The furious wind caught their words and hurled them broadcast before they had properly left their lips.
“Is she breaking up?”
Tom shouted the words into Jack’s ear as the two boys, clinging to the shrouds, stood on the inclined deck.
“I don’t think so,” was Jack’s reply, yelled with his hands to his mouth, funnel-wise, “she’s grounded so far on shore that she’s safe for the time being, anyway.”
“We’d better go below and see how the others are getting on,” came from Tom the next minute.
In their excitement and fright the boys had utterly forgotten for the time being their companions. The thought of the plight that they might be in now recurred to them with redoubled force. Slipping along the precipitous deck they made their way to the cabin companionway. As they went they noticed the marks of the relentless axes of the crew. Except the main cabin house amidship, the yacht had been practically stripped of every bit of available timber. She looked, as indeed she was, a sorry derelict.
It is now necessary to turn back a little and discover how the prisoners in the adjoining cabin had been faring. It will be recalled that when Jack and Tom had been summarily taken from the cabin they shared with Dick Donovan, the next stateroom was occupied by Mr. Chadwick, Professor Von Dinkelspeil and Captain Sprowl.
The two weeks that had been spent by the boys in the engine-room had passed like eternity to those locked in the cabins. Of course, they had been able to communicate by means of the “Morse” tappings. But Dick’s knowledge of telegraphy was so limited that he had not been able to understand much of what was communicated to him. Nor had he been able, except after a long interval, to explain to the others that Jack and Tom had been taken from the cabin for some unknown reason connected with the machinery of the yacht.
Food had been served to the prisoners regularly, but from the sailors who brought it they had received no word of the fate of the two boys, nor could even the promise of bribes elicit a word from the men. Under the strain of their captivity and their uncertainty concerning Jack and Tom, Mr. Chadwick’s health had suffered seriously. Dick, too, had suffered from a kind of tropical fever, and lay in a semi-conscious condition in his cabin for days. This was the more unfortunate as Professor Dinkelspeil had given, through Mr. Chadwick’s telegraphy, full instructions to the young reporter concerning the movable partition.
It had been agreed by the prisoners that Dick should remove the partition and get into the next cabin. There was a chance that the door would be open, in which case Dick might make his way into the main cabin and unlock their door in which they knew the key was kept. What they would do after this was not arranged; but they all felt that if they could get out they might find some way of bettering their situation.