Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound; Or, A Red Cross Worker's Ocean Perils

“He is a new member of the ship’s company—as I am,” admitted Dowd.

“He may be ‘Boldig,’” said Ruth, smiling faintly.

“I will find out what is known of him,” the first officer promised. “Meanwhile do you think you would like to look over the seamen and other members of the crew?”

“I do not think there would be any use in my doing so—not at present. They probably know what we are after and the flaxen-haired man will remain hidden. The boat is large.”

“True,” Dowd agreed thoughtfully. “And as we do not know his name it would be difficult to find him on the ship’s roster. Besides, I do not believe that Captain Hastings would allow further search. You see what kind of a man he is, Miss Fielding.”

“Make no excuse, Mr. Dowd,” she said hastily. “You have done all you can. I am sorry I started this in the first place. I merely considered it my duty to do so.”

“I quite appreciate your attitude,” he said, bowing over her hand. “And I think you did right. There is something on foot that must be investigated, Captain Hastings, or no Captain Hastings!”

He went away abruptly, and Ruth had time to think it over. She did not fancy the situation at all.

CHAPTER XII—THE MAN IN THE MOTOR BOAT

After her activities in France, and in other places before she sailed as a Red Cross worker, home would indeed be dull. She loved Aunt Alvirah—even the old miller himself; but Ruth Fielding was not a stay-at-home body by nature and training.

She might have mental exercise in writing scenarios for the Alectrion Film Corporation. She had had good success in that work—and there was money in it. But it did not attract her now. Her work at the Clair hospital seemed to have unfitted her for her old interests and duties. In fact, she was not satisfied to be out of touch with active affairs while a state of war continued abroad.

The trouble at home, and the anxiety she felt for Tom’s safety, served to put her in a most unhappy frame of mind. She surely would have given her mind to unpleasant reveries had not this matter which began with Irma Lentz come up.

This racked her mind instead of more serious troubles. Perhaps it was as well. Ruth disliked having been considered unwarrantably interfering, as Captain Hastings undoubtedly considered she had been.

She answered the second luncheon call and passed Irma Lentz coming out of the saloon-cabin. The woman with the eyeglasses looked her up and down, haughtily tossed her head, and passed on. Ruth was aware that several other first cabin passengers looked at her oddly. It was plain that some tale of Ruth’s “mare’s nest” had been circulated.

And this must be through Captain Hastings. Nobody else, she was sure, could have been tactless enough to tell Miss Lentz what Ruth had said. Had the short-haired “artist” taken others of the passengers into her confidence, or was that, too, the work of the steamship’s commander?

At about this time there probably was not a steamship crossing the Atlantic of the character of the Admiral Pekhard, and with the number and variety of passengers she carried, on which there was not some kind of spy scare. So many dreadful things were happening at sea, and the Germans seemed so far-reaching and ruthless in their plots, that there was little wonder that this should be so.

It would have been the part of wisdom had Captain Hastings kept the matter quiet. Instead, the pompous little skipper had evidently revealed Ruth’s suspicions to the very person most concerned—Miss Lentz. Through her, word must have been passed to the flaxen-haired man Ruth had seen talking with her, and likewise to the officer, Dykman, who must likewise be in the plot.

What would be the outcome? If there really was a conspiracy to harm the ship, either on the sea or after she docked at New York, had it been nipped in the bud? Or would it be carried through, whether or no?

There was so little but suspicion to bolster up Ruth Fielding’s belief that she had no foundation upon which to build an actual accusation against Miss Lentz and her associates, whoever they might be.

She felt the weakness of her case. There was, perhaps, some reason for Captain Hastings to doubt her word. But he should not have revealed her private information to the passengers. That not only was unfair to Ruth but made it almost impossible for her to prove her case.

She ate her lunch with the help of the steward, for her Red Cross friend had eaten and gone. When she returned to the open deck she saw Miss Lentz the center of a group of eagerly talking passengers. There were two wounded army officers in the group. They all stared curiously at Ruth Fielding as she passed. Nobody spoke to her. There was evidently being formed a cabal against her among the first cabin passengers.

Not that she particularly cared. There was really nobody she wished to be friendly with, and in ten days or so the ship would reach New York and the incident would be closed. That is, if nothing happened to retard the voyage.

She sought her own chair, which had been placed in a favored spot by the deck steward, and wrapped herself as well as she could in her rug, having only one hand to use. Nobody came to offer aid. She was being quite ostracized.

From where she sat she had a good view of the main deck and of all the ship forward of the smoke stacks. The sea remained calm and the Admiral Pekhard plowed through it with some speed. Not a sail nor a banner of smoke was visible. They were a good way from land by now, and it was evident, too, that they were in no very popular steamship lane. With the submarines as active as they were, unconvoyed ships steered clear of well-known routes, where the German sea-monsters were most likely to lie in wait.

With nobody to distract her attention, Ruth took considerable present interest in the conning of the ship and the work of the seamen about the deck. She looked, too, for some figure that would suggest the flaxen-haired man she had seen talking with Miss Lentz at dawn.

Dykman was on duty as watch officer now. Ruth felt that he must be one of the conspirators. Otherwise he could not have so blandly denied knowledge of the flaxen-haired man who talked German.

The Admiral Pekhard was a well-furnished boat, as has been said. Besides the lifeboats swung at her davits, there were nests of smaller boats forward. And just in front of where Ruth Fielding sat there was a canvas-covered motor craft of small size. There was a larger motor launch lashed on the main deck astern of where Ruth’s chair was established.

She noted, after a time, that some of the points lashing the canvas cover of the small launch forward of her station were unfastened. Everything else about the covered craft was taut and shipshape. Ruth wondered at the displacement of the loosened cords.

And then, vastly to her surprise, she saw the canvas stir. Something, or somebody, was beneath it. Whatever it was under the canvas cover, its movements were made with extreme caution.

Ruth was more puzzled than alarmed. She had heard of people stowing themselves away upon steamships, and she wondered at first if such were the explanation of the unknown, lying in the motor launch.

Should she speak to Mr. Dowd about this? Then, considering what had followed her interference in circumstances that happened at dawn here on the deck of the steamship, she hesitated to do so. She did not wish to get into further trouble.

But she watched the opening in the canvas cover. More than once within the next hour she observed the boat cover wrinkle and move, as whatever was beneath it squirmed and crept about.

Then, quite expectedly, she saw a face at the opening. The canvas was lifted slightly and a forehead and pair of eyes were visible for a moment.

The fact that somebody was hiding in the launch could not be denied. Yet it really was none of Ruth Fielding’s business. This might have nothing at all to do with Miss Lentz, the flaxen-haired man, and Dykman.

She watched the place warily. If the man under the canvas saw her watching he would be warned, of course, that his presence was discovered. She must speak to Mr. Dowd most casually if she desired to inform the first officer of this mysterious circumstance.

Nor could she get up and look for the first officer. While she was gone the man in the motor boat might slip out and escape. Ruth did not propose to put herself a second time in a position where her word might be doubted.

While she remained in her chair the person hiding in the boat would surely not come out. She did not wish to send a message to Mr. Dowd in such a way that her motive for bringing him here would be suspected.

The first officer was not on the bridge; so it was not his watch on duty. Ruth beckoned a deck steward, tipped him, and requested him to bring her a pencil, a sheet of paper, and envelope from the ship’s writing room. She was taking no chances with a verbal message.

The man fulfilled her request. Meanwhile nobody else seemed to notice the man peering out from the canvas cover of the motor boat. Indeed, the fellow had disappeared now and was lying quiet.

Ruth penciled the following sentences on the paper: “There is a stowaway in the small motor boat forward of where I am sitting. I will not move until you can come and investigate. R. F.”

She sealed this in the envelope, doing it all in her lap so that she could not be observed from the boat. Then she wrote Mr. Dowd’s name upon the envelope.

The steward came back and she whispered to him to take the note to Mr. Dowd and deliver it into the first officer’s own hand—to nobody else. As the man started away Ruth for some reason turned her head.

Across the deck stood Irma Lentz. Her black eyes flashed into Ruth’s, and the woman seemed about to start toward her. Then she wheeled and swiftly went forward.

Had she seen the letter Ruth had sent to the chief officer? Did she suspect to whom Ruth had written—and the object of the note? And, above all, did she suspect that Ruth had discovered the man hiding in the motor boat?

CHAPTER XIII—IT COMES TO A HEAD

If she left her seat to search for Mr. Dowd, or to confer with anybody else, the man she believed was hiding in the motor boat not ten yards from her chair might escape. Who he was she could only suspect. Why he was hiding there was quite beyond her imagination.

It was Captain Hastings who appeared first upon the open deck. He did not go immediately to the bridge, nor did he bow right and left to the ladies as was usually his custom. He came directly past Ruth and stared at her through his little squinting eyes in no friendly fashion. Ruth did not speak to him.

Captain Hastings took up a position by the rail not twenty yards from the girl’s chair. Several passengers gathered about him; but she saw that the commander of the Admiral Pekhard did not lose sight of her. He was there for a purpose—that was sure.

She wondered if the steward, playing her false, had given her note addressed to Mr. Dowd to Captain Hastings? She felt that apprehension nearly all feel when “something is about to happen.” In fact, she had never felt more uncomfortable mentally in her life than at that moment.

The sun was going down now, for she had spent most of the afternoon since luncheon in her chair. The watches had been changed long since and she knew that on a sailing vessel this would be the second dog watch. Some of the crew were at supper. The bugle for the first-cabin call to dinner would soon sound.

She desired to go to her stateroom to freshen her toilet for dinner; yet, should she desert her post? Was Mr. Dowd merely delayed in coming to answer her note? Should she take the bull by the horns and tell Captain Hastings himself of the presence of the stowaway in the motor boat?

In this hesitating frame of mind she lingered for some time. Although the sea was calm, there was a haze being drawn over the sky as the sun disappeared below the western rim of the ocean, and it bade fair to be a dark evening. The wind whistled shrilly through the wire stays. There was a foreboding atmosphere, it seemed to Ruth Fielding, about the great steamship.

A dull explosion sounded from somewhere deep in the hold of the Admiral Pekhard. The ship trembled from truck to keelson. Screams of frightened passengers instantly broke out. Captain Hastings, at the rail, whirled to look toward the engine-room companionway.

Out of this door, just ahead of a volume of smoke or steam, dashed one of his officers. Ruth, who had got out of the reclining chair as quickly as her injured shoulder would allow, saw that this excited man was Dykman.

“An explosion in the boiler room, sir!” he cried, loud enough for everybody in the vicinity to hear him. “The engines are out of commission and I think the ship is sinking.”

It seemed as though any ship’s officer with good sense would have told the commander privately of the catastrophe. But immediately the full nature of the disaster was made known to the excited and terrified passengers.

“My heavens, Dykman!” squealed Captain Hastings, “you don’t mean to say it is a torpedo? We’ve seen no periscope.”

“I don’t know what it is; but the whole place is full of steam and boiling water. We could not see the entire extent of the damage; but the water——”

He intimated that the water was coming in from the outside. Then, suddenly, the bugles and bells began, all over the ship, to signal the command for “stations.” The engines had stopped and the steamship began to rock a little, for there was quite a swell on. Some of the passengers began screaming again. They thought the Admiral Pekhard was already going down.

The tramp of men running along the decks, the shouts of the officers, and the continued screaming of some of the passengers created such a pandemonium that Ruth was confused. She knew that Captain Hastings had leaped to the bridge ladder and was now giving orders through a trumpet regarding the preparation of the boats for lowering.

One gang of men was unlashing the large motor boat and carrying davit ropes to it. That was the captain’s boat, and it would hold at least forty of the ship’s company.

Ruth began to wonder what boat she would go in. She realized that she was quite alone—that there was nobody to aid her. Tom had foreseen this. He had wished to accompany her across the ocean to be able to aid her if necessity arose.

And here was necessity!

Ruth saw some of the passengers running below, and was reminded that she was not at all prepared to get into an open boat and drift about the sea until rescued. There were several important papers and valuables in her stateroom, too. She moved toward the first cabin entrance.

Stewards were bringing the helpless wounded up to the deck on stretchers. No matter how small Ruth’s opinion might be of Captain Hastings as a man, he seemed neglecting no essential matter now that his ship was in danger.

From the bridge he directed the filling and lowering of the first boats. He ordered the crew and stokers who came pouring from below, to stand by their respective boats, but not to lower them until word was given. Each officer was in his place. The stewards were evacuating the wounded as fast as possible and were to see that every passenger came on deck.

But Ruth did not see Mr. Dowd. The Chief Officer, who should have had a prominent part in this work, had not appeared. The girl went below, wondering about this.

As she approached her stateroom, Irma Lentz, well-coated and bearing two handbags, appeared from her stateroom. The black-eyed woman did not seem very much disturbed by the situation. She even stopped to speak to Ruth.

“Ah-h!” she exclaimed in a low tone. “Your friend, Mr. Dowd, fell down the after companionway and is hurt. They took him to his room. Perhaps you would like to know,” and she laughed as she passed swiftly on toward the open deck.

The information terrified Ruth. For the first time since the explosion in the boiler room, the girl of the Red Mill considered the possibility of this all being a plot to wreck the Admiral Pekhard—a plot among some of the ship’s company, both passengers and crew!

The mystery of which she had caught a single thread that morning at dawn when she had observed this black-eyed woman talking with the German-looking seaman, or stoker, was now divulged.

These people—Irma Lentz, the flaxen-haired man, Dykman (if he was one of the plotters) and perhaps others, had brought them all to this perilous situation. The German conspirators had, after all, been willing to risk their own lives in an attempt to sink the British ship.

She was but one day from port; it was not improbable that the ship’s company would reach land in comparative safety. The two motor boats could tow the lifeboats, and if a storm did not arise they might all reach either the English or the French coast in safety.

Ruth was so disturbed by Irma Lentz’s statement that she did not immediately turn toward her own room. She knew where Mr. Dowd’s cabin was, and she hurried toward it.

It seemed sinister that the chief officer should have been injured just as she had sent word to him about the stowaway in the small motor boat. Ruth was convinced, without further evidence, that her discovery and attempt to reach Mr. Dowd with the information had caused his injury and had hastened the explosion.

She did not believe the latter was caused by a torpedo from a lurking submarine. The conspirators aboard the Admiral Pekhard had deliberately brought about the catastrophe.

And it smote her, too, that Mr. Dowd might now be neglected in his cabin. When the passengers and crew left in the small boats, the first officer would, perhaps, be lying helpless in his berth.

She reached the door of the officer’s cabin, and knocked upon the panel. There was nobody in sight in this passage and she heard no movement inside the first officer’s room. Again she knocked.

At last there was a stirring inside. A voice mumbled:

“Yes? Yes? Eight bells? I will be right up.”

“Mr. Dowd! Mr. Dowd!” Ruth called. “Wake up! The ship is sinking!”

“I’ll be right with you, boy,” said the officer, more briskly, but evidently not altogether himself.

“This is Ruth Fielding, Mr. Dowd!” cried the girl, hammering again on the door. “Do you need help? Come on deck quickly. The ship is sinking!”

“What’s that?”

He was evidently aroused now. The door was snapped open and he appeared at the aperture just as he had risen from his berth—in shirt and trousers. His head was bandaged as though he wore a turban.

“What is that you say, Miss Fielding?” he repeated.

“Come quickly, Mr. Dowd!” she begged. “The ship is sinking. Those people have blown it up.”

“Then there was something wrong!” cried the officer. “Did—did Captain Hastings come to you? I—I gave him your note after I fell——”

“He did nothing but wait until those people did their worst,” declared Ruth angrily. “It is too late to talk about it now. Hurry!” and she turned away to seek her own stateroom.

It was fast growing dark outside. There were no lights turned on along the saloon deck. She saw not a soul as she hurried to her room. Everybody—even the stewards and officers—seemed to have got out upon the upper deck. She heard much noise there and believed some of the boats were being lowered.

She unlocked her stateroom door and entered. When she tried to turn on the electric light, she found that the wires were dead. Of course, if the boilers were blown up, the electric generating motors would stop as well as the steam engines. The ship would be in darkness.

She hastily scrambled such valuables as she could find into her toilet bag. Her money and papers she stowed away inside her dress. They were wrapped in oilskin, if she should be wet. Ruth was cool enough. She considered all possibilities at this time of emergency.

At least she considered all possibilities but one. That never for a moment entered her mind.

It was true that while she dressed more warmly and secured a blanket from her berth to wrap around herself over her coat, she was aware that the noise on the upper deck had ceased. But she did not realize the significance of this.

Being all alone, she had much difficulty in arraying herself as she wished. Her shoulder was stiff and she could not use her left arm very much without causing the shoulder to hurt excruciatingly. So she was long in getting out of the room again.

Just as she did so she heard a man shouting up the passage:

“Anybody here? Get out on deck! Last call! The boats are leaving!”

The shout really startled Ruth. She had no idea there was any chance of her being left behind. She left her stateroom door open and started to run through the narrow corridor.

Not six feet from the door she tripped over something. It was a cord stretched taut across the passage, fastened at a height of about a foot from the deck!

Helplessly, with her hands full and the blanket over her right arm, Ruth pitched forward on her face. She struck her head on the deck with sufficient force to cause unconsciousness. With a single groan she rolled over on her back and lay still.

CHAPTER XIV—A BATTLE IN THE AIR

The Zeppelin was aimed seaward. She doubtless had started upon a coast raid along the English shore. If the Americans could bring her down they would achieve something that would count gloriously in this great work of fighting the Hun in the air.

To pitch down upon the envelope of the great machine and empty a clip of cartridges into it might do the Zeppelin a deal of harm, but it would not wreck it. A complete wreck was what Stillinger and Tom wished to make of the German airship.

The American pilot’s intention was immediately plain to Tom. He shut down on the speed and allowed the airplane to fall behind the German ship. The object was to trail the Zeppelin and pour the machine-gun bullets into the steering gear of the great airship—even, perhaps, to sweep her deck of the crew.

The fog was thinning—No! they were shooting out of the cloud. The sunlight suddenly illuminated both Zeppelin and airplane. Both must have been revealed to observers on the ground and in the air.

The presence of the American airplane, if unsuspected before by the crew of the Zeppelin, was now revealed to them. Tom, bending sideways to look down past the machine gun, saw the entire afterdeck of the Zeppelin. There were at least a dozen men standing there, staring up at the darting airplane.

Tom shot a glance back at Stillinger. The machine tipped at that instant. The pilot waved an admonishing hand. Tom seized the crank of the gun and turned to look down upon the German airship.

In that instant the crew of the latter had sprung to action. Their surprise at the nearness of the airplane was past. Their commander stood, hanging to a stay with one hand and shouting orders through a trumpet held in the other hand. At least, Tom Cameron presumed he was shouting.

All he could hear was the thuttering roar of the Zeppelin’s motors and the clash of their own engine. These noises, with the shrieking of the rushing wind made every other sound inaudible.

The American machine was tipping. She was not far behind the Zeppelin, nor far above it. The muzzle of the machine gun would soon come into line with the after deck of the Zeppelin. Then——

Suddenly a flash of flame and a balloon of smoke was spouted from a small mortar amidships of that deck. Instantly a shell burst almost in Tom’s face and eyes.

If the young fellow cringed as he crouched behind the machine gun, it was no wonder. That was a very narrow escape.

He glanced back at Stillinger. The pilot had dropped one of the levers and was holding his left wrist tightly. Tom could see something red running through Stillinger’s fingers—blood!

Shrapnel was flying all about the airplane. There was a second puff of smoke and flame from the mortar on the Zeppelin. Tom heard the twang of a cut stay. The airplane rolled sideways with a sickening dip—but then righted itself.

This was a kind of fighting Tom Cameron knew nothing about. He did not know what to do. Pivoted as the machine gun was, he could not depress the muzzle sufficiently to bring the Zeppelin’s deck into range. Was the machine out of control? If the nose of it dipped a bit more he could do something.

Another burst of shrapnel, and he felt something like a red-hot iron searing his right cheek. He put up his gloved hand and brought it away spotted with crimson. The Hun certainly was getting them!

He looked back at Stillinger. To his horror he saw that the man was slumped down in his seat, held there by his belt. Tom Cameron did not know the first thing about driving an airplane!

Again a shell burst near the rocking machine. It did no harm; but it showed that the Germans were getting an almost perfect range.

Tom Cameron was not a coward. He gripped his even upper teeth on his full lower lip, and by that sign only showed that he knew disaster was coming. Indeed, it had come the next second!

The tail of the airplane shot up and the nose pitched to a sharp angle. He heard the explosion of the shell even as he started the chatter of the machine gun. In that short breath of time the muzzle of his weapon was pitched to the right angle, and a swarm of bullets swept the afterdeck of the Zeppelin.

He knew the tail of the airplane had been splintered and that the machine was bound to fall. But as it poised on its wings for a few moments, he poured in the shot—indeed, he finished the clip of cartridges.

The man at the Zeppelin shell-thrower fell back and rolled into the scuppers. Another—plainly an officer from his dress—crashed to the deck. He saw the other members of the crew running to try to escape the hail of bullets. Ah, if he could only have accomplished this before the airplane was wrecked!

And that it was wrecked, he could see. He glanced over his shoulder. Stillinger was no longer in his seat. Indeed, the seat itself was not there! The entire rear part of the airplane was torn away, and his friend and college-mate had fallen.

Those next few seconds were to be the most thrilling of all Tom Cameron’s life.

The airplane was plunging downward, seemingly right on top of the Zeppelin. Then intuitively he realized that it would just about clear the German airship.

He held no more guarantee for his life if he clung to the airplane than poor Stillinger had in falling free. It was a swift spin and a crash to the earth—death beyond peradventure!

The spread wings of the airplane still held the wrecked machine poised. But in a moment it would slip forward, nose down, and “take the spin.” Tom scrambled over the gun and over the armored nose of the airplane. He swung himself through the stays. The airplane plunged—and so did he!

But he flung himself free of the stays. Like a frog diving from the bank of a pool, the American cast himself from the airplane, full thirty feet, to the deck of the German airship!

A taut stay of the Zeppelin broke his fall. He landed on all fours. Before he could rise two of the Germans leaped upon him and he was crushed, face-downward, on the deck.

The fellows who had seized him seemed of a mind to cast him over the rail. They dragged him to his feet, forcing him that way. He expected the next minute to be spinning in the track of the airplane toward the earth, five thousand feet or more below.

But suddenly there appeared out of the cabin, or “dog-house” slung amidships of the great envelope, the officer that Tom had first seen with the trumpet. Through that instrument he now roared an order in German that the American did not understand.

The latter was released. He staggered to the middle of the deck, panting and with scarcely strength remaining to hold him on his feet. He saw the officer beckoning him forward.

He could not see what any of these fellows looked like, for they were all masked, as he was himself. They were dressed in garments of skin, with the hair left on the hide—a queer-looking company indeed. Tom staggered toward the officer.

He was motioned to go into the cabin. The officer came after him and closed the door. At once the American realized that the place was—to a degree—soundproof.

The German removed his helmet and Tom was glad to unbuckle the straps of his own. The first words he heard were in good English:

“This is the first time I have taken a prisoner. It is a notable event. Will you drink this cordial, Mein Herr? It is an occasion worthy of a libation.”

His captor had opened a small cabinet fastened to the wall and produced a screw-topped decanter. He poured a colorless liquid into two tiny glasses, and presented one to Tom. The latter would have taken almost anything just then. The stuff was warming and smelled strongly of anise.

“Yes, you are the first prisoner I have heard of taken in this way. And, oddly enough, I may be bearing you homeward, only I shall be unable to allow you to land upon the ‘tight little isle’—you so call it, no?”

“You are making one mistake,” Tom said, finally finding his voice. “I am not an Englishman. I am American.”

“Indeed? But it matters not,” and the German shrugged his shoulders. “You will go back with us to Germany as a prisoner. But first you will accompany us on our bomb-dropping expedition. London is doomed to suffer again.”

Tom said no more. This ober-leutnant was a fresh-faced, rather dandy-like appearing person—typical of the Prussian officer-caste. His cheerful statement that he purposed dropping his cargo of bombs over the city of London brought a sharp retort to Tom’s tongue—which he was wise enough not to utter.

A subordinate officer looked in at the forward entrance to the cabin, and asked a question. The leutnant arose.

“I go to con the ship. We shall soon be over the sea. You, Mein Herr, must be placed in durance, I fear. Come this way.”

He did not even take the automatic pistol from Tom’s holster. Really, he knew, as did Tom, that to make any attempt against the lives of his captors would have been too ridiculous to contemplate. Tom Cameron arose quietly to follow the leutnant.

At the forward end of this cabin, or car, there was a door beside the one which gave exit to the forward deck. The German opened this narrow door, and Tom saw a small closet with a barred window. There was a cushioned seat, which might even serve as a berth, but very little else in the compartment.

He was ordered into this place, and entered. The door was closed behind him and bolted. He was left to his own devices and to thoughts which were, to say the least, disheartening.

He pitched the padded helmet and goggles he had taken off into a corner and pressed his face close to the glass of the barred window. Again they were smothered in fog. He could not see to the prow of the great ship. He wondered how the officer could steer the Zeppelin save by compass. This fog was a thick curtain.

Yet the Germans would cross the sea, of course, and find their way over London. He had heard Englishmen talk of the damage done and the lives sacrificed—mostly those of women and children—in these dreadful raids. And he was to be a passenger while the Zeppelin performed its horrid task!

Tom Cameron had recovered quickly from his fright and the shock of his landing on the airship. He was convinced that nobody had ever before done just what he had done. And as he had been successful in performing this hazardous venture, he began to believe that he might do more—perform other wonders.

It was not his vanity that suggested this thought. Tom Cameron was quite as free of the foible of conceit as could be imagined. He was earnestly desirous of doing something to balk these Germans in their determination to get to the English shore and bomb London and its vicinity.

Gradually his eyes grew blind to what was going on upon the forward deck of the Zeppelin. He was thinking—he was scheming. His whole thought was given to the desire of his heart: How might he thwart the wicked plans of the Hun?

CHAPTER XV—ABANDONED

As she struggled to her knees, picked up her bag, and gained her feet, Ruth realized, as in a flash of light, that the man who had shouted was Dykman, the under officer whom she had previously suspected. He was in the conspiracy with Irma Lentz and the flaxen-haired man—the latter, she was sure, having hidden in the small motor boat.

And what was now ahead? She had no idea how long she had lain unconscious. Nor did she hear a sound from the deck above.

Had she been abandoned on the sinking ship, even by Mr. Dowd, the first officer? That Captain Hastings had neglected to see that all the passengers were taken off the Admiral Pekhard did not greatly surprise Ruth. She had a very poor opinion of the pompous little skipper.

But Mr. Dowd!

She stumbled out of the dark passage and found the saloon stairway. The door at the top was closed. She had to put down her bag to open it. Her shoulder pained like a toothache, and she could not use her left hand at all.

She finally stumbled out upon the open deck. Darkness had shut down on the ship. There was not a light anywhere aboard that she could see. The ship was rocking gently to the swell. It did not seem to her as though it was any deeper in the sea than it had been when last she was above deck.

But one certain fact could not be denied. The davits were stripped of boats. Every lifeboat was gone! She looked aft and saw that the big motor launch had likewise been put off. Forward the deck was clear, too. The boat in which she had observed the stowaway had disappeared.

She was trapped. She believed herself alone on a deserted ship in a trackless ocean. She had no means of leaving the Admiral Pekhard; surely had the steamship not been about to go down, it would not have been abandoned by all—passengers, crew, and officers.

Captain Hastings, the Red Cross officer, even Mr. Dowd, had all quite forgotten her. Her enemies (she must consider Irma Lentz and Dykman personal foes) had made it impossible for her to escape in any of the boats. Perhaps they feared that she knew much more of the plot than she really did know. Therefore their determination to make her escape impossible.

Suddenly she saw a flash of light far out over the sea. It bobbed up and down for several minutes. Then it disappeared. She believed it must be one of the small boats that had got safely away from the Admiral Pekhard. The disappearance of the light seemed to close all communication between the abandoned girl and humankind.

She had dropped her bag. As the steamship rolled gently the bag slid toward the rail. This brought her to sudden activity again. She went to recover the bag. And then she peered over the high rail, down at the phosphorescent surface of the sea.

It did not seem to Ruth as though the Admiral Pekhard had sunk a foot lower than before she left the deck to obtain her possessions. There was something wrong somewhere! Rather, there was something right. The ship was not about to sink. Why, hours had passed since she had fallen and struck her head below near her stateroom! If the ship had been in such danger of sinking when the alarm to take to the boats was given, why was it not already awash by the waves that lapped the sides?

There was some great error. Captain Hastings must have been terribly misled by his officers regarding the condition of the ship. Much as she disliked the pompous little man, she was sure that he would not have knowingly deserted the steamship unless he had been convinced she was going down—and that quickly.

“But Mr. Dowd knew better,” murmured Ruth. “Or he must have suspected there was something wrong. And Mr. Dowd—I do not believe he would have left the ship without making sure that I was safe.”

The thought was so convincing that it bred in her mind another and, she realized, perhaps a ridiculous one. Yet she was so impressed by it that she turned back to the open companionway. She started down into the saloon-cabin. But it was so dark there that she hesitated.

Then, of a sudden, she remembered the pocketlamp that must be in this very toilet-bag she carried. She always tried to have such a thing by her, especially when she traveled. She opened the bag and searched among its contents.

Her hand touched and then brought forth the electric torch. She pressed the switch and the spotlight of the bulb shot right into the face of the great chronometer in its glass case, hanging above the companionway steps.

It was half after nine, and she heard the faint chime of the clock on the instant—three bells. Why! she must have been more than two hours unconscious below. Of course the boats, if they had been rowed at once away from the supposedly sinking ship, would be now quite out of sight. Their lamps were hidden from her sight; and as there were no outside lights on the ship, she would, of course, be invisible to the crews of the small boats.

If the order had been given to make for the nearest point of land, the people who had abandoned the Admiral Pekhard might easily believe the steamship under the sea long since.

This thought was but a flash through her troubled mind. The keener supposition that had urged her below still inspired her. By aid of the hand lamp she could make her path through the cabins. She crossed the dining room and the writing room and library. This way was the opening of the passage on which were the doors of the officers’ cabins.

She reached Dowd’s door. She had been here before; it was she, indeed, who had roused him to the knowledge that the ship was being abandoned. Could it be possible——

She pushed open the door without opposition, for it was unlatched. She shot the spotlight of the hand lamp into the small room. The bed was empty.

Of course, it could not be possible that Mr. Dowd, chief officer of the ship, had been left behind as she had been.

Yet, she could open the door only half way. There was something behind it that acted as a stopper. Ruth peered around the door and at the floor. Her lamp shone upon the unbooted feet of a man. She shot the ray of light along his limbs and body. At the far end, almost against the outside wall of the stateroom, was the turbanned head of First Officer Dowd!

Ruth could scarcely gasp the officer’s name, and in her amazement she removed her thumb from the switch. Her lamp went out. In the darkness she heard Mr. Dowd breathing stertorously. He was, then, not dead!

Ruth Fielding was far too sensible and acute in understanding to be long overwhelmed by any such discovery. Indeed, she felt a certain satisfaction in finding the man here. Even Mr. Dowd, ill and helpless, was better than no companion at all upon the steamship. One fear, at least, immediately rolled off her mind.

Used as she had become to hospital work, she went at once to work upon the victim of this outrage. For at first she thought he must have been injured a second time. Perhaps the man who had stretched that cord to trip her and had shouted to her down the passage, had first overpowered Mr. Dowd.

It proved to be that the man was merely asleep. But he was sleeping very heavily, very unnaturally. Ruth had seen people under the effect of opiates before, and she knew what this meant. The chief officer of the Admiral Pekhard had been drugged.

When she had previously spoken to him and roused him after he was hurt, she remembered now that he had not seemed himself. It was something besides the blow on his head that troubled him. Ruth wondered who had given him the opiate, and in what form.

But of a surety, both the chief officer and she had been deliberately placed in such condition that they could not answer the call to abandon ship! Evil people had been at work here. The conspirators feared that Ruth and Mr. Dowd knew more than they really did know, and they had planned that the two should sink with the Admiral Pekhard.

Only, by the mercy of Providence, or by a vital mistake on the part of the plotters, the steamship did not seem to be on the point of sinking. Ruth believed that that danger was not immediate.

She gave her attention to Mr. Dowd while she was thinking of these facts. She bathed his head and face, slapped his hands, and finally put to his nose strong smelling-salts which she found in her bag. The man stirred, and groaned, and finally opened his eyes.

He seemed to recognize Ruth at once. But the power of the opiate was still upon his brain. He could not quickly shake it off. He struggled to his feet by her aid and by clinging to his berth. He stared at her, groping in his mind for the reason for his situation.

“Miss Fielding!” he muttered. “Yes, yes. I am coming at once. The ship is sinking, you say?”

“Oh, Mr. Dowd! everybody has gone now and left us. We are too late to go in any of the boats. But I do not believe the ship is sinking, after all.”

“They—did they blow it up?” questioned the man, striving to pull himself together. “I—I——Why, Miss Fielding, what is the matter with me? I must have neglected my duty shamefully. Captain Hastings——”

“He has gone without us. Certainly he did not strive to be sure that everybody was off the ship before he left. He evidently must have left it to his subordinates to do that. And I am sure they were not all trustworthy.”

She swiftly repeated her own experience. The bruise gained by her fall over the taut cord was quite visible on her forehead. But the smart of it Ruth did not mind now. There were many other things of more importance.

“It looks like treachery all the way through,” groaned Mr. Dowd. “I remember now. I fell down the companionway—and I could not understand why, for the ship was not rolling. You say you suspect Dykman? So do I. He was right there when I fell, and it seemed to me afterward that I was tripped by something at the top of the steps.

“But I was so confused—why, yes, you came and aroused me once, did you not, Miss Fielding?”

“Yes. Somebody must have given you an opiate. Who bandaged your head, Mr. Dowd?” she asked.

“The surgeon. He was here and fixed me up. He—he gave me a drink that he said would fix me all right.”

“It did,” the girl returned grimly. “It may have been he meant you no harm. Possibly he thought a long sleep was what you needed. But, then, why did he not remember you when the ship was abandoned? He must have known you would be helpless.”

“It seems strange,” admitted Mr. Dowd. “Kreuger is the surgeon’s name. Of course, the name smacks of Germany. But—but if we are going to distrust everybody with a German name, where shall we be?”

“Safer, perhaps,” Ruth said, with rather grim lips. “In this case, at least, the doctor seems to have done quite as the conspirators would have had him. They plainly feared that both you and I suspected too much, and they did not intend that we should escape from this ship.”

“Come!” he said, having struggled into his vest and coat and seized his uniform cap. “Let us go up on deck and see what the promise is. Here! I will light this lantern; that will give us a steadier light than your torch.

“I am glad you are such a plucky young woman, Miss Fielding,” he added, as he lit his lantern. “One need not be afraid of being wrecked in mid-ocean with you. We’ll find some way of escape from this old barge, never fear.”

Thus speaking cheerfully, he led the way out of the room and into the open cabins of the saloon deck. Ruth followed, glad enough to give up the leadership to him.

CHAPTER XVI—ON THE EDGE OF TRAGEDY

“She does not roll as though she was waterlogged in any degree. Nor can I see that she has any pitch, either to bow or stern. If the explosion was amidships—and you say it was in the fireroom—I doubt if a hole torn in the outside of the ship would sink her.

“You see, the engine room and boilers are shut off from the rest of the ship, both fore and aft, by water-tight bulkheads. If these were closed when the accident occurred, or soon after, that middle compartment might fill—up to a certain point—and that would be all. She could not take in enough water to sink her by such means.”

“But one would think Captain Hastings—or the engineer—or somebody—would have discovered the truth,” Ruth said, in doubt.

“You’d think so,” admitted Mr. Dowd. “But there was a great deal of excitement, without doubt. If the water rushed in and put out the fires, and the place filled with steam, until that steam cleared the situation must have looked much worse than it really was.

“You see the ship was abandoned so quickly, that I doubt if the engineers could have learned just how serious the danger was. They must all have been panic-stricken.”

“Your Captain Hastings as well,” said Ruth scornfully.

“I am afraid so,” admitted the chief officer. “But the captain must have been misled by the under officers. I do not believe he showed the white feather. He had the responsibility of the passengers—especially of those wounded—on his mind. We must give him credit for making a clean get-away,” and in the lantern-light Ruth saw that he smiled.

“I hope they are all safe,” she responded reflectively. “The poor things! To have to drift about in open boats all night!”

“We are not far from land, of course,” said Mr. Dowd. “And it is a wonder that one of the patrol boats has not crossed our track. Hold on!”

“Yes?” said the startled young woman.

“What about the radio? Didn’t they send a wireless? Couldn’t they have called for help?”

“Oh, I never thought of the wireless at all,” Ruth confessed. “And I am sure it was not used at first—not while I was on deck.”

“Strange! With two operators—Rollife and an assistant—how could they neglect such a chance?”

“I heard nothing about it,” repeated Ruth.

“Come on. Let’s look and see,” said the chief officer of the steamship. “Something is dead wrong here. Sparks surely would not have left his post unless the radio had completely broken down. Why, if we could manipulate the radio we’d call for help now—you and I, Miss Fielding.”

He led the way swiftly along the deck. The radio station had been built into the forward house, for the Admiral Pekhard was an old steamship, her keel having been laid long before Marconi made his dream come true.

The staff from which the antennae were strung shot up into the darkness farther than they could well see. There was a single small window far up on either side of the house for circulation of air only. There seemed to be no life about the radio room.

Mr. Dowd tried the door. It did not yield. He shook it—or tried to—crying:

“Sparks! Sparks! Hey! Where are you?”

He was answered by a voice from inside the radio room. It was not a pleasant voice, and the words it first uttered were not polite, to say the least. The man inside ended by demanding:

“What in the name of Mike was meant by locking me into this room?”

“Great Land!” gasped Dowd. “It’s Rollife himself.”

“And you know darned well it’s Rollife,” pursued the radio man. “Let me come out!” and he went on to roll out threats that certainly were not meant for Ruth’s ears.

But to let the man out of his prison was not easy. Dowd found that two long spikes had been driven through the door and frame above and below the doorknob. He was some time in getting Rollife to listen to this explanation.

“Who is it? Dowd?” demanded the angry radio man at last.

“Yes,” replied the first officer. “Who did this?”

Whoever it was who pinned the man into the room was threatened with a good many unpleasant happenings during the next few moments. Finally Dowd’s voice penetrated to the operator’s ears again.

“Hold your horses! There’s a lady here. How shall I get you out, Sparks?”

“I don’t give a hang how you do it,” snarled the other. “But I want you to do it mighty quick—and then lead me to the man who nailed me up.”

“Wait,” said Dowd. “I’ll get a screwdriver and take off the hinges of the door. Then you can push outwards.”

“What the deuce has happened, anyway?” demanded Rollife, as the first officer of the Admiral Pekhard started away.

Ruth thought she would better answer before the imprisoned radio man broke out afresh. She told him simply what had happened, and why it had happened, as she presumed.

“It was Dykman nailed me up—the cur!” growled the radio man. “Then he monkeyed with the wires outside there. He put the radio out of commission, all right. That was before the explosion. My door was nailed almost on the very minute the old ship was hit. But why doesn’t she sink?”

“I do not believe she is going to sink, Mr. Rollife,” said Ruth. “Oh, if you could only repair your aerial wires, you might call for help!”

“Let me out of here,” growled the radio operator, “and I’ll find some way of sending an S O S—don’t fear!”

Mr. Dowd came back from the engine room where he had secured a screwdriver. He set to work removing the screws from the hinges of the radio room door.

“I do not believe that the explosion caused any serious damage to the ship itself,” said he. “The fireroom is full of water; but it looks to me as though a seacock had been opened. I think the explosion was on the inside—a bomb thrown into one of the fires, perhaps.”

“What’s that you say?” demanded Rollife, from inside the room. “No likelihood of the old tub sinking?”

“Not at all! Not at all!”

“Well, I certainly am relieved,” said the radio man. “I’ve been conjuring up all kinds of horrors in here.”

“Huh!” exploded Dowd. “You were asleep till I pounded on the door.”

“Oh, well, maybe I lost myself for a moment,” confessed Rollife. “Anyhow, I made up my mind I was done for when I could make nobody listen to me after my door was nailed. They certainly had it in for me.”

“Where was your assistant?” Dowd asked.

“That fellow is a squarehead,” growled the radio man. “I suspected him from the start. Why, he couldn’t talk American without saying ‘already yet.’ A Hun, sure as shooting.”

That Rollife himself came from the United States there could be no doubt. His speech fully betrayed his nationality.

“He never came near me,” he went on, speaking of his assistant. “He was some ‘ham,’ anyway! Graduate of one of these correspondence schools of telegraphy, I guess. His Morse was enough to drive one mad. Let me out, Dowd. I’ll fix up those aerials and call somebody to our help in short order.”

The first officer had accomplished his purpose. The screws were out of the hinges. Rollife was a big, strong fellow, and he drove his shoulder against the door with sufficient force the first time to push it outward at the back.

Then Mr. Dowd took hold of the edge of the door, and together they worked out the long nails and threw the useless door on the deck. Rollife came out into the light of the lantern which Ruth held at one side. He was a big, fresh-faced man with a square jaw and a direct glance.

Ruth was glad to see him. He was such another man as the first officer of the steamship. If she had to be aboard an abandoned craft in such an emergency as this, she was glad that her companions were just such men as these two. She felt that they were resourceful and trustworthy.

Her mind, however, was by no means at ease. Mr. Dowd and Mr. Rollife were much more cheerful than Ruth. And it was not because they were any more courageous than the girl of the Red Mill. But Ruth thought of something that did not seem to have made any impression on the men’s minds.

What had been the intention of the conspirators in abandoning the ship with the innocent members of her company? What would naturally be their expectation regarding the Admiral Pekhard, if she had not been put in condition to sink? If it was a German plot, surely the plotters did not intend to leave the steamship to drift, unharmed, until some patrol boat picked her up.

And the plotters knew the three castaways were on the vessel. What of the chief officer, the radio man, and Ruth herself? They had all been left for some purpose, that was sure. What was it?

Mr. Dowd and she had been allowed their freedom. Only Rollife had been locked up. And the plotters must have known that in time Ruth or Dowd would have found means of releasing the radio man. Once released, it was more than probable Rollife would be able to discover what had been done to the aerials and repair them. It was quite sure that, before morning, those abandoned on the Admiral Pekhard would be able to send into the air an S O S for help.

There was something that she could not understand—something back of, and deeper, than the surface-work of the plotters. Perhaps that explosion in the fireroom had not been meant to injure the ship seriously. It was merely meant (as it did) to create panic.

It caused a situation serious enough to alarm the captain and all aboard. It seemed that all they could do was to flee from a ship that threatened to sink.

This situation might have been just what the plotters intended to create; because they would not wish to remain on the steamship when actual destruction was coming upon her!

They had escaped with the other members of the ship’s company. Yet the steamship drifted in apparent safety. Was there something much more tragic threatening the Admiral Pekhard?