Badly mystified, Red Pennington trotted aft to the group gathering around Number Three lifeboat. He had a hundred questions to ask, starting with: Why was Don staying behind? On the other hand, orders were orders, and questions would keep until Don chose to answer them.
VIII
THE SECOND ATTACK
Sixty seconds from the moment Don shouted warning, Number Three lifeboat was swinging, fully manned, from her davits. On the dark water below, two life preservers, with patent flares attached, floated along the Gatoon’s portside. The ship, with engines dead, rolled gently in the trough of a gentle ground swell.
For a rescue at night, no better conditions could be asked. The trouble was that, from the moment Red Pennington’s attacker had hit the water, there had been no sign of him. No second splash or cry for help had been heard.
Was the fellow a suicide—deliberately drowning in preference to being caught? Or had he just gone down, unable to swim?
One guess was as good as another. Except that the man was a Scorpion agent, Don Winslow would have given the fellow up for lost. As it was, he suspected a trick.
Thinking back, he recalled that the spy had not hit the water all sprawled out like a man who had lost his balance. There had been only the single, clean plunk of an expert dive.
But where, in mid-ocean, could the man have swum? To a waiting boat, somewhere out of sight in the darkness?
There was one more alternative. As the idea flashed across Don’s brain, he whirled and ran to the starboard rail. After sweeping the ship’s side in one quick glance, he turned again and darted back to the after deck.
Halted at the taffrail, the young officer leaned far over, his eyes squinting to pierce the darkness under the gunboat’s stern. After a moment, he straightened up with a satisfied nod, and strode back to the portside.