"he's safe enough, pengelly," remarked cain, indicating the stranded bronx city. "any trouble?"
"none whatever, sir," replied his subordinate. "old adams was as good as gold after you had explained matters."
"'fraid we've missed the candide, curse her," said the pirate captain. "we'll have to keep a look-out for something else. i've warned the operator. well, take over now, pengelly. i'm going to have a few hours' sleep. call me if anything occurs."
"ay, ay, sir," replied pengelly.
cain went to his cabin, locked the door, and with the exception of kicking off his shoes, turned in "all standing."
he had had a fairly strenuous time of late. he did not spare his crew, nor did he spare himself, but he forgot the important fact that he could go for long periods without rest and sleep, whereas most of the hands could not.
in less than a minute he was sound asleep.
a quarter of an hour later, pengelly, accompanied by a couple of men, tiptoed to the door. he listened. cain was breathing heavily in a sound slumber. the second in command bent down and peered through the keyhole. the electric light was burning. he could see nothing of the captain, since his range of vision was limited by the smallness of the keyhole. above the door was a lowered ventilator. cautiously, pengelly stopped the opening with a damp cloth. then he signed to one of the men.
the fellow applied a rubber tube to the keyhole. at the other end of the tube was a bag containing chloroform. for several minutes the suffocating fumes were being pumped into the cabin.
"'nough, if you don't want to snuff him out," declared the man.
"sure he's insensible?" asked pengelly anxiously.
"like a noo-born babby," replied the fellow confidently.
"good enough," was the response. "down with the door. got lashings ready?"
the two seamen put their shoulders to the steel panel. it gave slightly, but the lock held in spite of reiterated efforts.
"get a sledge-hammer," ordered pengelly impatiently, as he toyed with a belaying-pin. a few blows with the heavy hammer shattered the lock. pengelly, followed by more of the crew, rushed in. cain, with a dazed look on his face, and making a gurgling sound as he strove for breath, was sitting up in his bunk with an automatic in his hand.
without a word the captain levelled the weapon and pressed the trigger. there was a deafening report. the bullet, missing pengelly's head by an inch, flattened itself against the steel bulkhead.
before cain could fire again, pengelly sprang forward and brought the belaying-pin down upon the pirate captain's skull.
"turn on the ventilating fan, one of you," ordered the chief mutineer. "place reeks like a slaughter-house. carry him on deck. he's not dead. he'll be more useful to us alive. pass a lashing round his ankles, and when he comes to, see that he's properly lashed-up."
they bore the body of the unconscious cain on deck, where the rest of the crew were assembled.
of the two men—cain and pengelly—the hands preferred cain. he possessed certain qualities that appealed to the crowd of lawless rascals. pengelly did not. but it was the affair of the bronx city that had enabled pengelly to prevail upon the crew to mutiny. they could not understand why cain refrained from looting her valuable cargo—why he should waste precious time in bringing the prize into bahia arenas when the candide was somewhere south of las palmas and likely to fall an easy prey to the alerte. the chance of capturing the candide had gone, they decided. the bronx city remained.
"we'll have the gold," declared pengelly to the mustered crew. "we'll take it up the river and bury it. then all that remains to be done is to take the alerte to within a few miles of st. louis—or bathurst, if more are in favour of it—scuttle her and take to the boats. we'll have to pitch a plausible yarn and get sent home as shipwrecked mariners. then, in due course, we recover the gold and share out."
"how about the ransom for that admiralty inspector bloke we kidnapped?" demanded one of the crew.
"and the cap hoorn loot?" added another.
pengelly assured them that they would all have equal shares in the plunder. in his own mind he felt certain that they would not. already he counted upon getting hold of the booty entrusted to the late captain silas porthoustoc. he wasn't altogether too sure about jasper chamfer's ransom. for a considerable time he had harboured a suspicion that cain was feathering his own nest with the money.
"man and arm boats," he ordered. "we'll want every available hand for this job. we've got to gut the yankee hooker and bury the stuff before dawn."
into the boats tumbled the swarm of ruffians. discipline had gone by the board. during cain's regime every evolution had been performed with man-of-war smartness. now jack was as good as his master.
alongside the stranded bronx city ran the boats. armed men, cursing and frantically brandishing their automatic pistols, swarmed up her sides. without any ceremony, captain hiram adams was made to hand over the keys of the strong-room. the american crew were driven for'ard and secured in the forepeak. then the work of looting began. there was no method about the procedure. the pirates rifled indiscriminately. the strong-room door was forced and the gold-dust taken on deck, but not before a large quantity of the precious metal had found its way into the pockets of individual members of the alerte's crew. the ivory being in bulk and too large to be conveniently hidden by the finders, was dumped into the boats. the american officers' quarters were invaded and their belongings either stolen or strewn all over the deck. the passengers were insulted, threatened and robbed; while, to make matters worse, the pirates broached several casks of rum, and having drunk as much as they could carry—and more—they wantonly allowed the rest of the spirit to run to waste.
"best batten the yanks down and fire the ship," suggested one drunken rascal. "dead men tell no tales. how about it, cap'n pengelly?"
pengelly objected. he shrank from work of that kind, not because he possessed any strong degrees of humanity, but because he feared the consequences.
"they gave us no trouble," he said. "the ship's hard and fast aground. she can't signal to any vessel in the offing. let her alone. we'll get the stuff up the river and hide it."
unsteadily, the besotted pirates dropped into the two deeply-laden boats and rowed back to the alerte.
cain, who had been left in charge of barnard and a couple of hands, had recovered consciousness. pengelly, after giving one furtive glance at his former partner, ascended the bridge ladder.
"look alive, lads!" he shouted. "get the booty aboard!"
"what for?" bawled one of the crew. "if we've got to land the swag what's the use of unloading the boats and loading 'em up again? useless work, i calls it."
instead of insisting upon his orders being carried out, pengelly began to explain the reason.
"don't you see that the people of the bronx city are watching us?" he replied. "if they see that we are towing the loaded boats up the river, they'll guess we're hiding the plunder ashore. whip it aboard. it's worth the extra work."
"then do it yourself," retorted the mutineer. "we've had enough back-breaking jobs lately. 'sides, what odds if the yanks do spot us?"
his protest was upheld by several others. marchant and half a dozen of the hands who were not so drunk as the rest tried to convince them of the soundness of pengelly's order.
for some moments the dispute threatened to develop into a free fight, until pengelly, fearful lest the objectors should gain the upper hand in a physical contest, bade the gunner pass the boats astern to be taken in tow.
the anchor was weighed and at four knots—more speed would have resulted in the swamping of the heavily-laden boats—the alerte ascended the river.
almost as soon as the pirate submarine had disappeared from view, the imprisoned officers and crew of the bronx city were released by the portuguese passengers.
captain hiram adams' first step was to assure himself that his ship had not been crippled beyond being run aground. to his delight he found that beyond the damage caused by the looters in their work of plunder and the removal of certain wireless essentials, the bronx city was unharmed. he had given a shrewd and correct guess as to the reason of the pirates' return visit. he had summed up cain as a man of his word, who was in consequence not responsible for the orgy of plunder. therefore, he concluded, that there had been an "almighty bust-up," and that cain had been supplanted by the loose-lipped, spineless pengelly.
captain adams had made several trips up the mississippi as far as memphis. he had had many experiences of running aground the soft mudbanks that fringe the frequently-shifting channel of that enormous waterway. he was now going to put that knowledge to practical use.
"say, how long will it take for a full head of steam?" he inquired of the chief engineer.
"i guess an hour," replied that worthy, knowing that the fires had not been drawn when the ship took the ground. "mebbe less."
"then get busy," rejoined the yankee skipper.
the chief went below with his assistant and firemen. presently volumes of smoke poured from the bronx's city smoke-stack.
while steam was being raised, captain hiram adams ordered a kedge-anchor to be laid out in the stream, and the stout wire hawser attached to it to be led aft, so that the angle made by the keel of the ship and the wire was roughly forty-five degrees.
as soon as the chief engineer reported that the pressure gauges registered a sufficient head of steam, the skipper telegraphed for full-speed ahead with the port engine.
completely mystified, the chief obeyed, wondering what possessed the old man to go full ahead with one engine that would tend to drive the ship farther into the mud-bank.
nor was the chief the only one puzzled. in fact, some of the crew wondered whether recent events had not touched the skipper's brain. and their wonderment increased when captain hiram adams, with a huge cigar jutting at an acute angle from the corner of his mouth, descended from the bridge.
"guess those darned cargo-lifters won't be comin' down before morning, mr. kelly," he remarked to his chief officer. "we'll be quit before then. set an anchor-watch and inform me if anything happens."
"and the engines?" inquired mr. kelly.
"full ahead all the time," replied the skipper, and without offering any explanation, he went to his cabin to snatch a few hours' sleep.
all the rest of that day and throughout the night the port engine kept up its tireless task. the massive propeller in going ahead was constantly throwing aft volumes of water with quantities of mud held in suspension. slowly but surely the soft slime was being sucked away from the vessel's port bilge, thus making a trench into which, when the time came, the bronx city would slide sideways.
just before the first streaks of the brief tropical dawn appeared over the dark outlines of the mangroves, captain hiram adams appeared on deck.
it was now close on high water. although the tide was still making, there was a considerable quantity of turgid fresh water coming downstream.
giving instructions to the chief officer to bring a strain upon the wire hawser, the skipper telegraphed for the port engines to stop and the starboard for "full astern." the hull of the bronx city quivered. for a brief, anxious period her fate hung in the balance. then, with a squelching sound as tons of shiny black mud were shifted bodily, the vessel slithered into the trench and began to gather sternway in midstream, held only by the stern kedge.
with the least possible delay the wire hawser was hove taut and the kedge broken out. then, at "easy ahead," the bronx city made for the open sea.
meanwhile the alerte had gone upstream, arriving well before nightfall at an anchorage five miles above the spot where she had left her latest capture. here pengelly, accompanied by two of the hands, went ashore, the new captain taking with him a prismatic compass.
selecting a suitable spot, he took bearings on three conspicuous objects, making the necessary data in his pocket-book. his assistants watched the operation with semi-torpid interest. they had a vague idea of what he was about, which was what pengelly wanted.
returning on board, he mustered the crew. they crowded round in a disorderly mob—a striking contrast to the orderly way in which they fell in under captain cain's orders.
"i've fixed the spot for burying the booty, my lads!" he announced. "the sooner we get to work the quicker we'll be able to make ourselves scarce. in a week the place will be overgrown——"
"then 'ow the blazes are we to find it again?" interrupted one of the audience.
"quite a natural, intelligent question," rejoined pengelly. "i've taken a three-point bearing. with either a sextant or a compass it will be as easy as winking to fix the spot to a yard. this is a mutual concern, my lads, so i'll chalk up the angles so that you can make a note of them in case anything happens to me. that's fair enough, isn't it? now, fall in half a dozen of you with spades, nip ashore and begin digging like hades. yes, the ivory won't hurt if it's well covered with canvas."
the digging party landed, while others, still under the effect of the rum, proceeded to unload the booty from the boats. while the operation was in progress, pengelly chalked the required information on the bulkhead of the dummy fo'c'sle—only the bearings he wrote down for the information of the crew differed materially from those he had noted in his pocket-book.
then he went ashore to watch the progress of the work of burying the loot.
"wot abaht these 'ere austridge feathers?" inquired one of the men, holding up a bunch for inspection.
"share them out," replied pengelly. "when we make port they'll fetch a tidy price. they won't keep here... pile the earth up, men. it's bound to sink a bit. look alive. it's not healthy to be hanging about ashore with this mist rising."
while the new captain was superintending operations on the river bank, barnard, who with two men had been detailed to keep an eye on the deposed skipper, came across to where cain was lying on deck under the bridge.
"i wouldn't that this happened for worlds, sir," he remarked to his former chief. "i couldn't warn you. they'd have let daylight into me if i had. and these two men—davidge and cross—they are proper jonnick. if we've the rope's end of a chance to get you out of this mess, sir, we'll do it."
cain smiled grimly. the effects of the chloroform, never very heavy, had worn off, but the blow with the belaying-pin had weakened him considerably.
"i see they've looted the bronx city," he remarked bitterly. "that's the limit as far as they are concerned. look here, barnard. do you think you three can get me into a boat to-night and row down to the bronx city? i'd give myself up if only to turn the tables on that doublefaced pengelly."
the bo'sun shook his head.
"can't be done, sir," he replied. "ten to one pengelly would search her, and where would we be then? 'sides, i've no liking to run the risk of shoving my head through a noose when there's a chance of steering clear of it. never fear, sir; the hands'll be wanting you back in command afore long. pengelly, he's got no hold on them. 'sides, he's no deep-sea navigator. he's all right in home waters, i'll allow, but here——-"
mr. barnard concluded his opinion with an expressive gesture.
"and he knows little or nothing about submarine work," added cain.
"he thinks he does, sir," said the bo'sun. "to hear him talk about what he can do with the alerte submerged, you'd think he'd been at it nearly all his life."
"i wouldn't care to trust him to take the alerte down," declared cain. "and i doubt whether there are others on board who would."
"must be moving, sir," interrupted the bo'sun. "the boats are coming off from the beach. i'll sound some of the hands. there ought to be enough of us to scupper that skunk pengelly, but it's no use trying to talk sense to them while they're three sheets in the wind."
as soon as the new pirate captain came over the side, he gave orders for the boats to be hoisted and watches set for the night, explaining that the latter precaution was necessary owing to the possibility of the ship swinging on to the mud when the tide changed. he then had cain taken below and placed in the compartment previously occupied by jasper chamfer. the ex-skipper's bonds were removed, food and drink were placed in his cell, together with a mattress and bedding.
pengelly was considerably anxious concerning his treatment of cain. he feared him even though the late skipper was safely under lock and key. there was always a chance of the hands turning against him, pengelly, and demanding that cain should again assume command. while the deciding factor that prompted pengelly to keep his captive on board was the fact that cain alone knew how to control the alerte when submerged.
at dawn the hands were turned out and piped to breakfast. most of them had slept off the brutish effect of unlimited quantities of rum. one or two were in a happy state, others inclined to be quarrelsome and pugnacious. but on the whole they were in fair possession of their faculties and were only too ready to get under way.
as soon as the motors were started up and the anchor out, the alerte was headed down-stream, pengelly being on the bridge and marchant, the gunner, conning the ship from the bows as she threaded her way down the intricate and tortuous channel.
presently pengelly leant over the bridge-rails.
"mr. barnard," he exclaimed, loud enough for the watch on deck to hear. "bring up the prisoner, and place him under the poop in charge of a couple of hands. take all precautions. i hold you responsible for his safe custody."
taking davidge and cross, the men who had signified their readiness to stand-by the ex-captain, the bo'sun went below and unlocked the door of cain's cell.
"my orders are to take you on deck, cap'n cain," he announced. "s'pose you don't want to jump overboard?"
"not under present conditions," replied the pirate.
"nor to give any trouble?"
"there'll be enough before long, without my having to cause any," rejoined cain grimly. "why do you ask?"
"pengelly's orders were that i'm responsible for you," replied barnard. "i must lash your hands, sir. a mere matter of form. i won't give your wrists a tight nip, and if anything happens as renders it necessary, sir, i'll set you free in a brace o' shakes."
"that's all right, barnard," said the ex-captain reassuringly. "i won't kick; for the present i'll knuckle under."
meekly he submitted to have his wrists secured behind his back, then preceded by davidge and followed by cross, with the bo'sun bringing up the rear, cain made his way to the conning-tower hatchway.
pengelly watched him furtively. cain gave no glance in the direction of the bridge. several of the men on deck stood to attention, a compliment that pengelly did not fail to notice. none of the hands paid that mark of deference to him, he recalled.
at that moment the alerte was rounding the last bend in the river between her and the spot where the bronx city had been run aground.
suddenly marchant shouted:
"she's sheered off, by thunder!"
a few seconds later pengelly had an uninterrupted view of the next reach. only too true was the gunner's announcement. not only had the bronx city got afloat; she was no longer in the river, nor in the spacious bahia arenas.
"that's kippered the contract," growled marchant, who had abandoned his post for'ard and had gained the bridge. "we ought to have scuppered her. she'll report us and there'll be a swarm of light cruisers and destroyers after us in less than no time."
"she can't use her wireless," said pengelly.
"never said she could," retorted the gunner. "she'll speak the first ship she meets and get her to use her wireless. there'll be french cruisers waitin' for us off the senegal and the south'ard, an' spaniards up the coast—british destroyers, too, i guess. an' we can't bust across to south america—we ain't got enough oil."
"what do you propose, then?" asked pengelly helplessly.
"propose?" echoed the gunner contemptuously. "propose—ain't you supposed to be the skipper? if you don't know what's to be done, who does? cain, of course; you'd best ask him."
the ex-captain on his way aft heard the dialogue. he shrugged his shoulders and looked meaningly at the bo'sun.
"pengelly'll part brass rags with every one on board afore very long, sir," whispered barnard.
the alerte was now ploughing across the bay. the sandy island enclosing the mouth of the anchorage effectually concealed the open sea from sight, although in a short time the entrance would afford an almost interrupted view of the offing. still, pengelly gave no indication of the course he proposed to pursue.
descending from the bridge, the gunner gathered several of the hands round him. ignoring the new captain entirely, marchant pointed out the additional risks they were running by reason of the escape of the bronx city.
"cap'n cain's our man," declared one of the hands.
"no, he isn't," retorted the gunner. "he ought to be, i admit. that horse-marine on the bridge there ain't good for nothin'. but if cain gets the upper hand, then some of us are in for a rough time. no, our best plan is to go in chase of the bronx city and overhaul her afore she gets a chance to speak another craft."
"and then——?" asked one of the men.
"then," continued the gunner, "we'll nab her, take all necessary precautions with her crew, abandon the alerte and carry the bronx city across to brazil. there's no need to bring her into port. we'll scuttle her and take to the boats, pitch a yarn to the british consul an' get sent home as shipwrecked mariners. how's that?"
the suggestion met with acclamation. marchant reascended the bridge ladder.
"this ain't a one-man show, mr. pengelly," he said meaningly. "it's the wish of the hands that we recapture the bronx city afore she lets the cat out of the bag."
"very good," agreed pengelly.
