CHAPTER XVII.

WHAT BEFELL IN THE AFTER CABIN.

"Man overboard!"

Bill, making his way along the deck to the wireless room companionway, heard the thrilling cry and joined the rush of passengers to the stern rail from whence the shout had come. Radwig and Schultz stood there with every expression of alarm on their faces.

The captain came hurrying up.

"What is it? What's the matter?" he demanded.

"Somebody fell overboard," declared Radwig; "we heard a splash and hastened here at once to cut loose a life belt."

"Lower a boat at once," commanded the captain; "slow down the engines."

The petty officer to whom the command had been given, hurried off at top speed to the bridge while the captain asked more questions of Radwig and his companion. But they could tell nothing more definite than that they had heard a splash and a cry and that was all. They had not seen who was the victim of the accident.

The captain decided to call a roll of passengers and crew at once. While the boat was lowered, and was rowed to and fro, on the dark waters, this work went on. When it was over, there was only one person on board found to be missing. This was, of course, Jack Ready. The cunning of Radwig had evolved this clever plan to obviate the search that would be surely made on the ship for the imprisoned young wireless lad when his absence from duty was discovered. If the lad was believed to be drowned, of course, no effort would be made to find him on board and he and Schultz would be safe from the results of their rascality. It was a clever though simple scheme and it worked to perfection, for after an hour of investigation the captain was forced to conclude that Jack had, in some inexplicable manner, fallen overboard and had perished.

But there was one person on board who did not accept this theory, and that was Bill Raynor. By no figuring could he bring himself to believe that Jack had fallen into the sea. In the first place, the rail was almost breast high, and in the second, Jack was too good a sailor to have lost his head and toppled from the ship.

"I am convinced he'll turn up," he told Mullen in the wireless room.

"Yes, but a thorough search was made for him without result," objected the other.

"Never mind, something seems to tell me that he is all right," protested Bill.

"I'm afraid you are deluding yourself," said Mullen, shaking his head. "When he fell overboard----"

"You mean _if_ he fell overboard," interrupted Bill.

"Why, you surely don't doubt that!" exclaimed Mullen; "a splash is heard and following that a canvass of the ship shows that Jack Ready is missing. If he wasn't drowned, where is he?"

"I admit that it sounds like a poser," said Bill. "See here, I'm not absolutely certain that he did go overboard at all."

"What?" Mullen stared at Raynor as if he thought he had suddenly been bereft of his senses.

"I mean what I say," repeated Bill slowly. "I'm not sure that he did go overboard."

"In that case he must be on board the ship."

"Exactly."

"But why should he be hiding?"

"He's not hiding."

"Then why doesn't he show up?"

"Because he's been hidden," replied Bill.

"Oh, that's too fantastic an idea," cried Mullen.

"I know it sounds wild--almost crazy, in fact, but I simply cannot help feeling it."

"I wish I could think the same way," said Mullen, and the tone of his voice left no room to doubt that he meant what he said.

In the meantime, how was it with Jack? Confined in the stuffy cabin, lighted only by the smoky lamp, his head ached intolerably from the cruel blow that had been dealt him. In fact, it was not till the following morning that he felt himself again.

Neither of the men who had made him a prisoner came near the cabin in which he was confined, and although he tried shouting for aid till his throat was sore, nobody appeared to hear him. The boy began to be seriously alarmed over his predicament.

Radwig had told him in so many words, that neither he nor Schultz intended to return to the cabin. The water and bread left him would not suffice for more than a few hours. By the time the cabin was entered by some employee of the ship, it was entirely probable that the aid would come too late. Luckily for him, his mental anguish was not increased by knowledge of the story of his death by drowning that had circulated through the ship. Had he known of this, it is likely that, plucky as the lad was, he would have given way entirely to despair.

The cabin was an inside one, so that there was no porthole through which he could project his head and call for aid. Examination of the small chamber, even to the length of pulling up the carpet, showed that there was no means of escape short of forcing open the door and that Jack, strong as he was, was unable to accomplish, although he wore out his muscles trying it.

The hours passed by with dragging feet until it seemed to the boy that he must have been in the bolted cabin for years instead of hours. The lamp guttered and went out, leaving him plunged in pitchy darkness. It was the last straw. Jack flung himself on the bunk and buried his head in his hands. How long he lay thus he did not know, but he was aroused and his heart set suddenly in a wild flutter by the sound of approaching footsteps and voices.

He shouted aloud:

"Help, for heaven's sake, help!"

Then he sat silent, hardly daring to believe that there was a possibility of his rescue. More probably the voices and footsteps were those of Radwig and his rascally accomplice.

In an agony of apprehension, Jack sat in the darkness waiting for the answer to his cry for aid.