“I don’t understand how she broke loose,” Clay said, as he pulled on his shirt. “I looked at her moorings just before I turned in, but loose she certainly is. Otherwise she would be pitching fore and aft instead of rolling in this sickening way. Come up, I am going out now and see what’s the matter. He twisted on the knob of the cabin door and tried to open it, but it resisted his efforts. He turned sharply around. “Who came in last night, you, wasn’t it, Ike?”
“Yes, I sits up on deck a little while, thinking over things,” Ike confessed.
“Did you change the key and lock the cabin door?”
“I don’t remember it,” Ike confessed, miserably. “I was thinking hard of other things, you understand.”
“You’ll understand some things more in a few minutes,” Clay said crisply, as he snapped on the cabin lights. He pounced upon a small dark object by the stove behind which Captain Joe lay in a sort of stupor. “That’s why Captain Joe didn’t warn us. They threw him a piece of poisoned meat through the window. I guess he won’t die. He only bit off a small chunk and he spit most of that out. Wise old owl, Captain Joe.”
“Whew,” whistled Alex. “Look, they have taken the rifle and shot gun.”
Each boy darted to his bunk, for they all kept their automatics under their pillows at night. They found them all safe.
“I wonder who did it,” Alex said.
“Ike’s friends, Bill and Jud, of course,” said Case in a tone that caused the little Jew to wince wretchedly.
“The thing to think about is to get out of here,” Clay said. “I don’t believe those fellows can start the engine up. They are almost a new invention. Now, if the wind is blowing from the same direction as it was when we turned in, we are bound to hit the rocks somehow between Nome and Cape Nome. This sea will break her up in no time and will drown us like rats in a trap. I would rather put up a fight against any kind of odds than to die that way.”