There was little to do while the ship was in port, and Jack devoted a good deal of time to putting the finishing touches on his portable wireless set. Captain Briggs was ashore most of the time, coming back to the ship usually late at night and walking none too steadily. His wound had long since healed and the man who had inflicted it had been tried. But owing to some peculiarity of foreign law, he was acquitted. Jack was not sorry when he heard this, for he had come to regard the captain as a coarse, brutal bully, whose excesses only made him the more truculent. As to Jack’s imprisonment, it had not been referred to by the captain and Jack felt inclined to take the chief officer’s advice when his wrath cooled and let “sleeping dogs lie.�
Thus matters stood one evening when Jack, who had been into the town to a moving picture show, was making his way back to the ship. The docks were dark, forbidding places at night. Here and there a sputtering arc light hung from a gloomy warehouse. But these lights only made little islands of light, outside which the shadows lay blacker and thicker than ever.
Brawls were of frequent occurrence among the foreign sailors, and altogether the place bore a bad reputation. As Jack came out of a narrow alley between two warehouses he became aware of a figure skulking along ahead of him.
There was something indescribably furtive and suspicious in the way in which this man crept along, hugging the wall and gazing straight ahead of him. A filtering ray of light struck his head for an instant and Jack saw that in the man’s ears were earrings such as Spanish sailors wear.
The next instant he saw another figure still further in advance. As it passed under a light he recognized the stocky form and unsteady gait of Captain Briggs. At the same instant it flashed across him that the man with the earrings was Baden Alvarez, the sailor who had had the tussle with the captain in which the latter was shot.
“Is he after revenge or what?� Jack wondered as he drew into a slight recess in the wall as Alvarez turned a corner and still skulked on like some wild beast stalking its prey.
“It sure looks as if there was going to be trouble,� the boy said to himself. “Guess I’ll just follow along and be handy in case of mischief. Confound it, I wish I’d brought a gun, as this Alvarez is said to be an ugly customer.�
But, after all, like most healthy American boys, Jack had no love for firearms. He preferred to use his fists when the occasion arose and he knew that at the end of each of his stout arms he had a formidable weapon.
Along the dark docks the strange trio strung their way. In the lead Captain Briggs rolled along, sometimes bawling out snatches of sea songs, behind him, and creeping closer all the time, came Alvarez and, last of all, Jack, his every muscle and sense tensed for the climax that he felt must come now at almost any instant.
Suddenly, like a wild cat, the Spaniard darted forward. He flung his lithe form on the stout captain, taking him utterly by surprise. Jack, in the little light there was, caught the gleam of an upraised knife as he dashed toward the spot where Captain Briggs was struggling with his foe.