The captain came hurrying up.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” he demanded.
“Somebody fell overboard,” declared Radwig; “we heard a splash and hastened here at once to cut loose a life belt.”
“Lower a boat at once,” commanded the captain; “slow down the engines.”
The petty officer to whom the command had been given, hurried off at top speed to the bridge while the captain asked more questions of Radwig and his companion. But they could tell nothing more definite than that they had heard a splash and a cry and that was all. They had not seen who was the victim of the accident.
The captain decided to call a roll of passengers and crew at once. While the boat was lowered, and was rowed to and fro, on the dark waters, this work went on. When it was over, there was only one person on board found to be missing. This was, of course, Jack Ready. The cunning of Radwig had evolved this clever plan to obviate the search that would be surely made on the ship for the imprisoned young wireless lad when his absence from duty was discovered. If the lad was believed to be drowned, of course, no effort would be made to find him on board and he and Schultz would be safe from the results of their rascality. It was a clever though simple scheme and it worked to perfection, for after an hour of investigation the captain was forced to conclude that Jack had, in some inexplicable manner, fallen overboard and had perished.
But there was one person on board who did not accept this theory, and that was Bill Raynor. By no figuring could he bring himself to believe that Jack had fallen into the sea. In the first place, the rail was almost breast high, and in the second, Jack was too good a sailor to have lost his head and toppled from the ship.
“I am convinced he’ll turn up,” he told Mullen in the wireless room.
“Yes, but a thorough search was made for him without result,” objected the other.
“Never mind, something seems to tell me that he is all right,” protested Bill.