“What’s he saying?”
“Plenty,” murmured Bill. “It would make me blush to tell you.”
As the brawny seaman who had Osceola by the arm, reminded him of the order for silence, Osceola merely chuckled. But he continued to do so until they were far below the waterline in the very bowels of the ship.
Eventually they came to a long passage running fore and aft. Electric bulbs in the ceiling brightly lighted the corridor on either side of which doors opened into tiny cabins, evidently the quarters for stewards and the ship’s petty officers. Half way down a steel-barred gate blocked this passageway from floor to ceiling. Before it lounged an armed sentry.
The man straightened to attention as the party approached. Brinkerhoff presented a paper which he read carefully.
“Very good, sir,” he pocketed the order and saluted. “All cells are full, sir, except the first on the right. Better stick them in there.”
He unlocked the gate while the Lieutenant pushed Bill and Osceola into an empty cell. Without a word the officer slammed shut the door. The gate clanged and they were left together in their prison.
The cell boasted no illumination of its own. What light and ventilation there was came through the door, which, like the gate in the passage, was constructed of crossed bars of steel. It was no more than a cubby-hole. There were two narrow bunks, one above the other on one side; across from these, a washbowl and toilet. There was no other furniture. Both the cell and the corridor were terribly hot and stuffy.
“Well, this isn’t so bad, I’ve had worse quarters,” Bill remarked philosophically. “When the Baron took over this ship and needed a special brig for his prisoners, he slapped that gate into the passageway and put others in place of the doors to these cabins. The sidewalls are of wood. If we had some tools, it wouldn’t be such a job to get out of here.”
“Humph! but we haven’t any! And if we had, and could cut our way through into the next cabin, outside the gate, where would we go from there?”