“Good enough,” he muttered. “If I haven’t been stripped I’ll find something.” He felt in his pocket and found a match, and ejaculated:
“Here we are, sure enough.”
He managed to scratch the match and as it blazed up he gazed round, and then an exclamation of consternation fell from his lips as he cried out:
“I thought so. I am in the ‘brig’ of some sort of vessel and I am out at sea. I have been kidnaped.” Then he smiled as he repeated, “Yes, kidnaped, for I am only a kid, after all.”
Continuing his soliloquy the boy muttered:
“What do they mean to do with me? Do they mean to drown me? Well, well, it’s hard luck, but it does look as though I were ‘a goner’ for sure, and I will go down to the bottom of the sea with the knowledge that I did not play my cards well or I never would have been in this box.”
As intimated Ike formed a pretty correct idea as to all that had happened, and he was indeed in a bad box; but he did not despair. He possessed a wonderful talent, a gift that had been carefully cultivated, and he had a great field to work—the prevailing superstition of people generally, and especially of sea-going men. Sailors are proverbially superstitious and superstition prepares one to become terrorized to a greater degree than any other sentiment. Men who would kill a fellow man in cold blood tremble if compelled to go through a cemetery at night. Men who would lead a charge in a battle would fall to the ground paralyzed with terror were their imagination to present to them after dark a vivid apparition of a dead soldier. Ike was well aware of these facts, and he determined to use his knowledge in order, if possible, to save his life and effect his escape. He knew he had fallen to the facts of a great scheme and possibly a tragedy. The men who were actors in the crime knew that he was a witness against them, and the question arose, did they intend merely to get him out of the way or did they intend to murder him or drown him in cold blood?
He knew that it was after midnight when the incident had occurred which led to his being a prisoner on that boat. He was quite a sailor himself, and as he lit a second match and glanced around, he concluded he was a prisoner on a medium-sized schooner or sloop. How long he had been there he had no means of knowing, as he had been unconscious and had regained his consciousness in total darkness. He concluded, however, that the possibilities were it was not yet daylight. He learned that the schooner was sailing over the waters, as he was down in the hold. He knew from the motion that they were under way and possibly far out to sea.
He lay and waited and fully an hour passed, when the hatch over his prison was raised and he became aware that a man was peering down upon him, and he knew it was daylight. He had decided upon his course; it might cost him a meal or two, but it was a part of his plan to lay low and watch his chance.
He heard a man on deck ask: