“Jest give me the chance,” answered Speake, his eyes flashing, “an’ I’ll show you what I can do.”
The boys finished the food, took a drink all around from the bottle of cold coffee that Ysabel had put in the basket, and then continued their wait for something to happen. They felt better physically, even if they were not more hopeful.
Dick lay back on one of the cots and went to sleep; Speake pulled his hat down over his eyes and leaned against the forward bulkhead; Bob, flat on his back on the other cot, stared upward at the rounded deck, wishing that he could poke a hole through the steel plates and so gain freedom for himself and his friends.
Speake dozed a little. Something white, poked through one of the ventilator holes above his head, floated downward and landed on his knee. He stared at it drowsily, then brushed at it mechanically with one hand. Suddenly he realized that the falling of a scrap of white paper was rather a peculiar circumstance, and snatched it off the floor.
“Bob!” he called.
“What is it?” returned Bob, rising on his elbow and directing his gaze at Speake.
“This dropped down on me!” Speake held up the paper.
Bob was off the cot in a flash and standing at Speake’s side. “When?” he whispered.
“Just now.”
“It was pushed through one of the ventilator openings. It’s a note—from Ysabel.”