But they were always driven back by a number of odd-looking men with guns and knives near the ladder.
“Who the deuce are those chaps?” Grand would demand as he and the others beat a hasty retreat along the deck. “I don’t like the looks of this!”
Occasionally the communications screen in each of the cabins would light up to reveal momentarily what was taking place on the bridge, and it was fairly incredible. The bridge house itself now was a swaying rubble heap and the Captain was seen intermittently, struggling with various assailants, and finally with what actually appeared to be a gorilla—the beast at last overpowering him and flinging him bodily out of the bridge house and, or so it seemed, into the sea itself, before seizing the wheel, which he seemed then to be trying to tear from its hub.
It was about this time that the ship, which, as it developed, had turned completely around in the middle of the ocean, came back into New York harbor under full steam, and with horns and whistles screaming, ploughed headlong into the big Forty-Seventh Street pier.
Fortunately no one was injured on the cruise; but, even so, it went far from easy with Grand—he had already sunk plenty into the project, and just how much it cost him to keep clear in the end, is practically anyone’s guess.
XVI
“To speak seriously though,” said Guy Grand, “does anyone have news of Bill Thorndike? I haven’t had a word in the longest.”
Ginger Horton set her cup down abruptly.
“That ... that damn nut!” she said. “No and I couldn’t care less!”
“Who?” asked Esther.