“And mine was tampered with. Either the bullets were broken out of the cartridges or else some blighter reloaded with blank and shoved the revolver back in my sea-chest.”
“Ten to one it was that oily rascal of a steward,” hazarded the doctor. “They shot the Old Man down like a dog. The third’s on your right. I don’t know what’s happened to the other deck officers or the engineers.”
For some moments they remained silent. The midshipman altered his position slightly to obtain some shade from the shadow of the foremast. By that fact his seamanship told him that the Ah-Foo was now on approximately a south-easterly course—heading for the coast of the mainland.
Then he happened to look along the deck, which was only a few inches below the level of his eyes. To his horror he saw the decapitated head of a child rolling between the coaming of the cargo hatch and the scuppers.
“Look, doctor!” he exclaimed.
The doctor gave a wry smile.
“Yes, the solution to the mystery how the pirates smuggled their arms on board,” he rejoined. “It’s only a doll’s head! Those women we took aboard are working with the pirates.”
So that was it! Most if not all of the children in arms were dolls that concealed the weapons that had enabled the pirates to rush the bridge and capture the ship. Although each male passenger had been rigorously searched as he came on board, no one had thought to disturb the “infants” that slumbered so soundly in the shawls that strapped them to their “mothers’ ” backs.
It was a new ruse on the part of the pirates. Hitherto they had concealed arms in baskets containing meal and rice; they had strapped automatics to their ankles; they had hidden them under their bowl-shaped hats. In every case they had been successful in surprising the officers of the various ships upon which they had designs. In most instances survivors—for the pirates rarely went to the extreme measure of murdering their prisoners—reported how the arms had been smuggled into the ship. This made the searchers at the port of embarkation wise. The pirates hardly ever repeated their ruses. It had developed into a continual war—the pitting of the brains of the authorities against those of these modern buccaneers of the China Sea.
Presently one of the pirates strolled past and caught sight of the decapitated doll’s head. He picked it up, looked at it thoughtfully and then called to another of the party—the broad-chested fellow at whom the midshipman had fired thrice in vain.