Somewhere below them the car stopped. The buzz of its engine was cut off and the lights disappeared.
Ken touched Sandy’s arm. “Get back.”
If the driver of the car came aboard the barge, they would certainly be discovered where they lay. And it was too late to use the barge ladder now. They might walk directly into the arms of whoever had just driven up on the dock below.
Slithering along the deck like eels, they went back the way they had just come, and on past the cabin window to take shelter behind the cabin’s far wall, in the narrow space between it and the bulwark.
As soon as they stopped moving they could hear sounds. Somebody was climbing the ladder. There was a dull thud as the new arrival jumped down onto the deck of the barge.
From inside the cabin there was a metallic banging, and suddenly once more the boys were enveloped in a cloud of choking smoke.
Sandy had learned his lesson. He jerked down the zipper of his windbreaker and ducked his head inside at the first whiff.
Ken, who had been concentrating on the sounds around the corner of the cabin, was caught completely unprepared. He had inhaled a lungful of smoke before he realized it. His shoulders began to heave as Sandy’s had done a few minutes before.
Ken held his breath. He pinched his nose tightly between thumb and finger. But the sneeze pushed harder than ever at the back of his throat.
Even through the buzzing in his ears he could hear the knock at the cabin door and the voice that said, “Open up, Cal. It’s me.”