Therefore, as the brig drew nearer to her destination Brandon set about studying the topography of the cabin—its entrances and exits—and how he could best pass through it and reach the deck without attracting the attention of anybody on board.
All this scouting had to be done at night, of course, and many were his narrow escapes while engaged in this most perilous undertaking.
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” was the motto of the Tarrs, father and son. In Captain Tarr’s case, and in that of his brother Anson, it had been, as a usual thing, a good deal of venture and little gain.
The same motive, however, was predominant in Brandon’s nature, and he took many risks in thus scouting about the brig’s cabin that almost any other boy would not have taken.
One night he had cautiously set the narrow door leading into the steward’s pantry ajar, and sat just under it in the darkness of the hold, trying to discover if all but the officers, excepting the one in command of the watch, had turned in.
There was a light in the outer cabin, but he could not see into the room from where he sat, and he dared not enter the pantry until he was sure that the cabin was unoccupied. Occasionally a sound of low conversation would reach his ears from the deck, but otherwise all was still.
“I’M A STOWAWAY. I’VE BEEN IN THE HOLD SINCE
WE LEFT NEW YORK.”
“I believe I’ll risk it,” he declared, after remaining in a listening attitude for nearly half an hour. “I need water badly—my throat is well nigh parched—and if I could learn whether the lamp was usually left turned up like that, whether the cabin was empty or not, I might know better how to act when I do try to escape.”
Finally he crawled through the opening and crept softly to the cabin door. The apartment was empty—or it appeared to be—although there was a chair drawn up to the table, and some books lay there as though having been in recent use.