Jack came to himself lying on a rocky couch. For a few moments his brain refused to work. He did not comprehend where he was or what had happened. He felt stiff and sore and his head ached intolerably.
Then memory came back with a rush. He recalled the darkened hut where he had drunk the supposedly innocent cola and then, but very vaguely, the sensation of being placed in a rig and experiencing a desire to call for help without being able to raise his voice.
But where was he now?
He looked about him. He lay at the bottom of a steep walled pit, apparently hewn by man or nature out of the solid rock. The walls shot up sheer and smooth to a height of at least thirty feet. The bottom of this pit was about forty or fifty feet in circumference.
Beside him was a big canteen of water and some food. He noticed something around his shoulders, something that passed under his armpits. It was a rope about forty feet long. So, then, he had been lowered into this pit by somebody. But by whom?
His mind reverted to Cummings. Jack was tolerably certain now that he had been drugged by his crafty enemy, but he could not bring himself to believe that Cummings’ mind had plotted the bold stroke by which he had been marooned in this pit. Some master wit had contrived that.
Jack’s head swam as he began to sense the full horror of his situation. He did not even know how long he had been there. He looked at his watch. The hands pointed to three o’clock. He had wound the watch in the morning, so it was clear that it was the same day as the one on which he had entered Mother Jenny’s place with Cummings.
He rose dizzily to his feet and, steadying himself with one hand against the rock walls, looked about him with greater minuteness. Far above was the blue dome of the sky and at the top of those walls lay freedom. But he might as well have been in China for all the good it did him. He was cut off from his friends as effectually as if on the other side of the globe.
Naturally, too, he had not the slightest idea on what part of the island the pit was located. There was nothing to indicate where it was. Jack was not a lad who easily lost heart, but his present position was almost unbearable.
Unless rescuers came to his aid, and it seemed hardly likely that anyone could penetrate to such a place without a guide, he was doomed to a miserable death. He flung himself down on the rocky floor of the pit in an agony of despair. His despondency lasted for some minutes, and then, resolutely pulling himself together, Jack sprang to his feet.
“I won’t give up! I won’t!” he said, gritting his teeth. “There must be some way out of this.”
He took a pull at the canteen and ate some of the bread and meat. Then he began a systematic tour of exploration of his place of captivity. It was so nearly perfectly circular in form that he was sure that human hands had fashioned it.
In places in the walls were fastened iron rings that had mouldered away with the ages till they were as thin as wire. In ancient days, though Jack did not know it, the cruel old Don’s victims were tied to these, to be devoured by the lions from which the pit took its name.
In one place a creeper hung temptingly down. But its extremity dangled fully four feet above the boy’s head, and although Jack could have climbed on it to freedom had he been able to gain it, he knew that such a feat was out of the question.
All at once, though, he saw something that sent the blood of hope singing through his veins.
On the side of the pit opposite to that on which he found himself on his first awakening from his coma, was a big fissure in the wall. A ragged rent, it ran from top to bottom of the rock wall like a scar on a duelist’s face.
It was apparently the work of an earthquake; perhaps the one that had devastated Kingston had caused it. At any rate, there it was, and to Jack, in his desperate condition, it offered a chance of escape.
True, for all he knew, he might, by entering it, be embarking upon worse perils than the ones he now faced, but at any rate it was an avenue to possible liberty and he determined to take full advantage of it.
In his pocket Jack had plenty of matches and the small electric torch that he used in making examinations of the more intricate parts of the wireless apparatus. He stuffed all the bread and meat he could inside his coat, slung the canteen over his shoulder and was ready to start on an adventure that would end he knew not how, but which he had sternly made up his mind to attempt.
As a last thought he coiled up the rope by which he had been lowered into the pit and laid it over his arm. Then he plunged into the deep fissure. For some distance it was open to the sky above, but after some time it closed in and became a tunnel.
At this point, Jack hesitated. The darkness beyond appalled even his stout heart. He knew not what lay within, what perils might face him. For several moments he stood there hesitant; but finally he took heart of grace and, gripping his electric torch, plunged into the black mouth of the tunnel.
The passage, for such it was, through which Jack was now advancing, was swept by a wind of such violence that at times it almost lifted the boy from his feet.
But this Jack regarded as a good omen. He knew that there must be some opening in this bore of nature’s making to cause the great draught. He was glad he had his electric torch. No other light could have remained burning in the fierce gale.
The walls were of black rock, and the electric torch gleaming on them was flashed back in spangled radiance from some sort of ore it contained. In places, the tunnel contracted till it was only possible for the boy to progress by bending double. Again it broadened out till he could only touch the roof with his finger tips.
Suddenly he heard ahead of him a roaring sound like a water fall. Pressing on with a beating heart, lest he should find his further progress barred, Jack found himself facing a fair sized chamber, from the roof of which a cascade was falling. The boy guessed that he must be beneath the bed of some river and that the water was pouring into the cavern from a fissure in the rocky roof.
It was a beautiful sight, but he had no time to stop and admire it. He must push on. He left the cavern and the singing waterfall behind him, and once more battled with the mighty wind that swept through the bore.
The walls began to grow damp now and it was almost as cold as if a heavy frost had fallen. Jack shuddered and drew his coat close around him. He tried to calculate how far he had come, but the bore had made so many twistings and windings that he found it impossible to estimate.
His limbs felt tired and his eyes ached, but he kept on stubbornly.
“I’ve started this thing and I’m going to see it through,” he said doggedly to himself.
And now the passage began to grow narrower. Jack felt the walls closing in on him as if with intent to crush out his life. The passage began to slope steeply and it was hard to keep a footing on the wet floor.
All at once the boy stumbled and slipped. He almost fell headlong, but recovered himself with an effort. In front of him he could hear a mighty roaring sound. The wind, too, was stronger and seemed damper than it had further back. It smelled as if impregnated with salt.
Jack gave another stumble on the uneven floor. This time he did not recover himself, but pitched headlong. And then——
He was in the water. It filled his ears, drowning all sounds. He rose to the surface battling desperately, all senses dormant but the frantic desire to live.
He dashed the water from his eyes. He spat it from his mouth. It was salt and must come from the sea. Wave after wave swept toward him and under each of them he dived.
He soon realized that his fight for life was well-nigh hopeless, but he struggled as men will when death stares them in the face, for life is never sweeter than when it seems to be slipping from our grasp.
Weaker and weaker he felt himself growing. A sort of lethargy crept over him. He didn’t care much longer. His limbs were numbed and chilled. The waves swept down on him, each gleefully following its predecessor, as if they were determined to end Jack’s life in this cavern of the seas.
At last he felt himself uplifted on the crest of a gigantic comber and carried helplessly into the maw of that black gullet.
“It’s the end,” he thought.
But still the instinct of life was strong in his battered body. His outflung hand caught a projecting scrap of rock in a drowning grip and clung there, despite the efforts of the wave to tear him loose. It was more blind instinct than human reason that sustained him as the wave swept on into the dark cavern, thundering against its sides like a train passing through a tunnel.
His outflung hand caught a projecting scrap of rock.
He found himself hanging to the side of a jagged crack that slanted across the rock high up on the side of the cavern. Into it he managed to jam himself, and then he hung there, too exhausted to move hand or foot, waiting for the next wave to tear him from his precarious hold.
How long he hung there he never knew. Wave after wave came racing by, reaching up watery fingers to tear him from his haven. But he had jammed himself too securely into the providential rift in the rock to be easily dislodged.
Hope began to dawn in his mind once more, despite his position. He mentally cast up what had occurred since that disastrous tumble in the passage. It was plain enough that the bore in the rock opened on this cavern where the salt seas swept and raved. The cave, then, must be connected with the sea. Jack’s reasoning was right. By an extraordinary chance, he was in the cave which Jarrold had told Cummings existed far under the ruins of the old Don’s castle.
The boy had lost his rope and his electric torch and he was soaked through and through. But the canteen of water still hung round his neck. Safe for the time being, he began to cast about for some means of extricating himself from his position, but his heart sank as he realized the full hopelessness of his predicament.
The necessity for action became imperative. If he stayed cramped and wet in that position much longer, there was grave danger that he would lose the power of locomotion altogether. He could not tell how far up the crack ascended, and, of course, since he had lost his torch he had no means of lighting up the gloom, for his matches, like the bread and meat with which he had stuffed his pockets, were soaked through.
He began to climb, moving painfully forward perhaps an inch at a time. For about fifteen feet he crawled, clinging with fingers and toes. It was heart-breaking work and anyone with a less stout heart than Jack Ready would have given it up and lain down to die where they were.
But Jack was made of sterner stuff. He wormed his way forward, and found suddenly that the crack widened. Then he struck his head violently against the cavern roof.
The crack continued to widen, though, till it was possible for him to crawl into it. But the jagged edges of rock cut and tore his hands and face unmercifully.
Once within the crack, he lay still, panting. It hardly seemed worth while to go further, after all. Would it not be better to die there in the darkness without further effort? There was not the remotest probability that he was nearing a way out of the cavern, and to follow the crack further was labor lost.
Thus he meditated as he stretched himself out to rest. But when he had recovered his breath, love of life reasserted itself.
He would keep on. At any rate, one thing was certain: he could never get back now. Death lay behind him in all its grimness. Ahead, at least, there was the unknown with a fighting chance—one chance in a thousand—in his favor.
Desperately, then, he struggled on, writhing between the narrow walls. He felt as if the whole weight of a mountain was upon him, crushing his ribs, driving the breath out of his body. The darkness was so dense that it could be felt enveloping him like a velvety pall of blackness.
Again and again he thought himself stuck fast, doomed to an eternal grave in the secret bowels of the earth. But every time he managed to wiggle through the tight place and gain another that was not quite so constricted.
But it was heart-breaking work at best. Then all at once the crack widened very noticeably. Cautiously he drew himself to his feet. He judged that he was standing on a shoulder or ledge of rock, but of course, in the inky darkness, he had no means of knowing.
It was at least good to be able to stand up and feel no longer the crushing of the rock walls, like those of a living tomb.
After a little he began to move along, taking care, however, to keep close to the wall, for he did not know how wide the ledge, as he judged it, might be. For perhaps a hundred yards he progressed thus. Always before he took a step he reached out with one foot before him, fearing to encounter vacancy.
Suddenly he found he was on the edge of a void, and shrank back, clinging to the wall with the desperation of fear. It was some seconds before he dared to move again. He could feel the sweat rolling off him, the cold, pricking sweat of fright.
By a supreme effort he mastered himself. He found a loose bit of rock at his feet. Cautiously he cast it into the darkness in front of him. There was a long silence, and then, as if from miles away, came a tiny tinkle.
Jack shuddered.
He had narrowly escaped pitching head first into a bottomless abyss. He carefully retraced his way down the ledge. Suddenly his feeling fingers discovered another crack. This one ran vertically upward like a chimney, almost, at least so far as he could determine by the sense of touch.
A wild hope surged over him. This crack perhaps ran up to the surface of the earth! Recalling an old school-boy trick, he “spreadeagled” himself into the crack. He reached out his hands to either side of the “chimney” and lifted himself a little.
Then he wedged his toes in either side. Thus he painstakingly mounted, praying within himself that the walls of this natural shaft might not widen and make further progress impossible.
It was terribly slow work, though. Time and again he was on the point of giving up, but always the tough spirit of his indomitable old sea-faring ancestors kept him at his task.
Foot by foot he toiled upward, till he estimated he had climbed some thirty feet. And then suddenly: Light! The blessed light of day! High above it was, but unmistakably the light of the outside world was streaming into this hideous subterranean chamber. It gleamed down into the shaft he was painfully ascending, shining like a blessed beacon of hope. It appeared to filter through some sort of net-work of greenery.
Wild with hope, he climbed on till at last he burst his way through a canopy of creepers and vines that obscured the mouth of the natural shaft. He clambered out beneath the blessed sky. As he fell exhausted, prone on the rocks, he heard a cry.
It was his own name!
But for the life of him he could not answer. He could only lie there without thought or motion.
The statement of De Garros concerning his chum struck Sam like a blow between the eyes. Of course he did not place the slightest belief in the Frenchman’s words, but he was sorely puzzled and perplexed.
“Where was this place?” he demanded.
“If you will come with me, I will show you,” said De Garros, linking the boy’s arm in his own. “How sorry I am that I did not accompany him myself! But I thought, I sincerely thought, that he was in good hands.”
“Who was this fellow that was with him,” demanded Sam.
“I don’t know. I didn’t notice particularly. It was no one I had ever seen before.”
“What did he look like?”
“As I told you, I did not pay him the attention that I should had I known things were going to turn out like this. He wore a big sun helmet, if that will afford you any clew.”
They were walking through the streets now toward the hut of Mother Jenny.
Sam suddenly stopped short and struck his forehead with his hand, as if striving to recollect something. Then he shouted:
“Why, why, it was a young man with a sun helmet who was talking to Jarrold at the hotel this morning.”
“So?” exclaimed the Frenchman. “Can this be more of that rascal’s villainy? Has he got a finger in this?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” declared Sam vehemently. “He hates Jack, and with good cause from his point of view, for Jack checkmated several of his schemes.”
“In Paris and again here, Jarrold,” muttered De Garros to himself, as if recalling some latent memory. “Some day, my friend, you will meet your reckoning.”
“You knew Jarrold abroad?” asked Sam.
“I knew him, yes. I was his victim, almost—but let us talk no more of this. Let us hurry to the place where I last saw Jack Ready.”
When they reached the hut with its palm thatch and untidy garden, Sam gave a gesture of disgust.
“And this is the place you saw Jack being helped out of?” he asked.
“It is, my friend.”
“I cannot think that he would ever have come to such a hovel of his own free will.”
“Possibly not. But you are confronted with the fact that he was here.”
“That is true. Let us ask that old hag in the doorway what she knows.”
They approached old Mother Jenny, who had hobbled to the doorway and stood watching them out of her bloodshot old eyes, puffing the while reflectively at a home-made cigar, as if ruminating on what the strangers wanted.
“We came to inquire about two young men who were here this morning,” began Sam.
The old woman’s voice rose to a shrill scream.
“What I know ’bout dem, buckra?” (White man.) “Dey come. Dey drink de cola an’ den dey pay and go. I know nothing mo’.”
“She’s lying,” whispered De Garros to Sam.
“Who was the hackman who drove them away?” demanded Sam.
The old woman started, but swiftly recovered her composure, if such it could be called, and flourished her stick wildly.
“Tell you what, buckra,” she yelled; “you go ’way. No bodder me no mo’. Me, Mother Jenny,’ ’spectable woman. Wha’ yo’ t’ink, buckra, yo’ fren’ come to harm by my place?”
“I didn’t say so. I merely asked the name of the hackman who drove them away?”
Sam knew how important it was to keep his temper with the old crone.
“How much it wort’ yo’ fo’ me to impart dat imflumation?” asked the old woman, leering hideously through a cloud of smoke she blew out of her wrinkled old lips.
“I’ll pay you well for it,” struck in De Garros, who had cabled for and received a large remittance. Poor Sam was almost “broke.”
“Fi’ dollar?”
De Garros nodded. The old hag stretched out a shriveled claw.
“Gib me de money, buckra,” she croaked; “gib me de money here in dis hand.”
“There you are,” said De Garros with a gesture of disgust and annoyance.
The aged crone burst into a scream of wild laughter. She shook with mirth and then shrilled out in her high, cracked voice:
“He drove a brown horse, dat’s all I know. Now go look fo’ him yo’ ownselves!”
It was useless to try to recover the money, and the two friends had to walk off minus five dollars and followed by the derisive laughter of the hag.
“At all events, she gave us one clew,” said Sam hopefully; “the man drove a brown horse. We must look for every driver in Kingston with a brown horse.”
“As it so happens,” commented De Garros, “that is no clew at all, for I happened to notice that the equine in question was a white one.”
“Better still. A white horse should be easier to run down than a brown one,” declared Sam. “Hullo, there goes one now!”
They halted the driver, but he declared he knew nothing of the matter, having been out in the suburbs all the morning.
“Oh, well, there must be other white horses,” said Sam, as the man drove off and they turned to take up the quest afresh.
“I believe, too, I’d remember the driver if I saw him again,” said De Garros.
“Better and better. I’ll bet we’ll have good old Jack back with us before night,” declared Sam hopefully. “At all events, we’ve got something to work on now.”
“That’s so,” agreed De Garros. “But if we’ve got to interview every owner of a white horse in Kingston, we’ve got our work cut out for us.”
“I don’t care how hard I work, so long as we can find some trace of Jack,” declared Sam positively.
An aged negro driving a dejected-looking white horse jogged by. The horse was plastered with dust till it was difficult to decide on what his real color might be.
Sam stopped De Garros by a tug at the arm.
“Stop that fellow,” he said; “there’s another white horse.”
But oddly enough it was the darky who pulled up without any admonition to stop. He checked his aged beast and addressed De Garros.
“’Pears ter me lak you am de party wot addressed dat young man wot was a-helpin’ an-nudder gen’mun inter mah equipage dis mawn-in’?” he said.
“That’s right!” cried De Garros. “You’re the man we’ve been looking high and low for. Where did you take him?”
“’Bout five miles out down de Castle Road, ’Busha,’” said the old man.
“Five miles out down the road?”
“Yas, Busha, an’ den dey takes him an’ puts him in an awfulmobile and runs off wid him. Ah t’inks to myself dat ain’ des right. When Ah gets back to town, Ah’s goin’ to hunt up dat gen’muns wot spoke to him dis mawnin’ and acquaint him with de circumplexes.”
“Great Scott! This is a clew, indeed. Do you know where they were going to take him?” choked out Sam.
“Yas, Busha. I hear dem say de Lion’s Mouf.”
“The Lion’s Mouth!”
“Dat’s right, massa. De Lion’s Mouf ol’ time name fo’ a mighty big hole in de groun’ out at ol’ Don Pedro’s Castle. Don’ nobody hardly never go dar. White folks don’ know ’bout it. Niggers all scared ob dere bein’ a ghos’. Ah was dere once when Ah was lil’ an’ dat’s all I know ’bout it.”
De Garros, with the excitable nature of his race, was hopping about from foot to foot. As the old negro finished speaking, he burst out:
“Do you want to make some money?”
The old man’s eyes popped out of his head. Here was another chance to make money. Things were coming his way. But he deemed it well to be prudent.
“Oh, as ter dat, I ain’t particular. Ah’m right tired an’——”
“Put your horse in the stable and meet us here in half an hour. It will be worth your while. I want you to guide us to the Lion’s Mouth.”
“Berry well, Busha. Ah’ll jes’ put up ole Whitey, he’s nigh tired out, an’ Ah’ll be right back.”
“Good; hurry. Now, then, Sam——”
“Where are you going?” demanded Sam, carried off his feet by the volcanic activity of the young Frenchman. “What are you going to do now?”
“Get about a mile of rope and then charter the fastest auto they’ve got in this town,” was the reply.
“Then you think——”
“I don’t think, I know, that in revenge for his activities against him, Jarrold has tried to wreak a hideous vengeance on Jack.”
“In the Lion’s Mouth?”
“I don’t know. I surmise so. But let’s waste no time here in speculation. Get two hundred feet of the best manila rope you can buy. In the mean time I’ll charter a car. Then we’ll pick up old Black Strap and drive at top speed for the Lion’s Mouth.”
“Heaven grant we won’t be too late!” exclaimed Sam, but the lively young aviator had darted off, leaving Sam dazed. Truly the climax had come quickly. Jack kidnapped, possibly drugged, and cast into a deep pit! Had it not been for Providence, they might never have heard of him again.
And so it came about that when Jack emerged from the mouth of “the chimney,” not more than twenty yards from the rim of the Lion’s Mouth, the first sounds that greeted him were the voices of his friends who had been peering, with blanched cheeks, into the profundities of the Lion’s Mouth.
It was the day following Jack’s stirring adventure, which had left no more serious consequences to him than bruised hands and knees. He was sitting in the wireless room listening to the uproar outside. For the Tropic Queen was coaling, and the shouts of the negroes and the roar of the coal as it shot into the bunkers filled the air.
Sam was ashore and so was De Garros. They had gone to communicate with the authorities; but had found the Colonial police not much interested. Jack felt drowsy. It was getting late in the afternoon. Soon the swift tropic dusk would drop like a pall.
To keep awake, he decided to take a turn along the decks. He descended to the promenade deck and walked briskly up and down.
“Since we don’t sail till to-morrow, I guess I’ll go ashore this evening,” he decided to himself. “It’s too lonesome on board. Everybody’s gone ashore for that big ball at the hotel to-night.”
But he decided to wait for the return of Sam and De Garros before leaving. It grew dark, and they had not come back. Jack was about to scribble a note and leave it in the wireless room, explaining that he had tired of waiting and gone ashore, when a roughly dressed man brushed by.
It was too dark to see the fellow’s face, but he appeared to be a sailor. Jack thought little more of the incident and went to his room to change his uniform for street garments. He was descending the stairs again to the main deck, bound for the gang-plank, when he was startled by a sudden sound.
It was the dull booming noise of an explosion, and it appeared to come from some place on board the ship.
For a minute or two he stood still, trying to locate the sound. As he stood at pause, a figure darted from the purser’s room. It was that of the roughly dressed sailor who had shoved past the boy a short time before. From the purser’s room there rolled a dense cloud of smoke. It reeked of dynamite.
Jack flashed along the deck. There was a light inside the office of the ship’s bookkeeper and cashier—which is what a purser amounts to, besides being a banker and money changer.
The boy saw in an instant what had happened.
The safe had been dynamited. Its door hung by one hinge. The air was full of smoke and the acrid reek of the explosive.
Jack knew that large sums of money and jewelry were frequently in the safe, and no doubt the bold thief had made off with an armful of loot. He wasted no more time investigating, but at top speed dashed for the gangway.
On the deck two big arc-lights shimmered whitely. Under their glare he saw a darting figure making for the shore end of the dock. He noticed that the man was heavily bearded and wore the rough clothes of a sea-faring man.
“Stop thief! Stop!” shouted the boy; but the man kept right on with his head down, clutching something that he had concealed in his loose sailor’s blouse.
There was an old watchman at the gates of the dock. He put out a feeble arm to stop the marauder, but a terrific blow in the face knocked him off his feet.
The man darted on. Jack was close on his heels. They passed through the gate with only a few feet separating them.
A hack, apparently stationed there in preparation for the flight, was waiting. The black-bearded man leaped into it. But, by providential luck, another night-prowling rig came along at just that moment, its driver nodding sleepily.
As the first rig dashed off, rattling loudly over the rough street, Jack leaped to the front seat of the second, beside the astonished driver.
He seized the reins from the man and brought down the whip on the horse’s back with a crack that made the animal jump. It leaped forward with a jerk that seemed as if it would disrupt the crazy harness.
The man began to yell with dismay. But Jack quickly checked him.
“It’s all right. You’ll be well paid for this. That man in the hack ahead of us is a thief.”
“Gelagoodness, Busha, I t’ink you was de thief, when you come leaping board mah cab de way you do.”
The man was reassured by Jack’s frankness, however, and they flew down the street at top speed after the other cab. The way lay along the deserted water-front, by coal docks, warehouses and gaunt traveling cranes. There were few lights and the road was rough and uneven. The old hack jumped and bounced about like a ship at sea.
Suddenly something happened to the cab in front. One of its wheels caught in a rut as it was passing a dock. The wrench proved too much for the rickety old contraption, and the wheel went spinning off its snapped axle, while the black-bearded occupant was flung into the road like a stone from a catapult.
He lay still a moment while the driver of the wrecked vehicle in vain tried to stop his horse. Sagging to one side on its broken axle, the hack vanished in the distance with its runaway steed’s legs working like piston rods.
Jack was out of the following rig in a flash. He rushed up to the black-bearded man’s side just as the other rose to his feet.
It was not till that moment that Jack recollected that he had no weapon with him.
By the light of an arc-lamp some distance off, Jack could catch the dangerous gleam in the black-bearded man’s eyes. It was no time for half measures. The boy leaped straight at the other, who, entirely taken off his guard by the sudden onslaught, was borne backward and fell in a heap on the stones.
The negro who had driven Jack, scared out of his senses by the sight of the struggle, whipped up his horse and drove off. Jack was left alone with his antagonist, whom he soon found out was no despicable foe.
He struggled free from Jack’s grip with the agility of an eel. He found his feet and reached back into his pocket. For an instant Jack thought the other was drawing a pistol. But it was a whistle that he produced.
He placed it to his lips. Jack, guessing that it was for the purpose of summoning aid that the thief was about to blow it, jumped forward to tear it from his grasp. But in his excitement instead of seizing the whistle he seized the man’s beard.
It came off in his grasp and—James Jarrold stood before him!
For a second Jack’s astonishment was so great that he stood perfectly still, as if carved from stone. That atom of time was enough for the disclosed Jarrold. He blew two shrill blasts on the whistle. From somewhere they were answered. Down the dock came a swift pattering of feet.
At almost the same instant, Jarrold recognized Jack, as the boy’s face, for the first time, came into the light.
“So it’s you, is it?” he roared, with an oath. “You escaped from the Lion’s Mouth! Well, there’s no escape for you now. Here come my men and this time I’ll put you where you’ll be out of harm’s way for good.”
At the same moment several men, among them Cummings, came running at top speed toward them.
Jack was no coward. But he was also no fool. There were six against him in that lonely part of the dock section of Kingston. If he stood his ground he would not have a chance. As Jarrold leaped toward him, he turned swiftly and darted off.
Bang!
Jarrold had drawn a pistol and was sending bullets after him. Up a dark alley Jack dodged, while behind him he could hear the rush of feet pursuing.
“Goodness, if they ever get me, it’s all off!” gasped the boy.
He darted out of the alley he had been following, doubled up another and heard the rush of feet growing fainter. At last they died out altogether. Apparently his pursuers had given up the chase.
Utterly winded, he leaned against a blank wall to recover his breath. He had no idea what part of the town he was in, but it appeared to be in the native quarter. From the opposite direction he heard men approaching.
By a street lamp he saw that they were two blacks. Both carried bundles. From their dress and walk they appeared to be stokers or firemen on some steamer. Jack stepped up to them and asked them the way to the hotel.
They stared at him a minute, and then one of them said:
“Lawd, boss, we dunno no mo’ ’bout Kingston ’an you do. We’s United States niggers, we is. Not dis Wes’ Injun trash. We b’long on de ’Dimyun.”
Jack gasped.
“On the Endymion?”
“Yes, boss, reckon dat am de name, come ter fink ob it.”
“The Endymion is docked here, then?”
“She sho’ is, boss, but she won’ be long. We’s got orders to git a wiggle on. She’s gwine to sail right away. Come on, Jake, we ain’t got no license ter be talkin’ here. We’s likely to miss de ship.”
“One question more!” cried Jack, as the men hurried off. “When did the ship dock?”
“Night befo’ de day befo’ yisterday,” said Jake.
“Do you know the name of her wireless operator?”
“Ah dunno. Fink it’s Comein or suthin’ lak dat. But see here, we all kain’t answer no mo’ question. Goo’ night.”
The two negroes hurried off, leaving Jack with swimming senses. So the Endymion was in the harbor! Had docked the night before the Tropic Queen! It was all plain enough now to the boy. Cummings was her wireless man. That explained his connection with Jarrold. And the yacht was to sail that night, within a few minutes probably, and Jarrold, in disguise, had blown the Tropic Queen’s safe open.
Jack’s head buzzed. What was the key to it all? What had Jarrold blown the safe for just before he was hurrying to sea on his yacht in this clandestine fashion?
And then, like a bolt of lightning, the explanation struck him.
Colonel Minturn’s papers had been placed in the safe while he was ashore!
Jarrold had taken a desperate chance and won out.
In half an hour’s time he would be at sea beyond the possibility of pursuit, for the Endymion was far faster than any craft in the vicinity of Kingston.
The gardens of the hotel were brilliantly lighted, and the colored lamps, strung among the trees, glowed down on a gay throng, when into the midst of the merry-makers there burst an odd figure.
It was hatless, its white duck clothes were bedaubed with mud. Few would have recognized in this panting, wild-eyed apparition the usually natty Jack Ready.
But Jack it was. A waiter stretched out an arm to stop him as he dashed into the garden, but he shoved the man aside with a force that sent him spinning. Men and women stared at the boy as if he were a madman as he rushed about, searching frantically for Colonel Minturn.
He found him at last, chatting with a group of ladies and gentlemen.
Despite Jack’s condition, the colonel recognized him at once.
“What, my boy, what has happened?” he exclaimed. “You look——”
“Never mind that now, Colonel, please,” besought Jack. “I must speak to you alone at once.”
“Certainly,” said the military man, realizing that Jack must have some serious news. He excused himself to his friends and stepped aside, while Jack, in a swift, eager, low tone, told him what he feared had occurred.
“Colonel Minturn must have bad news,” said one of the ladies of the gay party with which the colonel had been chatting. “Look, he’s as white as a ghost!”
“That scare-crow messenger has brought him some news that has given him a shock evidently,” commented one of the men.
But although Jack’s message of the probable theft of the Panama papers had shaken the colonel to the fibers of his being, the long training of a military officer stood him in good stead at that crucial moment. By a supreme effort he steadied his nerves, and in the most casual voice in the world excused himself to his friends, saying that he would be back before long.
“I’ve a friend here who has a fast auto,” he said to Jack, as the two thrust their way through the throng, who gaped at the spectacle of the distinguished-looking man in evening clothes and his disreputable appearing companion.
“We must get it and work quick,” he went on, “there’s a chance even yet that we can stop that yacht.”
“If only I hadn’t lost my way,” said Jack, “we’d have saved a lot of precious time.”
Colonel Minturn found his friend, and the auto with its chauffeur was willingly loaned. They jumped into the fast machine and were off, after Colonel Minturn had given directions to drive first to the ship. They found old Schultz guarding the safe. The reek of the explosive was still heavy in the air.
Utterly regardless of his apparel, Colonel Minturn dived in among the blackened contents. There were packages of money, costly jewels and other valuables, but the most important contents of the safe—the papers which the colonel had hoped against hope might have been overlooked by the thief—were gone.
Despite his stoicism, the colonel could not restrain a groan.
“This means my ruin,” he exclaimed. “We must get a boat of some kind at once and give chase.”
“There’s nothing in this harbor or south of New York that could touch the Endymion for speed,” declared Jack bitterly. “There’s only one chance in a thousand of stopping her! Oh, why didn’t I think of that before?”
Before the colonel could stop him or ask explanations, the boy rushed off. He headed straight for the wireless room. Sam was there with De Garros.
“What in the world——!” began Sam, as the disheveled, wild-eyed boy burst in. But Jack shoved his chum aside without a word and fairly threw himself at the wireless key.
He was calling the government quarantine station at the tip of Port Royal and the mouth of Kingston Harbor. There was just one way he could stop the Endymion and he meant to try it, forlorn hope that it was.
The spark flashed and roared and whined.
Other stations, those on ships far out at sea and along the coast of the island, broke wonderingly in as the volley of impatient calls went thundering out into the night.
The sweat poured from Jack’s blackened face as he bent over the apparatus in the boiling heat of the tropic night, and worked the wireless as he had never worked it before.
At last he raised the operator at the quarantine station.
“We’ve shut up shop for the night. What is it?” inquired that individual, not best pleased at having his rest disturbed.
“You must stop the Endymion,” thundered the Hertzian waves; “stop her at all hazards, even if you have to notify the fort to fire upon her.”
“The Endymion?”
“Yes; she has infectious disease on board. She must not leave the harbor.”
There was a brief and portentous silence. In the hot, heavy stillness the boys could hear each other’s deep breathing.
Then radio waves began to beat against Jack’s stunned ears. “The Endymion with a clean bill of health passed out to sea half an hour ago.”
Jack turned to find the colonel bending over him. Despite the military man’s firm effort at self-control, his face was gray.
“Is there any hope?” he asked.
Jack shook his head.
“They’ve stolen a march on us, Colonel,” he said. “The yacht had a clean bill of health, whether forged or not, I don’t know. At any rate, her clearance papers must have been O. K. or she could not have sailed.”
“Probably forged,” said the colonel. “I must communicate with Washington at once.”
“I can probably relay a message through,” said Jack. “What do you want to say?”
“I will go to my cabin and write it in code,” was the reply, and with stooping shoulders the stricken colonel left the wireless room. After a short time he was back again with his code message. In the meantime, Sam and De Garros, under Jack’s instructions, had notified the ship’s officers, who were all ashore, of the looting of the safe, and an important conference, which Colonel Minturn joined, was held in Captain McDonald’s cabin.
An examination by the purser showed that nothing except the papers, which had been in an inner drawer, had been taken, so that there was no object in alarming the passengers by notifying them of the robbery. The money and valuables were temporarily removed to another and older safe, and a screen placed about the damaged one to shield it from prying eyes.
Jack was summoned to the cabin to give his version of the affair and received warm commendation for the way he had acted. But the boy felt somehow—however causelessly—that he might have done more to prevent the robbery and recover the papers. However, it was too late then.
He succeeded at last in getting a message through to the national capital, relaying to the immense radio station at Arlington. That message borne over the seas, caused more excitement in Washington than had any piece of news received there for many days. Cabinet officers were summoned for an extraordinary conference and every wire and tentacle of the secret service was set in motion.
Scout cruisers stationed off Mexico were ordered to scour the seas for the Endymion and capture Jarrold if they had to sink his yacht. The administration’s message to Colonel Minturn was in code, but Jack guessed that it was a sharp reprimand couched in no very gentle terms. Uncle Sam is not harsh with his servants, but he does not tolerate mistakes, even though innocent and unavoidable.
The Tropic Queen sailed early next morning while the naval wireless was still sending the far-flung message, “Find the Endymion and capture the man Jarrold.” That simple message from Jack, tapped out by his agile finger-tips, had set the machinery of the war and navy departments buzzing as nothing short of a declaration of war could have done.
The possession of the complete plans of the fortification of the Panama Canal by Jarrold, meant only one thing. They would speedily pass into the hands of the foreign power of which he was agent. This meant that the power in question would have complete, triumphant knowledge of the most carefully guarded secrets of the mighty nation that built the great canal.
It would be necessary to squander money and time on remodeling the whole system of defense unless the Endymion could be found. That was the burden of the song the naval wireless men were flinging backward and forward with flaming keys that crackled and flared angrily.
“Find the Endymion! If she is on the Seven Seas, find her.”
Over those who knew the secret agony that the army officer was suffering hung a heavy gloom, as the Tropic Queen ploughed her way seaward, bound for Santa Marta on the coast of Colombia. Colonel Minturn kept to his room, nursing his anxiety.
From time to time the naval wireless boomed messages in the secret code into Jack’s ears and they were promptly transmitted below. But the colonel sent out no replies. All that he could say had been said in that first radiogram that had set official Washington a-buzz.
And in the meantime, on board the Endymion, what was happening? Speeding as if from a deadly plague, she was driven at top speed across the Caribbean. Jarrold, his face gray and lined, and almost as anxious-looking as the visage of Colonel Minturn, paced the deck and the bridge, calling always for speed and more speed. His niece, pale-faced and nerve-racked, watched him anxiously.
Cummings, catching the naval messages that volleyed through the air, told of the hunt that was up; of the naval prows ploughing the tropic seas in a systematic hunt for the grayhound-like yacht that was fleeing like a criminal across the sea wastes.
Jarrold, under the strain, grew dangerous to approach. He kept shouting and signaling for speed and ever more speed. The engineer appealed to him in vain. It was dangerous. The boilers could carry no more steam. Already the ship was a-quiver with their imprisoned power.
But Jarrold had only one reply:
“More speed, I say, more speed!”
On the evening of the second day of this mad race, a murmur began to run through the ship: A rumor that Jarrold was a criminal. That he was fleeing from justice. That he would blow the ship up with every soul on board rather than be captured.
The grimy crew of the stokehold, the “black watch,” refused to face the trembling boilers any longer. They feared that at any moment the steel plates would yield under the terrific pressure and annihilate them and the ship. The chief engineer, unable to keep them at their work, even at the pistol’s point, sought Jarrold, while the stokers spread a mutinous spirit throughout the yacht.
Jarrold was bending over a chart in the pilot house when the engineer found him.
“You are crawling like a snail,” he snarled; “more speed.”
“The men have quit,” said the engineer quietly to the half-crazed man. “They are afraid to work below. The boilers may burst any moment.”
“I don’t care about that. We must reach the coast before to-morrow morning. It must be done. My life hangs on it.”
“I can’t help that. The men won’t work,” protested the engineer; “they’ve thrown down their shovels and gone forward. I’d advise you to give in to them; they are in a dangerous mood.”
Jarrold sprang to his feet with a snarl. He reached into a drawer and drew out a magazine revolver.
“The mutinous dogs! I’ll drive them back to their fires with this,” he rasped out, rushing from the bridge.
“Don’t do anything rash,” implored the engineer, who knew how things stood. “The rest of the crew are with them and we’ll have a general mutiny on our hands if you precipitate trouble.”
The only answer was a roar of rage from the hunted man, about whom Uncle Sam was weaving a fine-meshed wireless net.
He swung down the steps from the bridge to the main deck with the agility of an ape. The captain, who also knew how matters stood, turned to the engineer and the mate.
“You fellows better get your guns,” he said; “there’s trouble coming now.”
Suddenly the slender, graceful form of Jarrold’s niece appeared on the bridge.
“Oh, what is it? What is the matter?” she implored.
“It’s nothing, Miss Jarrold,” began the captain, in a tone intended to pacify the half-hysterical girl. “You see——”
The sharp crack of a pistol shot cut him short. Following the shot, came a riot of savage cries and shouts.
The captain wasted no more words but, followed by his officers, all armed with revolvers, ran forward.
“That madman has spilled the fat now,” he cried, as they rushed toward the forecastle. The sounds proceeding from it resembled the uproar from a den of wild beasts.
Cummings, like the rank coward that he was, had run for his cabin just behind the pilot house when the inferno broke loose. He was cowering in it with ashen cheeks when Miss Jarrold appeared in the doorway.
“Go away! Go away!” screamed Ralph, in an agony of fright. “The crew has mutinied. They’ll kill us all. Oh, dear!”
“You coward!” said the girl, with flashing eyes, drawing her figure up to its full height. “Have you got a pistol?”
“Yes, there’s one in the drawer there,” stuttered Ralph.
With cool, firm hands, the girl took out the weapon.
“What are you going to do?” mewed Ralph fearfully.
“Help my uncle. You know what danger is on his track. Those men must go back to the furnaces.”
“Oh, we’ll all be killed,” repeated Ralph tremulously; “or, if we’re not killed, we’ll be caught by a war ship. The air is full of messages about us. Scout cruisers from Vera Cruz, and war craft from other places are closing in all around us.”
The girl bit her lip and turned a trifle pale.
“What are they saying?” she demanded.
“I can’t tell. The messages are all in code, but I can catch the name of this yacht all the time.”
The bulky figure of the captain suddenly appeared. The girl looked at him inquiringly. There was an expression on his bluff face that she could not fathom.
“Miss Jarrold, I have some unpleasant news for you,” he said.
“Well, Captain, what is it?” she demanded haughtily.
The big seaman shifted from foot to foot uneasily.
“Your uncle has shot a fireman up in the forecastle,” he said. “Oh, don’t be alarmed; not dangerously, but the men are ugly. Your uncle, too, has confessed to me that there’s a whole lot that is crooked about this cruise and I don’t like it. The United States cruisers are after us, he says.”
The girl bowed her head.
“So I believe. What of it? We have chartered this vessel and it is your duty to obey orders.”
“I beg your pardon, Miss, that’s what I was coming to. It’s my duty to my owners not to get their craft in a position where it can be confiscated by the government. That is what will happen if we keep on running away. The situation amounts to this. The men have got your uncle captured and tied. They say they won’t work the ship as long as he is on board unless he is made a prisoner.”
The girl tapped her foot impatiently.
“Is that all the authority you have over them? Why don’t you drive them to their posts?”
“Because I don’t intend to, Miss. This cruise ain’t regular; and I want this fellow here to send out a wireless message to the nearest battleship telling her our bearings and saying that we’ll give up Mr. Jarrold.”
“And if he refuses to accept?”
“We’ll have to provision a boat and turn him loose in it. It’s in the regular steamer lane here and he won’t suffer much inconvenience. Somebody’s bound to pick him up, and, anyhow, there are islands not far off.”
The mate and the engineer appeared with Jarrold at this juncture. His hands were bound and his expression of rage was more like that of a wild beast than a man.
“I’ve already told Mr. Jarrold the men’s terms and mine, Miss,” said the captain. “Mr. Jarrold, sir, which is it to be?”
Jarrold looked like a trapped wolf. He glared at his niece and at his captors.
“You see, I can’t lose my ship just because you’ve done something that seems to have stirred up the whole administration,” said the captain diplomatically. “Personally, if you want to get away, I’d take to the boat. I can cook up a story about you and the young lady escaping one dark night, when we reach port.”
Jarrold raged silently. The girl, white-lipped, erect and defiant, merely said: “Go on, please.”
“You see we can’t hope to get away. Every port we can touch at has a wireless plant of some sort. By this time the whole coast of the two Americas is on the lookout for us. And we can’t keep on going without coal, and because of the crazy way we’ve been making steam, the bunkers are pretty nigh empty.”
Jarrold nodded bitterly. The truth of the captain’s arguments appeared to strike home on even his stubborn mind.
“You’ll pledge your word to do no talking?” he said.
“Not a word, sir, and I’ll answer for my officers, too.”
“But the sailors?”
“Oh, they’ll talk, but nobody believes a sailor’s yarns, anyhow. I don’t know what you’ve been doing, but it’s clear that Uncle Sam wants you mighty bad. However, that’s none of my business. My job is to save my ship from confiscation or being blowed up. So is it to be surrender by wireless or the boat?”
Jarrold glanced at his niece. She came to his side and stood there proudly.
“Let it be the boat,” she said; and Jarrold nodded his head in silent assent. He seemed crushed and broken by the way in which fate had turned against him in the very hour of his triumph.
The Tropic Queen moved majestically through a sapphire sea. It was a perfect tropic night. A dream mist, like a scarf of shimmering, spangled vapor lay over the water. Above, the great, soft stars of the equatorial regions beamed from a sky like blue-black velvet. High above the main mast, like a great lamp, hung the full moon.
Disaster, danger and death seemed miles away, a contingency too remote to be considered. Yet they were close at hand, far closer than any of the sleeping passengers dreamed.
The bells chimed the hours and half hours as they slipped by to the steady threshing of the propeller, and the wake of the big ship spread fan-like from her stern in a milky stream that flashed with luminous phosphorescence.
Suddenly, from the lookout in the crow’s nest came a shout sharp and clear.
“Something dead ahead, sir,” was the reply to the inquiring hail from the bridge.
“Can you make it out?”
“Not yet, sir. It’s two points on the starboard bow.”
From the bridge night-glasses were leveled, but the eyes in the crow’s nest made out the nature of the drifting object on the moonlit sea first.
“It’s a boat, sir.”
“A boat?”
“Aye, aye, sir. Looks like a ship’s boat.”
“Anybody aboard?”
“Can’t just make out yet, sir.”
And then a minute later:
“Yes, sir. I see somebody standing up and waving. It’s—it’s a woman, sir.”
“Jove,” exclaimed Mr. Metcalf, who had the watch. “Schultz, call the captain. Tell him there’s a boat with a woman castaway on board ahead of us.”
“Aye, aye,” cried the old quartermaster, and hurried off on the errand, leaving the wheel to his mate; for on such a night the ship could be steered almost by a boy.
The captain hastened to the bridge in his pajamas and bath-robe.
“A boat, eh, Metcalf?” he said.
“Yes, sir. A ship’s boat, by the looks of her.”
“Order the engines slowed down. Schultz, get the after cutter ready for clearing away.”
The old quartermaster’s whistle sang out shrilly, and the watch jumped aft, alert for anything that was in the wind. Like magic, word had flown among the crew of the discovery of the tiny derelict.
“The land’s not more than two hundred miles off,” said Metcalf. “It’s possible they’ve drifted out to sea.”
“Most probably that is it, unless some disaster has overtaken a ship. At any rate, it couldn’t have come from storm, for we haven’t had any weather to speak of for days.”
“By the way, sir, I heard a lot of talk before we left Kingston about earthquake weather. In my opinion, a quiet, still night like this means some sort of a shake. At least, that’s what the natives say.”
“Yes; and the glass has been singularly high. That’s a sign of something in the wind,” was the response. “But go aft, Metcalf, and see that they clear that boat properly.”
“Yes, sir,” and the chief officer hurried off.
He found Colonel Minturn, who had been pacing the deck sleeplessly in his anxiety, beside the boat crew, watching their preparations. Jack, whose watch had just expired, was there, too.
“Something up, eh?” asked the colonel.
“Yes; there’s a drifting boat with a woman in it dead ahead. We’re going to pick her up.”
“I wonder if I could go along,” said the colonel. “It would be something to relieve this anxiety. It is terrible. I cannot sleep. All I can do is to walk the decks and think.”
“I’ll ask the captain,” said Mr. Metcalf. “Personally, I have no objections.”
He was soon back with the required permission.
“Ready, you’re off duty and I know you like anything like adventure, so if you want to come, get aboard.”
“Good!” exclaimed Jack. “Have you any idea what boat it is?”
“Not the least. That makes it all the more interesting. From what we can make out, though, it’s a ship’s boat of some sort.”
The big vessel almost ceased to move. Her propeller, driven by the slowly working engines, only made a ripple on the water. The boat was swung over and struck the sea with a gentle splash.
“There they are, men. Give way with a will now,” ordered Mr. Metcalf briskly.
The oars struck the water, sending serpents of phosphorescence over its dark surface. The boat moved swiftly forward toward the other craft, a small white gig apparently.
“There’s the woman,” cried Jack. “Look, she’s standing up and waving!”
“There’s a man there, too,” cried Mr. Metcalf. “Pull hard, men, the poor devils may have been drifting for days.”
“Hold on! We’re coming,” cried the colonel encouragingly, forgetting his own troubles in the sight of these two castaways of the sea.
The boats ranged alongside and the crew of the Tropic Queen’s boat seized the gunwale of the other craft, holding them together. Jack stood up and extended his arm to the young woman to aid her on board the liner’s boat.
The next instant a shock, sharp as the sudden sting of a galvanic battery, shook him.
The girl was Miss Jarrold! She recognized him at the same instant and gave a little cry. Simultaneously Jarrold and Colonel Minturn came face to face. A hoarse cry broke from Jarrold’s throat. He reached into an inside pocket and drew out a bundle, which he threw overboard before Minturn could catch his wrist in an iron grasp.
But as the papers splashed, and Jarrold broke out into a mocking laugh and cried, “You thought you had me beaten, but it’s you that are beaten now, Colonel Minturn,” there came another splash, a bigger one.
“It’s the kid!” shouted one of the sailors. “He’s gone after that bundle!”
Mr. Metcalf jumped from his seat to the assistance of Colonel Minturn, for Jarrold, maddened by the series of disasters that had overtaken him, had reached for and drawn a pistol. A crack over the wrist from an oar wielded by the first mate, sent the weapon flying overboard.
A few moments later Jarrold, who fought like a tiger, was lying bound in the bottom of the boat with two sailors guarding him. His niece sat in the stern sheets sobbing hysterically over the ironic turn of fate that had caused the ship that they thought was to rescue them to be the very one they most dreaded.
Jack was hauled back on board after a few seconds’ immersion. In one hand he held high a dripping bundle of papers. A sailor reached out to take them from him. But the boy refused to give them up.
“Only one man gets these,” he said, shaking the water from his curly head, “and that is Colonel Minturn.”
With a gasp of thankfulness that was almost a sob, the colonel took the papers from the boy’s hands, thrust them within his coat and then fairly hauled Jack on board.
By a twist of fate, seemingly incredible, but really attributable to a logical chain of events, the papers relating to the priceless secrets of the Panama Canal were once more in the proper hands. They never left them again.