Not until that moment did Bob Steele suspect treachery. The revelation came to him like a lightning flash.
A wild uproar echoed from below, and forward and aft Speake and Clackett were struggling with those they had helped aboard.
The rounded deck of the Grampus, slippery with water and deluged again and again by the waves, was a fearsome place for such a struggle. How the combatants ever kept themselves out of the sea was a mystery.
Bob fought as best he could. He recognized the big fellow as Abner Fingal, and knew, as well as though he had been told, that Don Ramon Ortega had engineered a cunning plot for the capture of the submarine.
“What are you trying to do, Fingal?” Bob demanded, as the scoundrel held him helpless in his ironlike grip.
“Trying to even up fer some o’ the things you done a spell ago!” roared Fingal. “Stop yer squirmin’, or——”
With a fierce effort, Bob succeeded in breaking free. He rose to his knees, only to meet the flintlike fist of Fingal. The terrific blow hurled him backward, and he slid along the sloping deck against the guy rope that supported the small flagstaff, close to the bow.
Fingal jumped after him, caught him by the collar, and pulled him back before he could slip from the support of the rope and drop into the sea. The jerk Fingal gave him hurled Bob headfirst against the iron socket in which the base of the staff was secured to the deck. It was a savage blow, and Bob straightened out limply and a wave of darkness rolled over him.
When Bob opened his eyes again, he was in the same room where he and Dick had been confined by Gaines, Speake, and Clackett. But there was another prisoner now, for Speake was with Bob and Dick.
Dick, on a stool beside the cot, was rubbing Bob’s temples. Across from them, on the other cot, Speake was sitting, nursing a bruise on the side of his face.