink. Then, what did they do all this for?”