The Devil's Admiral Part 20

The Filipino in the engineer's cap dropped the iron bar with which he had advanced in the rush, and put both hands to his stomach, and stood within six feet of Thirkle, looking at him in a surprised way, and finally threw up his hands as if he had lost his balance and curled over backward to the deck.

A Filipino toppled over the bridge-rail and struck in a heap on the fore-deck, and lay still, but I could not tell whether it was the fall or a bullet that had killed him.

One Chinaman slid down the ladder-rail whirling like an acrobat in the air before he landed, and another followed him, but they were the two last, and Buckrow and Long Jim started after them. The first started for the forecastle and began to throw off the chains, standing between me and the deck, so that I could not see what was happening for a minute. He worked frantically, jabbering all the while, and, as I thought, calling to his companion.

He couldn't have been at work more than a minute, but to me it seemed an hour or more, and I prayed that he might succeed in opening the scuttle, and I wondered at his surprise if he should throw back the sliding-board and see me come out with upraised pistol.

But a pistol spoke close at hand, and the narrow slit in the board let in the sun again and I saw the Chinaman fall just outside. Buckrow and Long Jim were running back to the bridge. Thirkle yelled something to them and they nodded and went through the starboard pa.s.sage.

The uproar of the escaping steam was dying out, and I told Riggs what I had witnessed. The Filipino in the cap was the chief engineer, and we knew that he had led a last sortie against the pirates, determined to die in a last effort to defeat them rather than be shot down or left to drown.

"Sally Ann!" said Riggs. "If that c.h.i.n.kie had cleared away the chains there we might have got out of here and put in a hand's work, too. He won't have steerage way on her--her engines have gone dead now. Feel her swing with that current?"

"They've started again," I said, feeling a tremor in the vessel.

"Here we go!" cried Riggs. "They've opened her sea-valves!"

We listened and stared at each other for a minute while the water sucked and gurgled and the _Kut Sang_ began to vibrate from the flood pouring into her. Gradually her head began to swing to seaward away from the island, as the current caught her, and, as I looked out I saw Thirkle and Buckrow in the forward boat, lowering away.

"There they go!" I yelled, and we dashed below, hoping that we would have a shot at them as they got clear of the vessel, but, as the s.h.i.+p was swinging outward, and our ports were so far forward, we were kept swinging away from them, and all we had was a bare glimpse of the two boats pulling away from the s.h.i.+p, one of them being towed.

The island was close at hand, a half-mile or more, although it seemed almost within reach, but we lost sight of that in a minute as the head of the _Kut Sang_ stood toward the open sea, and her stern began to settle.

"They had to get out of her when Pedro cut her engines out and lowered her boilers. It rushed their game, because he wanted to hide her in behind the island, but it won't make much difference now, Mr.

Trenholm--hear that? She's filling rapidly."

We were drifting broadside in the current now, sweeping down the coast and sinking at the same time.

I ran up the companion and began to struggle with the scuttle-board again, hoping that the Chinaman who was seeking shelter from the pirates'

bullets had made it possible for us to escape. The board was looser, and I slipped it to one side nearly an inch, and then it jammed again.

"Trenholm! Trenholm!" yelled Riggs frantically from below.

"What is it?" I called, hating to lose a second in my efforts to get the board free.

He did not answer, and I called to him again. Before the words were out of my mouth I was sprawling on all fours on the deck below.

CHAPTER XIII

WE PLAN AN EXPEDITION

I had been thrown down the companion by an appalling crash and a sudden lurch of the steamer as she careened to port. It seemed to me that the bottom plates were being ripped out of her and she was settling on her side with a succession of thumps which I took to be her last effort to keep afloat. The sea was almost to the open ports on the port side; and, as I tried to gain my feet on the tilted deck of the forecastle, I fell against the outboards of the line of bunks.

"She's aground!" screamed Captain Riggs at me. "She's gone smash flat into a bed of coral! See that green streak running away from us to seaward? That's a reef running out from the mainland and we've piled up on it, and if we don't slip off we're safe until it comes on to blow."

He ran to the starboard side and climbed the bunks to look through the ports there.

"It's all around us! Hear her settling? She's making a bed for herself in the coral-patch and she's not taking any more water. She's safe as a church, Mr. Trenholm. If the tide don't lift her off enough to pull her into deep water, or the current swing her, she'll hold until the sea comes up; but she's pretty deep and lays steady. She'll break up right here."

"That's small comfort for us," I said, nursing my bruises.

"They've gone in behind that point and made a landing," said Riggs, still looking through the port. "We'll be out of here in jig-time now. Where be my matches? Here! You and Rajah fish for water with these tins on a string, and wet down all these rags. Pull all the water in here you can."

He lit the slush-lamp again, and I wondered what he was about. I was not quite sure whether he knew of a way to get out of the forecastle, or had lost his reason. He was all bustle and business in a minute.

"I thought we wanted to keep the water out," I remarked.

"Stow that talk and obey orders," said Riggs sharply, digging grease out of the can of the lamp with his fingers and picking the wick to make it burn better. "Look lively now with that water and I'll show you a trick or two now that they've abandoned s.h.i.+p. I'll take a hand in this business myself."

"What's the plan?" I asked.

"Burn the cussed scuttle off a mite at a time. Grease a bit of the board and then hold the flame of the lamp on it, and, when it gets too lively, heave some water on and put it out and begin again. Haul a couple of barrels of water in here and spill it under the bunks so we can git at it with the pans if the fire starts to git away from us. Clap on, man; we need every minute now."

Rajah and I rigged them with strings and set to drawing water through the port-holes on the port side, which was not a hard job, for the swells came within a couple of feet of our hands as we held the tins outside. We filled sea-chests, the rubber crowns of a couple of old sou'westers, and dumped water through the slats of the tiers of bunks so that it lodged in the angle between the side of the s.h.i.+p and the deck.

While we were at this task Riggs was up in the scuttle, and from time to time we could hear the crackle of flames, and then the hissing of the water as he extinguished the burning planks. The thick smoke came down the companion and burned our eyes and nostrils as it escaped through the ports.

Riggs came down every few minutes to get a supply of water. He was black as a chimney-sweep, but he reported good progress and grinned at our discomfort from the smoke and heat.

Finally we heard Riggs hammering at the charred board with the belaying-pin.

"I've got it through!" he yelled to us from a smoking shower of black fragments of the board, and I ran up to him and saw the sun through the chains around the frame of the scuttle. The links were glowing with heat and we dashed water on them. In a short time we had wrenched them apart so Rajah could get through the strands. Then he threw off the bars of our prison, and Riggs and I gained the hot plates of the sloping fore-deck, crawling over the body of the dead Chinese, which we rolled into the sea.

"They are clean gone," said Riggs, crawling up to the starboard side and scanning the island and the channel. "They went in behind that point, and it's a good chance they'll be back if they see she's still afloat."

"Let them come," I said. "Are there any more weapons in the s.h.i.+p?"

"I've got a few guns stowed where even Thirkle couldn't find 'em, or at least Harris hid some away. Always afraid of mutiny, he was, and he got one with a vengeance, poor chap. It's my ticket to a penny whistle we'll find Thirkle and his men on the island."

"Then you'll go after them, captain?"

"Well, I'd rather guess so," he said vehemently. "I'm on fair ground now, and if they don't come back to burn the s.h.i.+p I'm the man to hunt them out of their holes ash.o.r.e. But what I'm afraid of is they will hide the stuff and make for the mainland, or put off to the north in the boats to see if they can't be picked up by some steamer for the north coast.

"They'll report the _Kut Sang_ lost, and Thirkle'll figure on getting back here before folks are suspicious. Of course the people who s.h.i.+pped that gold may smell a rat and keep tab on him, but he'll see that he gets clear. He'll report her foundered far from here--leave that to him.

I doubt if he'll quit this place as long as he sees a foot of the _Kut Sang_ above water. Are you game to go after him, Mr. Trenholm?"

"I'm with you to the end of the whole game--I want to see it played out now, win or lose."

"I knew you would. I suppose I've been a bit of an old woman, Mr.

Trenholm, but I never looked for the likes of what was aboard last night.

There I was, alone, you might say, blind as an owl on what was going on around me, and when things began to go bad they had you mixed in it so I took you for one of 'em. They had me flat aback for a time there--I didn't know my own name from Sally Ann's black cat. It looked like the whole s.h.i.+p was against me, and, when I saw Harris go, I was clean out of soundings."

I told him that he had realized the danger better than I did, and that I had not been hampered by the sense of responsibility or the possibility of disgrace.

"Oh, I lost my wits for a time there, and we can't get away from it--I was all fuddled, but I'll show ye I've got more fight in me than ye look for, if ye'll see me through with it."