CHAPTER XVIII.
“SAFE AS IN A STEEL-LINED VAULT.”
Whatever the future may hold in store for them, it is doubtful if either Ned or Channing Lockyer will ever forget the moment that they met on that sandy beach, surrounded in the darkness by wicked and desperate men. The surprise, however, was all on the side of the inventor. His first impulse, as his eyes fell on the bound form and he recognized it, was to give a shout of joy. His next, however, was one of regret that another should have been dragged in to share his predicament. He had no idea, of course, how the Dreadnought Boy came to be there, nor had he an opportunity to inquire.
Before a word could be exchanged between these two so strangely met, they were hustled into a small flat-bottomed boat lying on the shore, and rapidly sculled off to a long, low-lying black motor-boat which lay at anchor a short distance off shore. Once on board, the tender was at once taken in tow, the anchor hauled up, and, rapidly as a water snake, the gasoline-driven craft glided off into the darkness. Whither they were bound Ned had not the slightest idea. Only one thing was in his mind. That was a feeling of gladness that he was at least near to Channing Lockyer, and that helpless as he was at the moment, he might yet be able to render him some service, for Ned was not a lad whose spirits were easily downed. Otherwise, bound and helpless as he was, and in the hands of men whom he knew had every reason to hate him, he would have had good cause for apprehension.
How long it was before the motor craft stopped, Ned had no idea, but he knew by the lessening vibration of her engines that she was coming to a stop. Presently he heard her fenders scrape as she was run alongside a wharf. Then he was lifted up once more and carried swiftly along a small landing place and hustled off into the darkness. That they were crossing sand, he knew by the noiseless progress of the two who were conveying him.
All at once the dark outlines of a building of some sort loomed up in front of him. But before he had time to take his bearings or get the least idea of where he was, Gradbarr, who had hold of his feet, dropped them and ran swiftly forward. Ned heard the sound of a door of some kind being slammed open.
Then Gradbarr came back and picked up his feet once more.
“Now then, in with him,” he heard Camberly say, and before he had time to utter a cry, for, of course, it was impossible for him to move, Ned felt himself being held above a black pit—as it looked. The next instant he was dropped, into what abyss he knew not. A cry rang from his lips, but was stifled the next instant as he felt himself plunging down upon a floor, which, to his astonishment, was soft and yielding.
“Sand!” thought the boy.
For one brief instant he could see, through the still open trap door above him, the bright gleam of the stars. The next moment, with an ominous crash, the door fell, blotting out the sky and leaving him in utter darkness. He heard a dull clanking of metal. Evidently his captors were securing the door from the outside. Then came a burst of smothered laughter from above, which made Ned’s blood boil. This was succeeded by absolute silence.
Before long, however, he heard footsteps above him. They rang hollowly, as if on a wooden floor.
“Hum, so I’m in a cellar,” thought Ned, “and I’ll bet the hole out of a doughnut that it’s the cellar of that bungalow I heard those rascals talking about while I lay hidden in the automobile. I wish to goodness I’d stayed there a while longer. I might have been of more help to Mr. Lockyer.”
Some men, and most boys of Ned’s age, finding themselves in pitch darkness, bound hand and foot and without the least idea of where they were save that they were in the hands of bad men, would have given way to despair. But this was not the way with the Dreadnought Boy. For one thing, his navy training had borne fruit in giving him unusual self-reliance, a feeling that one of Uncle Sam’s men must never give up the ship, not even when he feels her reeling and sinking beneath his feet. This feeling in great or less measure is in every heart that beats under a navy uniform, and it’s a mighty good insurance for the country that it is so.
“Well,” thought Ned to himself, “for apparent hopelessness this reminds me of that time we were all in that prison in Costaveza expecting to be shot. But we got out of that and maybe I’ll find a way out of this yet. But I must confess that it looks as if Gradbarr and Co. rather has it on me for the present, at any rate.”
He wiggled a hand, but if he had hoped to find any slack in his ropes he was disappointed. The same test applied to the ropes confining his lower limbs had no other result.
For some time he lay there in the darkness thinking up a dozen schemes to escape, all of which looked good at first, but each proved to be impossible of execution after a moment’s thought had been devoted to them.
“Wow! as Herc would say,” thought Ned. “It begins to look as if I was up against it as never before since our naval career began. I wonder what the other fellows are doing? They may have tried to trace the auto, but even if they succeed in finding it, it won’t do me any good. They’d never guess that those chaps had a motor boat.”
Suddenly he heard voices above him. Evidently the men who had captured them had come out of the house.
“I guess they’ve imprisoned Lockyer up there,” thought Ned. “Well, they certainly had their plans well laid for carrying out their campaign. Hullo! what’s that they’re saying?”
He listened attentively.
“Oh, they’re safe enough,” came in Gradbarr’s voice. “That kid in the cellar will keep till Christmas, and as for that milksop inventor, what the bag began that sleeping stuff you gave him will complete. Come on you’re as safe to take a run ashore as if we had them both locked up in a steel-lined safe deposit vault.”
“That’s no dream,” thought Ned.
“Well, I guess you’re right, Gradbarr,” replied Ferriss’s voice, “and, as you say, we’ve got to put back to shore and pick up Anderson——”
“Oh-ho, so he’s in this, too!” exclaimed Ned to himself. “What a choice collection of worthies.”
“Yes, you’d better come along, Ferriss,” urged Camberly. “Gradbarr will have to take the auto back to town. And in the event of trouble the three of us will be none too many.”
“You think, then, that that boy’s companions may have followed the car?”
“I don’t think it’s likely, but still they may have. There is no doubt in my mind, since we discovered that young Strong was hiding under the seat all the time, that the whole gang of them was on shore.”
This came from Gradbarr.
“But how on earth did they discover our plan to kidnap Lockyer?” protested Ferriss.
“Search me,” rejoined Gradbarr. “It’s enough for me that they did. If we had not got away when we did, we’d have had the whole hornet’s nest about our ears. As it is, once we’ve got Anderson safely off shore, no one will be the wiser.”
“Right you are,” chuckled Ferriss, seemingly much relieved. “I hope Anderson did a good job on capsizing that boat. It’s important that his friends should imagine that Lockyer is drowned. And, as I was saying——”
But here the voices, which for some seconds had been diminishing in volume, died away altogether. Ned realized that the men had deemed it safe for them all to leave the island and were now on their way to the boat.
“Now if I only could get free of these ropes,” he muttered, “I could do a whole lot of surprising things before they get back.”
The thought that, were it not for his bonds he could be free and at work to save them both, rendered Ned almost desperate. He thrashed about wildly, rolling hither and thither in a frantic attempt to somehow loosen the knots that bound him. But Gradbarr had worked around shipyards too long not to be able to tie a knot that would hold. The ropes did not yield the fraction of an inch. On the contrary, they began to cut into Ned’s flesh and pain him intensely.
All at once, as he rolled, something struck his right hand, and a sharp thrill of pain shot through him.
“Ouch!” he exclaimed, “there’s something sharp in the sand. Feels like I’d given myself a bad cut.”
He lay still, then, and as he gave over his mad threshings about, he could feel the warm blood trickling from the cut that he had received from the sharp object, whatever it was. All at once, however, a thought shot through him that speedily banished all idea of pain or sense of injury.
If that object, lying half-buried in the sand, was sharp enough to cut his hand, surely it was sharp enough to sever his ropes!
With wildly throbbing pulses and a heart that beat as if it would choke him, Ned began tumbling about again. But his rollings and heavings had a definite object now—to locate again the sharp thing that had cut him. He was about despairing of finding it when, all at once, he felt something grate against the taut ropes at his wrist. Rolling over till his weight bore down on the object he had encountered, the Dreadnought Boy swayed his body as much as he could, so as to chafe the rope. Once, twice, thrice, he wriggled, and then—oh glory!—he felt the rope part with a quick snap.
An instant later he had a hand loose and was rapidly uncoiling the long rope wrapped about him. Another five minutes and he was free, but oh how stiff! Pins and needles shot through his limbs. He felt quite sick and faint as he stood upright.
“Here, this won’t do,” he thought; “I’ve only got a short time to act in, and I’ll have to make the best of it.”
He fell to chafing his stiff limbs, and soon had the blood comfortably circulating.
“Wonder what that was that so providentially gave me a cut fist and then set me free?” mused the lad, feeling about in the sand as he waited the moment when he could stir without excruciating pain. He soon found it, the broken end of a bottle. Evidently, when the cellar had been made, the glass object had been left in the sand. If ever there was an instrument of providence, that broken glass bottle had proved itself to be the article.
“I feel like having you mounted in gold,” said Ned to himself, as he ran his fingers over it in the darkness.
As his stiffness vanished, Ned rapidly became a very much animated young prisoner. Feeling his way in the darkness, he soon came to a flight of steps. These, he surmised readily enough, led upward to the door through which he had been tumbled so unceremoniously. But a short examination sufficed to show him that it would be impossible to make an exit that way. It was, evidently, clamped too firmly on the outside for it to be a feasible project to open it.
Rather cast down at this discovery, for somehow he had calculated on getting out that way, Ned started a systematic round of the cellar. It was walled with rough stone, against which he groped in the darkness as he went round it. All at once, his hands encountered an empty space. By dint of feeling he could make out that the wall at that point was built in a U-shape, as if it had been intended to make a chimney or a fireplace there.
Hardly had he made this discovery before Ned found out something else.
This was, that by gazing upward he could feel a cool breeze in his face. Presently, far above him he saw the glimmer of stars.
“Hooray!” cried the boy; “that looks good. Now, let’s see, I must be at the bottom of a chimney of some kind. Maybe it has an opening into one of the rooms of the house above. At any rate, it may be possible to climb up it—it’s wide enough. Here goes for a try, anyhow.”