Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 18, No. 3, September 18, 1926
- Автор: Bailey H. C., Bechdolt Jack
- Год: 1926
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 18, No. 3, September 18, 1926». Краткое содержание книги:
Brakely emptied his pistol, but without result so far as I could see. He ran to the rail and reloaded the gun, but gave shooting up as a hopeless task. The moon, on the wane, shed only a dim light. The glare from the burning yacht suddenly disappeared, as incoming water drowned the flames. The Angela Lee, drifting, had swung around so that the fleeing lifeboats were astern.
“That’s the work of Barney Masters,” Brakely said.
“All right,” I rejoined. “To blazes with your differences with Barney Masters! We’re on a sinking ship. Tell me about that hole. Have we got any chance if we get the pumps going?”
“Not a chance in the world. The hole — I took a look at it after the explosion—”
With his hands he spaced off the approximate size of the hole. Too big for the pumps to catch up with. Besides that, flames had leaped up again near the quarter deck. The fire had been merely retarded for a moment.
“It’s a raft for us,” I said.
“Raft?”
“Life raft. There’s one on each deck, if they haven’t pushed ’em overboard.”
“That’s right,” Brakely said. “Come on.”
Brakely still had the gun in his hand, but I grabbed him by the arm and spun him around.
“Come on nothing,” I said. “It’s you who’ll do the coming on. I’ll command that raft, and you’ll obey my orders if you want me to fetch you out of this mess.”
He looked at me and smiled. He was dirty, and his clothes were tom from the work he had done fighting the fire.
“All right, George,” he said.
“And I’ll take that gun, too,” I told him. “I don’t propose to have you around me with a loaded gun.”
He backed up a step and shifted his eyes.
“Hand it here,” I told him, “or we’ll fight it out on the deck, and maybe go down with the ship.”
He answered me by tossing the gun overboard.
“Now we’re man to man,” he said. “What are your orders, captain?”
“Go below, and fetch up sail cloth and rope, and any sticks you can find for masts,” I told him. “I see the raft over there. I’m going into the galley — grub and water.”
We separated.
I judged that we probably had a half hour — maybe a little more — to get clear of the Angela Lee. The flames weren’t doing much on account of the water that poured into the ship and through some of the passages. But, of course, the fire might get a clean sweep any moment, and come roaring forward with a speed that would trap us.
It was impossible to get at any of the instruments or charts, which were in the quarters aft, if Barney Masters hadn’t taken all of them. The fire was burning briskly around there now. Brakely and I would have to put off to sea on a raft with no navigating instruments, but that was a small thing in the face of all we had to be thankful for — a life raft strong and seaworthy, a calm sea, and a position that would undoubtedly result in us being picked up within a few hours.
Indeed, ships might be bearing down on us now, drawn by the glare of our fire in the sky. The glances I stole out to sea while going back and forth at my tasks did not reveal any ship lights however.
The men who had left us there to die were out of sight now.
“Are you sure Vernet, the French sailor, was in one of those boats?” I asked Brakely.
“Yes. Masters worked that nicely. He got that sailor in, then beat it the moment my back was turned. He’ll need the sailor — if he makes Querolle.”
“They’ll be picked up.”
“Not if they can help it. You don’t understand, George, but Barney Masters will not let himself be picked up. He’s bound for Querolle, and God help Mary Lee if he gets there!”
I stared at Brakely.
“Is that why he abandoned you?” I asked.
“That — and something else.”
“Then we’ll head toward Querolle,” I said.
We got the raft in the water, and Brakely was passing down various articles to me. I exchanged places with him.
“A matter of sailor’s pride,” I told him, working on the deck of the yacht with Brakely on the raft. “The captain should be the last to leave a sinking ship.”
With the raft loaded, I went over the side. We pushed off, easily, being on the lee side. The Angela Lee flamed tremendously.
Chapter XXVI
We Were Alone
A short piece of plank from the lumber room was the only thing in the shape of an oar I’d been able to find, and I paddled the raft away as fast as I could with that. A light swell running with the breeze helped us, but even at that it took us some little time to get far enough off so that we should be out of danger if the mainmast fell our way.
The raft consisted of two light booms with a thin but stout flooring between, built so that the flooring was probably six inches above the water. It was safe enough so long as the wind remained quiet. We had loaded it pretty heavily.
The fire was now sweeping forward and aloft on the Angela Lee. The most of its havoc up to this was confined to holds and the officers’ quarters, it having been held back considerably by the incoming water, but it was above that now and the breeze caught it. The sails were furled, the yacht having been under engine power, and the flames were running up the sails and rigging of the mainmast on the after deck.
The water was dragging the ship down astern. She had been settling only gradually while we were aboard, but I knew that when the flood in her holds reached a certain point she would go speedily.
Suddenly I reached over and felt of Brakely’s pockets.
“What’s wrong, George?” he asked.
“I just happened to think,” I told him, “that that gun you threw away might not have been the only one you had. I see it was now.”
He laughed.
“It sometimes takes you a long time to think of things,” he said; “but you do think of them.”
I didn’t know whether to take that as a compliment or a slam.
Brakely was looking toward the yacht. An exclamation of wonder escaped his lips.
“Beautiful!”
It was a wonderful sight. The flames raced along the halyards, and these pitched ropes were like oily fuel. They reached the foremast, and were licking up the furled sails there. One rivulet of flame ran down the forestay with the speed of lightning and clear out on the bowsprit.
The burning ropes and sails, with the fire blazing up, too, in the ’midship house and with the quarters aft a regular furnace, the ports glowing from the inferno that now raged the length of the hull below decks, made the yacht look like a ship painted in fiery colors against a dark background.
We didn’t know when the masts might fall. It depended on the work of the flames around their stumps below. I paddled again, and got clear of that danger with the help of the swell.
The fire now put us in the spotlight. The lifeboats were beyond the illumination, but to the crowd in them we would be visible, if they weren’t on the other side of the yacht. The Angela Lee, drifting, might have come between us. We didn’t know. If it hadn’t, Barney Masters would know that we had escaped from the death he meant should overtake us.
I remembered the glimpse I got of Barney Masters’s face when I first looked at the fleeing lifeboats. He wore a horrible grin, meant for Brakely, I suppose, and this impressed me with the sinister qualities of the man.
The stakes must be good in this game — big.
“Is Barney Masters likely to come looking for you,” I asked Brakely, “if he sees you’re clear of the yacht?”
“I don’t think so,” he replied. “He’ll understand we’re on a raft — lucky he forgot the rafts. He won’t think we’ll be able to make Querolle on this raft. He’ll make speed for Querolle. And I don’t see,” he added, “how you expect to make Querolle on this.”