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:
“We’ll bear that way,” I told him.
I depended on being picked up by some ship, telling my story to the captain, who would see that the lives of a rich American and his daughter were in danger at Querolle. Things would move pretty fast then, with the wireless to work with, and no doubt whatever ship picked us up would speed to Querolle.
But I said nothing about this. If Brakely thought that was on my mind, he gave no sign.
The mainmast of the Angela Lee went down with a crash and a shower of embers. It fell aft, the settling yacht being tilted that way, and smashed the wheel and quarter deck to smithereens. The mast was of steel and, with the sails and rigging burned off it, showed no sign of fire. The weight of it hurried the inevitable doom of the yacht. She was settling fast. Her taffrail was down to the sea.
There wasn’t such a glare of light now. I was rigging a mast on the raft.
“How many of those fellows did the explosion knock off?” I asked.
“None,” Brakely said. I was surprised. “We didn’t lose a man. I saw it coming — saw the fire reach the tanks — and ordered all hands away. Our fight had been to keep the flames away from there. We lost it. The gas tanks went up, but we were out of danger. Nothing to do but take to the boats. The water pouring in checked the fire for awhile and gave me a chance to look at the damage. I saw it was no use. She was gone.”
“How’d the fire start?”
“Carelessness — I think.” He spoke reflectively. “Yes — carelessness. There was liquor aboard. They were all drinking more or less. Some of Barney Masters’s men were on duty in the engine room. But I think both Throgg and Masters were asleep. They looked scared and surprised when I first saw them.
“I hardly think Masters pulled that trick — the fire. I think he just took advantage of it when it came along. The engine men were probably drinking and smoking. Lots of oil around the engine room — a dangerous place to smoke. But they were probably sneaking a cigarette, and the thing started.”
“You did a good piece of work,” I said, with the admiration of a sailor, “in saving all hands from the explosion.”
“Thank you, George. But I don’t mind telling you that if I had known what was in Barney Masters’s mind, there’d be a whole bunch of frying carcasses aboard the Angela Lee at this minute.”
I believed him. The glint in his eyes and the set of his jaw told me that he wouldn’t hesitate to wipe out Barney Masters and the crew who had double crossed him. I wondered what would happen if we all did meet on the island of Querolle.
My mast was up, and I was working at the roll of sail cloth.
“Brakely,” I said, “what kind of a game are you playing anyway? I don’t see—”
He raised a hand and smiled amiably.
“Now, George,” he said, “you and I have been thrown together on this raft, with nothing around us but water and sky. We’ve got to pull together for the time being. The state of your mind, which I’ve been watching pretty closely since we’ve been together, makes us enemies. There was a time when I had hopes. But no use to speak of that now.
“Under ordinary circumstances, you’re a constant threat to me. That’s why I wanted to keep an eye on you — wanted you with me on this voyage. But, George, we are enemies compelled to work together. Ashore — that’s another story. That being the case, you will pardon me if I don’t play right into your hands by telling you of my affairs.”
“That’s natural,” I said, and went on with my work.
“But,” Brakely assured me, “you ought to be told that both of us have every reason to get to Querolle as fast as possible. In a way, we have the same object there. I want to save Miss Lee from Barney Masters as much as you do — and I don’t want to see any harm come to her father either. If things had gone the way I first intended, they wouldn’t be in danger. I have more reasons for getting there than you have, but that one reason we have in common. We must protect Miss Mary Lee.”
“We’ll go to Querolle — some way,” I promised him.
The Angela Lee reached a state where the weight of the water pulled her down with increasing speed. All of a sudden her stem went skyward, and a burst of flame appeared in the fo’c’s’le. She hovered there a moment with the forepeak aloft and blazing like a torch.
Brakely and I stood on the raft watching, me with a coil of rope in my hand. We seemed to be losing something — at least I did. A sailor feels that way about any ship going down. A sinking ship is a death at sea, a melancholy thing at night with the sky dark.
The Angela Lee went down with a sputter of doused flames, leaving only a cloud of steam which soon vanished.
I looked all around. No lights. Julius Brakely and I were alone on the sea.
Chapter XXVII
“A Tough-Looking Customer”
“What are you going to do,” Brakely asked me, “sail this raft on a course, or keep it going any old way until you sight a ship?”
“That depends,” I told him, “on how much you remember.”
“What do you mean?”
I kept on working at my mast and sail, explaining:
“I’ve got no instruments, and can’t get position — unless your memory’s good. For instance, did you sail a straight course?”
“Yes, we laid a course; and I think we kept on it pretty well, better than we did on the way up.”
“Can you give me the point you steered on the compass?”
He did that.
“And how many hours sailing time did we have until the fire broke out?”
He calculated it, and told me right down to minutes, as he remembered the sailing time and the time of the fire.
“What was the speed of the Angela Lee?”
He was able to give me that, too, and, of course, the speed would be the same hour by hour, as the sea had been smooth and the breeze light. The yacht had made big distance, for she had been under engine power all the way. We weren’t very far from the big island inside one of whose bays Querolle lay.
“Now figure up,” I told him, “your total distance.”
He worked that out in his head. The figures bore out what I suspected when he told me the yacht’s speed — Querolle was within striking distance, thanks to the yacht’s powerful gas engine.
“Then,” I told him, “I’ve got a general idea of where the Angela Lee went down.”
“So have I,” Brakely rejoined; “and I know we’re not so very far from Querolle.”
“Maybe not,” I said.
I didn’t want to tell him any more about that than I could help, as I had begun to think of running up to one of the lighthouses on the big island and getting help there, if we weren’t picked up by a ship.
If we sighted the island, I knew that Brakely would attempt to take command. An effort of mine to attract the attention of a ship or to approach the lighthouses meant a battle.
“If the sky stays clear,” I informed Brakely, “knowing our general position now, I’ll be able to sail by the stars and sun.”
“You won’t need the stars after daylight,” he rejoined calmly, “as we’ll sight the island before another night.”
“Maybe.”
“No maybe about it, George — if you try. You’d better believe me when I tell you that if you want to do a service for Mary Lee, you’d better make for Querolle as fast as you can.”
“That’s what I’m going to do.”
And I meant it. If I could pick up help on the way, from a ship or from the lighthouses, so much the better — but the lifeboats, filled with strong men with oars, had a big advantage over us. I couldn’t lose too much time. The thing for me to do was get my feet on the island of Querolle, and take things as they came after that.