Suddenly, from the deck, came the shrill sound of a pipe. It was the call to return. Ned darted off, but Herc, always curious, lingered just a minute to peep into what had been a solitary cell, a tiny, black hole with a heavy iron door.
He swung the door open, and striking a match, stepped inside.
“Wow! Just think of being shut in a place like that with the ship boiling and roasting in the tropics!” he exclaimed with a shudder. “Why a man could hardly live in such a——”
Clang!
The iron door had suddenly banged to as the ship gave a slight roll on the swells generated by the close proximity of the big dreadnought. Herc sprang at the door. But it resisted his stoutest efforts to open it. It had closed with a spring lock and there was Herc a prisoner in the bowels of the old convict ship.
After the lapse of so many years, the solitary cell once more held a victim. This time though, it was no cringing, shaven convict going into exile, but a Yankee blue-jacket.
Herc set up a lusty yelling for help. He shook the solid door and roared for release out of his predicament.
“Goodness,” he exclaimed, “in trouble again! But this time the joke is certainly on me. It’s a good thing I was never a convict,” he added in his whimsical fashion, “or they’d have been feeding me to the sharks in a very short time. Gracious! what a hole! Hot as a furnace, too, and as dark as it was in those coal bunkers. I hope they hurry and let me out!”