CHAPTER XVI.

AN ATTEMPT AT FOUL PLAY.

As might have been expected, Tom’s outburst was followed by confinement to the cabin. But this he did not mind so much, as Mr. Chillingworth was his companion, and they found more opportunities to talk over their position thus than was the case on deck, where they were constantly under observation.

The cabin of the schooner was plainly furnished. In the center was a swinging table, oilcloth covered, with four plain swivel chairs at each side, and one at each end. On the floor was some gaudy matting. Above the board hung a big brass lamp. It depended from the crossbars under a skylight opening on deck. At the farther end of the cabin was a flight of ladder-like stairs, leading to the deck. On each side were doors, opening on small staterooms. The wood was pine—of no very good quality—and varnished. At the forward end was a bulkhead of the same material, along which ran a lounge covered with leather, or an imitation of it.

They had been almost two days at sea now, and still no intimation had come from Simon Lake as to what his intentions were in regard to them. But even Tom’s attempt to signal the schooner was not punished with any violence, except Zeb Hunt’s knock-down blow.

“Reckin you’ll be safer in the cabin arter this, by Juniper,” Simon Lake had said, helping the recumbent boy to his feet, and that had been all, except that Tom had deemed it prudent to carry out the hint conveyed in Lake’s words to the letter.

It would be wearisome and useless to detail the conversations between Mr. Chillingworth and his young companion. They were all on one subject, and that was: how were they to escape from their predicament. But they all ended in the same place. That is to say—nowhere. Night and day the schooner swarmed with men, so to try to cut away one of the boats, as Tom had suggested, was soon declared to be manifestly impossible.

At meals Simon Lake and Zeb Hunt shared the table with them, but at other times they had the cabin to themselves, except for the occasional ghost-like goings and comings of the tall Chinaman. In this connection it may be interesting to note that since coming on board Tom had seen the recreant Fu. The former employee of Mr. Chillingworth was working on a sail with the crew when his eyes met Tom’s. But whatever he may have felt, no expression appeared on the yellow mask that did duty for his face. Tom surmised that, in exchange for a promise of loyalty to the gang, he had been made one of them. But of the status of the tall Chinaman, who seemed to be a man of some influence with both crew and officers, it was more difficult to guess. Mr. Chillingworth was inclined to think he was some sort of a priest. He based this theory on the veneration which Fu had shown on the night he had seen his big countryman at the burial of the dead in the cove. For the rest, the tall Mongolian ate by himself and had his own cabin. Not by word or sign, since they had been on board, had he conveyed a hint that he had ever seen Tom before, although he must have recognized the boy he had conducted to Simon Lake at the camp in the canyon.

Hitherto the schooner had had fair weather, although the wind had been strong. But this afternoon the sky began to grow overcast and there was an ominous feeling in the air that betokened the coming of a storm. By supper time, in fact, the schooner was laboring along in a heavy sea and under much reduced canvas. But even the reefing which had been done was against Lake’s will. In her cabin they could hear his voice coming down through the skylight in angry argument with Zeb Hunt.

“By Chowder, it’s my way to clap on all she’ll carry.”

“But you’ll have the sticks out of her by sundown,” Zeb had protested.

“All right, then, shorten up if you want to. But not more than one reef in the main sail, mind yer. I’m a downeast sailorman, and we don’t b’lieve in sailing ships ter suit young ladies’ seminaries.”

By sundown the wind had developed into a screeching gale. Every timber and bolt in the schooner cried out and complained with a different voice. Under the heavy sail that Simon Lake obstinately insisted on carrying, she was being heavily racked.

From the way in which things in the cabin were tumbled about, the gale must have been terrific, but when Mr. Chillingworth tried to go on deck to see what sort of a night it was, he was met by a stern order from Simon Lake.

“Go back thar in ther cabin, Chillingworth,” he ordered. “The deck ain’t no place fer you ternight.”

Soon after, he came down and entered his cabin. He emerged in oilskins. Zeb Hunt followed his example. What, with the trampling of feet as the crew ran about the decks, the increasing motion of the ship, and the cruel uproar the creaking timbers kept up, there was no sleep for the castaways, and till long after the usual hour for going to their cabin they sat up. A certain amount of apprehension mingled with their other feelings. It is one thing to be upon deck, active and alert, in a big storm, and quite another pair of shoes to be confined in a stuffy cabin, not knowing what is happening above and whether at any moment you may not see green water come tumbling down the companionway.

Shortly before midnight the rancher and Tom Dacre turned in. But it was not to sleep. The storm was decidedly increasing in fury every minute. The little vessel seemed fairly to stand on its head one instant and the next to be rearing upward, pointing toward the stars.

What time it was Tom had no idea, but he figured afterward that it must have been about two hours after they turned in when he was awakened from a troubled doze by loud voices in the cabin outside, and a trampling of feet, as if several persons were there. Opening the door a crack, he peered out.

He saw Simon Lake, very pale, and bleeding from a big cut in his head, laid out on the forward lounge, while Zeb Hunt and several of the others bent over him.

“It all comes of crackin’ on so,” Hunt was saying. “If we hadn’t carried all that canvas, we wouldn’t never have had that sail rip loose, and then Bully here wouldn’t have got hit with that block.”

“Is it a bad cut, Zeb?” asked one of them.

“Well, it’s purty deep,” said Zeb, who by this time had opened a locker and was selecting some bandages from it. “But I reckon we kin fix it. How d’yer feel now, Bully?”

The injured man gave a groan. It was evident that he was partially stunned by what Tom guessed, from what he had overheard, was a falling block. Soon after he was carried into his cabin, the tall Chinaman being left to watch him.

After that the hours wore on somehow. From time to time Tom fell into an uneasy nap to awaken with a start of alarm and a horrible fear that the schooner was at last going to the bottom.

There was a clock in the cabin, affixed to the forward bulkhead, and after one of these sudden awakenings he decided to peep out and see what time it was. He longed for the coming of day with every nerve within him. If the schooner was to sink, he felt that it would be better in the daylight than in the pitchy darkness.

Steadying himself by the side of the bunk in which Mr. Chillingworth lay sleeping as peacefully as if he were at home, Tom peered out. He caught his breath with a start as he did so, and saw the figure of the tall Chinaman standing upright above the table in the center of the cabin.

In front of him was a glass of water. He had evidently just fetched it from the small keg at the after-end of the cabin for the injured man.

Tom could hear Simon Lake’s voice from another stateroom:

“Cheng! Cheng! Hurry with thet thar water, you blamed yellow-faced Chink.”

“Yellow-faced Chink, am I?” Tom heard the Chinaman mutter, as he reached into his loose blouse and pulled out a small vial containing a red fluid. “Well, Bully Banjo, I am about to demonstrate to you that we yellow-faced Chinks are more than a match for men of your caliber.”

As the Chinaman muttered the words, he allowed a few drops of the red liquid to fall into the glass of water.

“One swallow of this and you enter the white devil’s heaven,” he snarled, tiptoeing toward the cabin in which lay the injured leader of the Chinese runners.

“It’s poison,” gasped Tom to himself, “and he’s going to give it to Simon Lake.”

Already the tall Chinaman’s hand was on the handle of the stateroom door, and he was about to enter it when Tom’s door opened, and above the uproar of the storm he shouted:

“Hold on a minute there.”

The Chinaman faced around like a flash. There was an evil expression on his face, but it changed to a smile as he saw the boy. For a forced smile summoned so hastily to the surface it was a very creditable one.

“Ah, it is the white boy,” he exclaimed. “What do you want, white boy?”

“I’d like a drink of water,” said Tom. “Let’s have that glass a minute, will you?”

The Chinaman looked hard at him for an instant as if he would have penetrated his thoughts. Then, satisfied apparently that Tom had seen nothing, he said:

“Bym bye you can have. Jes’ now me go give dlink to Missa Lake.”

Still grinning like a yellow image, he glided into the cabin occupied by the injured man.

“Here, give it to me, quick. Consarn it, the thirst is burning me up,” Simon Lake cried, as he reached for the glass.

But before his fingers could close on it, it was dashed from his grasp and its contents spilled over the floor.

“Consarn your mischievous hide, what d’ye mean by that?” bellowed Lake, furiously turning on Tom, who had entered the cabin in two flying leaps, just in time to save the rascal from drinking the stuff.

“I don’t owe you any debt of gratitude,” rejoined Tom, “but I don’t want to see you poisoned by a scoundrelly Chinaman. That fellow drugged that water.”

“Wh-a-a-a-a-a-t!”

“That’s right. If you don’t believe it, have him searched. You’ll find a small vial of red stuff in his blouse. He dropped some of it into your water, and——”

Stunned by the suddenness with which his rascally plot had been discovered, the Chinaman had hitherto remained motionless. Now, with a bellow of rage, he leaped at Tom, flinging his long, wiry arms about him.

The boy struggled bravely, but the yellow man had the first hold and he was tremendously strong, as Tom soon found out while he helplessly thrashed and struggled.

But either Simon Lake was not as badly injured as they thought, or else he managed to make a superhuman effort, for just as the Mongolian had Tom down on the cabin floor and his yellow fingers were digging in his throat, Lake hurled himself out of his bunk upon the yellow man, bearing him with resistless force to the floor under his great weight.

This was the tableau that Zeb Hunt, rushing into the cabin, arrived just in time to see. He came to the aid of his superior and they soon had the tall Chinaman helpless.

“Sarch his blouse, Zeb! Sarch his blouse!” bellowed Simon Lake, his wound apparently forgotten in his excitement.

“I’ll tie him first,” said the prudent Zeb, producing some yarn. Then, with the Mongolian helplessly pinioned to a stanchion, the mate proceeded to search him. Almost the first object he found was the vial which Tom had seen.

“Here it is, boss,” he said. “Just as the youngster said.”

The Chinaman bent an angry glare on them.

“Him no poison. Him medicine,” he cried.

“Oh, it is, is it. Well, I’ll mix you up a dose of it and see if you’ll take it,” declared Zeb.

Procuring a glass, he mixed up some of the red drops with water. But when they were thrust toward him, the Chinaman had to admit by his refusal to take it that the stuff was deadly poison.

Simon Lake, white and shaky, now that the excitement was over, had sunk back on the lounge. He kept passing his hand over his bandaged brow as he looked on as if to try to assure himself that he was awake.

“Just ter think that thet thar rascal Cheng who I’ve trusted like a babby would hev tried to give me a deal like thet,” he kept repeating. “What d’yer think got inter the feller, Zeb? Why did he want ter do it?”

“In ther fust place, because he’s jes’ naturally mean and pesky, bein’ a Chink,” rejoined Zeb, “and in ther next, I reckon he figured that with you out of the way and the rest of us busy on deck, he’d rob you uv that money belt of yours and nobody be the wiser.”

“Maybe you’re right,” rejoined the injured man grimly, “but I’m too sick ter attend ter him now. But, by Juniper, wait till I’m well. I’ll——”

There came a sudden jarring crash. The schooner trembled as though she had been dealt a mortal blow. At the same time there was a terrible grinding of timbers, and a confused uproar of alarmed shouts and cries from above.

“Jee-hos-o-phat, we’ve struck!” shouted Zeb, bolting from the cabin. He darted up the stairs in an instant. Simon Lake, staggering as he went, followed him. An instant later Mr. Chillingworth, aroused by the clamor and the shock, appeared.

“Come on,” cried Tom, “something’s happened. I don’t know what, but maybe our opportunity to escape has arrived.”