“Nobody aboard either of the others,” Sandy said.
“Doesn’t seem to be,” Ken agreed. “Let’s climb aboard the middle one. Maybe from there we can see what’s going on in our friend’s cabin.”
Sandy hesitated only for an instant. “I don’t suppose we have any right to be doing it,” he said. “But come on. Let’s go.”
Ken scrambled up the ladder of the middle barge. He paused when his head was level with the top.
“O.K.,” he whispered down to Sandy below him. “All clear.”
Ken was standing in the protection of the barge cabin’s aft wall when Sandy joined him.
The cabin occupied about two-thirds of the barge’s twenty-five-foot width, leaving a passageway only a few feet wide on either side, between the cabin wall and the bulwark that dropped sheer to the water line. The faint glow from the lights on the street disclosed that the ten-foot space aft of it was mostly open deck, cluttered with heavy coiled lines. To one side a small shed was attached and a sizable bin filled with large lumps of soft coal. Forward of the cabin was the cargo hold, heaped high with crushed stone.
They looked down toward the lighted cabin of the next barge, nearly a hundred feet away. Its hold also was loaded with stone. The single window in the cabin’s forward wall was small and partially covered by curtains.
“We certainly can’t see anything from here,” Sandy said disgustedly.
“I was afraid we couldn’t,” Ken admitted. “If we want to find out what’s in that package, we’ll have to get closer.”