Part 2

The two castaways went through the stokehold doorway. The shovels grated on the iron apron before the double fire-boxes. A biting Scotch oath rolled into the engine-room. Micky eyed the steam-gage on the main steam pipe. It was climbing. He glanced upward. The ferocious Russian was standing guard with the rifle. Ivan had disappeared.

* * * * *

Days passed in unending drudgery. Food was lowered down at the end of a line. The sentry was changed each watch. Ivan kept away from the companion, though his voice was heard in loud argument concerning the position of the freighter. Micky, stripped to his sweating waist and smarting from the blows he had received, grinned through the knuckle-thick bristle on his lips.

He kept the engines oiled. He saw to it that the throttle-wheel was wide open. Once he relieved Mike at passing coal. The ship made progress of a kind. It was evident that the citizen captain had headed for the center of the north Pacific. There was little danger of a lee shore.

“And may he wander like the Flyin’ Dutchman!” said Mike Monkey on the sixteenth day. “Ah hope he’s lost.”

“No,” said Red Landyard, “he’s heading somewhere. The course is always east. I can tell by the sun. He hasn’t changed a quarter point.”

Micky McMasters glared at his two mates. They resembled stokers of Hades. Their skin was blistered. The callouses on their hands had become small cushions. The fighting fire in their eyes alone remained to remind the little cockney skipper what manner of men they were and had been.

“The plot,” said Micky, “is thick and ’ard to fathom. For why are they ’eadin’ to the States or Canada? No one wants them over there. They’ll run their bloody ’eads hinto a noose.”

Mike Monkey cocked a grease-lined ear. He blinked.

“Ye hear them chatterin’?” he asked. “They’re sea lawyers! Ah hae hopes they start to massacre themselves.”

Micky rubbed the bristles on his chin.

“We’ll reach land in a day or two,” he said. “Then we’ll find out the answer for the boxes of tea and the voyage and the other questions.”

“Tay!” exclaimed Mike. “Ye always said it was tay. This looks like a tay party. It--it----”

The Scotch-Irish engineer’s statement was broken by the appearance of Ivan’s bulky form in the companion. The Russian came down to the grating. The sentry pointed the rifle at the group. Mike dodged beneath the forward bulkhead door and waited there with bent head.

“McMasters!” called Ivan. “Come here, McMasters!”

Micky folded his arms across his hairy breast and stared at the Russian.

“What d’you want?” he asked.

Ivan peered through the engine-room gloom.

“We have decided,” he said heavily, “that you can join us as a brother. We have voted on it. We will make you rich. You can be one of us.”

“I’d rather be a dirty stoker than one of your breed!” replied Micky.

“We are going to give you a chance. You can help us navigate to our port of call. The citizen captain is not sure of his exact position. Assist us to obtain a reading and we will honor you by admission to the Benevolent Order of Reds. We intend to raise one billion dollars in Canada and the United States. We shall give you a share in it.”

“To ---- with you and your billion!”

Micky screamed, brandishing a broken fist. “Get hout of the gangway!”

“Ye did right,” whispered Mike as Ivan climbed hurriedly through the engine-room companion and disappeared on deck. “Ye were not to be bribed by the scum o’ Russia. Wot’s the answer to the billion dollars?”

Micky stared at the point of the bayonet which crossed the sky over his head. He glanced at the flashing cranks of the cross-compound engines. He raised his voice above the noise of their wallowing passage.

“The answer is this!” he snapped. “They’re going to Victoria and Canada to raise a revolution. There are a lot of Bolsheviki in ’iding--from Victoria to the Atlantic seaboard. This is a plot to start somethin’ against law and order. I’ll smash that big grand juke with a ’ammer the next time ’e talks to me. ‘E’s insulted a British seaman--’e ’as!”

Mike shot a crafty glance at the stokehold door. He scratched his greasy neck.

“A plot?” he said. “Ah hae noo doot we can nip it in the bud. All we got to do is to open the bilge-cocks and drown the rats.”

“And we go down with them?”

“Aye!”

Micky shook his head.

“We’re not martyrs,” he suggested cuttingly. “There may be a better way to get rid of the scum of Siberia.”

“Set the hooker on fire?”

“We’ll roast with it!”

“Ah’ll think it over, then.”

Mike Monkey disappeared through the bulkhead door. Micky watched the engines for a long minute. He raised his eyes and saw a shadow cross the companion opening. A second bayonet joined the first. Ivan had posted two guards to watch the three men between decks. The big Russian also signaled for more speed. He was answered by oaths from Mike Monkey and Red Landyard.

* * * * *

A long, hot day passed. The heat of the stokehold and engine-room was a thing to remember.

The three castaways sweated beneath the menace of the two bayonets and Ivan’s brutal oaths. The sounds from the deck were those of a madhouse. It was evident that the citizen captain did not know his position on the ocean. Once the _Shongpong_ headed due south. Her course was changed to northeast. She steadied and clamped onward, holding an uncertain path.

Night brought some relief from the heat. The Japan current was swinging along the American shore. A breeze sprang up. The ship rolled. Lurid oaths from the Russians came down the rusty ventilators. This was music to the castaways’ ears.

Midnight and eight bells brought diversion. Running feet sounded on the ship’s planks. A muffled cannon-shot echoed from the distance. A shell burst over the freighter’s rigging.

Clanging bells for more speed drove Micky from the engine-room into the stokehold.

“A gunboat!” he exclaimed. “We’re being chased!”

“Ah thought we would be!” rasped Mike Monkey. “Shall Ah draw the fires?”

The engineer’s question was answered by a curdling oath from Ivan. The leader of the Bolsheviki descended to the stokehold door. He peered through the gloom.

“You heard the bells!” he snarled through his beard. “You all die if you don’t keep up steam. We’re going to escape from the cutter. Fortunately it is an old one.”

Micky McMasters shook his head toward his two mates. He followed the Russian into the engine-room and picked up an oil can as Ivan motioned for the sentries to get on deck. A silence fell upon the brooding ocean.

Red Landyard appeared between the stokehold and the engine-room. He braced his legs and toyed with a short iron bar. Now and then he stared forward to where the crimson light glowed from the fire doors. The steam mounted in the gages. Mike Monkey worked alone. The Scotch-Irish engineer had evolved an idea out of the situation. He had sent Red to the stokehold door in order to stand guard.

“What is ’e doing?” asked Micky in a whisper.

“_Sist!_” said the Yankee. “Pretend to oil the engines and keep busy. Don’t let the sentries suspect anything. Watch the steam. It’s going up to the bursting point.”

Micky watched the gage on the main steam leader. It started climbing from one hundred and seventy to one hundred and ninety. It went over the two hundred mark. It dropped and mounted again.

The little cockney skipper heard the fire doors clanging. A baleful light streamed past Red Landyard. A roar sounded in the single funnel. It was as if the ship were equipped with a double-fan forced draft. The cross-compound engine spun like a turbine.

“What’s ’e putting on the fires?” questioned Micky.

“The tea!”

“The what?”

“The boxes of tea in the forehold,” husked Red. “We broke through and looked the Bolshevik cargo over. It’s combustible all right.”

“TNT?”

“Nope! Look out! That sentry is cocking his gun. Duck aft. Don’t let him see you talking with me.”

Micky crawled down the narrow shaft-alley. He sat on the thrust block and searched his heated brain for an answer to Mike’s energy. Hours later he heard the scraping of rocks and shale under the _Shongpong’s_ keel. The ship heeled and plunged on. Her bow crashed upon a shelving beach. The Bolsheviki cursed. A mast went by the board. It splintered the deck. The funnel fell with its load of soot. The engine-room filled with choking smoke.

Mike Monkey burst through this pall. He started mounting the ladder to the companion. Red and Micky followed the engineer. They stood on deck and ranged their smarting eyes over a desperate scene.

The citizen captain of the _Shongpong_ had found his port of call--a wooded cove on Vancouver Island. In his zeal at the discovery of the rendezvous he had neglected to stop the ship. The freighter lay with a seven-degree list to starboard. Her deck was a mass of wreckage from fallen standing rigging, mast and funnel. Above this melee of twisted lines and back-stays and smoking ventilators, towered Ivan of the long surname, his great spade-shaped beard lifted on high.

His followers swarmed around him on the tottering bridge. A red light showed through the tall stems of fir-trees. This fight moved as a signal. A score of furtive shadows flitted in the underbrush at the head of the cove. Russian faces stared out over the shoal waters of the rendezvous. A shout of brotherhood passed between ship and shore.

“Loom on,” whispered Mike Monkey to Micky and the Yankee seaman. “Loom aft. They’re too busy forrard to notice us. We’ll lower the dingey and escape.”

The cockney skipper climbed over the deserted quarter-deck and loosened the falls. He dropped the bow of the small boat into the waves that curled astern of the grounded freighter. Red Landyard lowered the after part of the dingey. The three castaways found oars. They rowed for a dark cape that struck out into the cove. They gained the beach of this point and staggered ashore. They turned and stared at the canted freighter.

“See,” said Mike Monkey. “They’re opening the forehold. Ah wish them luck in wot they find beneath the hatch.”

Micky squinted through the gloom. He discerned dancing figures on the deck of the _Shongpong_. A bloodthirsty yell of baffled rage rose to the western stars. It was echoed by the conspirators ashore.

“Ah hae noo doot,” Mike Monkey rasped, “they found ah had burned all the tay. Didn’t Old Whiskers ask us to keep the fires burning hot and nice? Ah kept them burning--at a price. Ah put all of the tay boxes through the fire doors. There’s none left.”

“What was in them?” asked Micky.

Mike closed a lashless eyelid. He drew a greasy handful of papers from beneath his shirt. He offered them to the little skipper.

“Rubles!” he said. “Bolshevik bonds and rubles! They were bringing them to Canada and the States. Ah hae an idea they were going to sell them to the Reds in both countries. All ah know to be sure is--there ain’t no rubles left. Ah found them better to burn than the miserable slag called Japanese coal.”

Micky saw a light. He squareset his unshaven chin and pointed south along the coast.

“We’ll walk the beach,” he said, “until we come to a coast guard. No doubt the cutter that chased the Bolsheviki is nosin’ around. We’ll show it where to go.”

Mike thrust his ruble notes back within his shirt.

“Ah’ll keep these!” he declared. “They ain’t worth a ha’penny, but they’re what we can expect to get for wages if the Reds start runnin’ the governments.”

THE END

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the December 3, 1919 issue of Adventure magazine.]