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Title: Assignats
Author: Henry Leverage
Release Date: September 5, 2022 [eBook #68918]
Language: English
Produced by: Roger Frank and Sue Clark
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ASSIGNATS ***
Assignats
by Henry Leverage
Author of “The Iron Dollar.”
When Ivan with the long surname walked down the beach at Novgorod he
found three men. These men were sitting on their haunches staring out
over the Japan Sea. Ivan spoke to them in English.
“I have a ship,” he said.
The first man glanced at the second; the second stared at the third.
They rose from their haunches and wrapped their rags around gaunt
limbs.
“A ship in this accursed port?” asked one.
“A bloody lie!” exclaimed a second castaway.
“Ah hae me doots,” rasped a third derelict.
“It is a fact, gentlemen,” said Ivan with the long surname. “The ship
is loading between here and Vladivostok. She wants but a master, a
mate and an engineer.”
The three men grew sad. They had been broken on the rack of peace.
They had come ashore at Novgorod in a leaking sampan. The government
of Japan was at that moment interested in their whereabouts.
“Our papers were lost in a great storm at sea,” said the leader of
the trio, whom men called “Micky” McMasters. “You mind the vast
simoom?”
Ivan, the Russian, spread out his hands. His great spade-shaped beard
fluttered in the warm Japanese breeze. He thumped a be-medaled chest.
“Come with me!” he said. “Papers or no papers--it is you three who
shall take the _Shongpong_ out across the sea.”
“He talks like a poet writes,” whispered “Red” Landyard, a Yankee
mate, to Mike Monkey, the Scotch engineer.
“Ah hae noo doot he’s read a wee bit. How otherwise would he know we
were on the beach at Novgorod? There is a price on our heads.”
Micky McMasters edged the big Russian away from his whispering
companions.
“This ship,” asked the little skipper, “this boat you ’ave loading
between ’ere and Vladivostok--what flag does she fly?”
“Her home flag is Chinese. Her crew are loyal Russians. Her cargo,
now going aboard, is caravan tea. This tea must be taken to America
where Victoria on the Island of Vancouver is. Do you know the route?”
Micky felt his heart thump like a mallet inside a cask. He had
sweated and toiled and starved on the mud flats of Novgorod. He
sensed the coming of a bitter Winter. And here was a hard-eyed
Russian offering him and his mates a ship for the Pacific broadside,
where white men walked and roses bloomed and shirts could be worn.
“I’ve steamed and sailed, man and boy,” he explained, “going on
thirty years. I’m ’Umber born--at Great Grimsby on the North Sea. My
mate, the tall man with the red face, is an American out of New
Bedford. My first engineer came from Tyneside--where they build good
ships. We take no back-slack from nobody. Show me your ship, says I,
and I’ll work ’er across the Japan Sea and east by the line to
Victoria.”
“That is settled,” said Ivan Alexandrovski. “You may come with me.”
Micky McMasters gathered the tattered collar of his dungaree coat
around his unshaven neck.
“One more question before it becomes a contract,” he said
suspiciously. “Are you loyal Russian or are you Bolshevik?”
Ivan with the long surname smiled blandly. He stroked his straggling
beard. He stared down at the little castaway.
“Loyal Russian,” he said. “I have a home in Vladivostok--where Allied
troops are guarding.”
Micky turned, jerked his head toward his mates who stood shivering in
their rags, and shouted:
“The contract’s signed! A fair thing for all of us. We work the
_Shongpong_ across the western Pacific.”
“Ye arranged about terms?” asked Mike Monkey, siding up to the
skipper and glancing at the Russian.
“Terms?”
“Bonuses and wages?”
“We’ll leave that to our noble friend.”
Mike gulped and spat to the mud flat.
“Last time Ah left that,” he said, “Ah had nothing coming to me when
Ah went ashore.”
The Russian drew himself erect.
“The scale of wages,” he declared, “shall be, for you three officers,
one thousand rubles a week--paid at Victoria.”
“How much is a ruble?” asked Mike.
“Two shillin’,” hissed the cockney skipper.
“Twa shillin’? That make a hundred pun a week! Ah hae noo doot it’ll
be well earned before the end of the passage.”
“Where’s the ship?” asked Red Landyard. “Show me the _Shongpong_!”
The Russian led the way up the beach. Two hours stiff walking brought
the castaways to a cove in which lay a rusty tramp flying the Chinese
flag and swarming with coolies--like ants on a cockroach.
Mike Monkey stared at the boxes which the coolies were carrying
aboard the ship.
“Tay!” he spat. “Aya, it may be tay and it may be something else.
Them ain’t Chinese marks on the sides.”
“Russian!” explained Ivan. “Come with me aboard my ship. You can see
the boxes are marked with Russian letters.”
Micky McMasters jabbed the engineer in the ribs as they trailed up a
shaky gangplank and sprang from the _Shongpong’s_ unpolished rail at
the waist.
“Be careful!” he warned. “Don’t ask no bloomin’ questions. Wait till
we cross the Sea o’ Japan!”
Mike gulped. He eyed the decrepit back-stays and standing rigging of
the tramp. He ranged a fluttering glance along the dirty planks of
the freighter. He shifted his tongue in his mouth as he stared at the
drunken-looking funnel, which bore evidences of poorly patched shot
holes.
“A rum hooker,” he told Red Landyard. “She’s had her name painted out
about five times. She’s no more’n eight hundred tons, if she’s that.
She’s a broodin’ menace ov some kind. Ah wash my hands of this
voyage.”
“You’re ’ands need washin’!” snapped Micky McMasters. “Drop below and
look over the engines. See hif there’s any coal or supplies aboard.
Report to me on the bridge.”
“D’ye call that a bridge?” Mike pointed forward of the tipsy funnel,
which was painted light blue.
“Hit’s a better bridge than the mud flats of Novgorod!” Micky said.
“Get below and report. I’m skipper ’ere!”
* * * * *
Mike’s report, delivered between champs upon a chew of Chinese
tobacco borrowed from a coolie, was tense and bitter.
“Ye hae no conception of the state of things below,” he told Micky
McMasters. “There’s only one double-door boiler. It was made in
Canton--China. The engines are cross-compound of the vintage of Isaac
Watt and Robert Fulton. The coal is Japanese--twa bunkers of it. The
stokehold leaks and the shaft-alley is full of bilge muck. Ah saw the
stuffin’-boxes jettin’ water myself. The last engineer of this packet
wrote wot he thought of it on the ditty-box door. He said enough. His
name was MacFarland.”
“What’s that got to do with hus?”
Mike walked from starboard to port of the tramp. He stared down at
the line of coolies who were staggering aboard under the last of the
boxes. He watched the yellow hands of the gang in the forehold reach
for the cargo. He came back to Micky McMasters.
“Wot’s it got to do with us?” he repeated. “It’s got a lot. Ah doot
if we make Japan--let alone Victoria.”
“We’ll try,” said Micky sadly. “The Russian says we can clear at
nightfall. ’E and ’is crew are coming aboard then. I tested the
steering-gear. It works. Who got steam up?”
“Three coolies who are sittin’ in the engine-room waiting to go
ashore. Ah borrowed some cut-plug from them--enough to last the
voyage--if it lasts. They can’t talk anything but pidgin English.
Their clothes are not worth taking--or I’d of taken them.”
Micky McMasters rubbed a bristly chin reflectively. He stared at Mike
Monkey’s faded outfit. He swung his gaze to where Red Landyard stood
on the forecastle deck, directing a gang of coolies who were clearing
away wreckage which had fallen about the capstan.
“This Russian,” he said with an anxious glance at the dark outlines
of the shore, “this man who hired us at a thousand rubles a week is
some kind of a big labor captain or prince. The coolies salute him.
The two Tatars standing guard at that shed ashore bowed when he spoke
to them. There’s a whackin’ mystery ’ere!”
“Ah thought ye would get yer foot in it when ah saw ye chinnin’ with
that Russian on the mud flat. He is a smuggler!”
“No! ’E don’t look like one.”
“Looks is only skin deep. He ought to be skinned--with his thousand
rubles a week.”
“’E ’as nobody to navigate the ship, and the tea ’as got to be taken
hover the western Pacific.”
“Tay? Ye are daft? D’ye call that tay?”
Mike Monkey pointed a scornful finger at the boxes piled around the
fore-hatch. He spat to the bridge-deck.
“That ain’t tay! That’s opium or hashish or fireworks of some sort.
Ah never saw tay boxes with Russian letters on them.”
“There is good tea grown in some parts of Russia.”
“It’s grown! Aye, it’s grown! Wot’s to prove this cargo growed there.
It may have been brought to this cove in a sampan--it may have been
brought in a Chinese junk--it may have----”
“’Vast with your ‘may-have’s!’ Get below to the boiler! ’Ere comes a
caravan or a funeral. They’re Russians of the province of the Don.
See their beards and their robes. There’s the big fellow who hired
us. ’E’s a bloomin’ juke, that’s wot ’e is! Kow-tow when ’e comes
aboard.”
“Ye told me to go below.”
“’urry hup! Never mind the kowtowin’. You walk straight and take my
orders until we get on the ’igh seas.”
The first engineer fluttered a pair of pale lashes in the general
direction of the squad of Russians who were winding around the shore
shed. He climbed down the rusty bridge-ladder and glided for the
engine-room companion. He went through the single grating and thrust
his hands into the broken pockets of his dungaree trousers as he eyed
the three coolies sitting on the crank-shaft of the cross-compound
engine.
“On deck!” he roared at the chinamen. “Ye all get on deck, and don’t
show yer miserable faces here again. Ye’re discharged! Ye built my
fires in Oriental fashion--upside down with all the Japanese coal on
the grates. Ye left me nothing but clinkers and salt water in the
boiler and leaking gaskets and----”
The last yellow man stared down through the grating on his way to the
deck and departure.
“Plenty much you learn by and by,” he said softly--too softly.
“Plenty much----”
Mike picked up a rusty spanner. He had drawn this back when there
sounded the raucous clang of an ancient gong in the engine-room.
Micky McMasters, wasting no time, had rung for quarter-speed forward
before the Russian crew were well aboard.
Two men came down the engine-room ladder in awkward fashion. They
blinked at Mike. They stared at the engine as if it were an idol in a
temple. They stroked their whiskers.
“Are ye coal-passers?” asked Mike.
“Passengers.”
“Wot?”
“We are passengers.”
“Ah asked ye if ye are coal-passers?”
Mike Monkey pointed toward the low door through the bulkhead which
separated the engine-room from the stoke hold.
“Get forrard!” he rasped. “D’ye know the skipper rang for a turn on
the engines? D’ye know there’s only thirty pounds ov steam?”
The Russians moved toward the stokehold door. Mike picked up his
spanner and followed them. He spent the next lurid hour breaking in
two green firemen whose manners were sullen and morose.
* * * * *
It was after sundown when the _Shongpong_ clamped from her anchorage
in the cove and started eastward over the polished waters of the
Japan Sea.
A tan-colored moon hung in the sky. A soft breeze swung out from
Manchuria. The powdered stars spangled the velvet dome of heaven.
Red Landyard, Micky Masters and Mike Monkey came together on the
decrepit bridge of the freighter like three men making a common
report.
Ivan with the long surname and most of his following were in the
lighted cabin where rose the quarter-deck of the freighter. A lone
lookout stood on the forecastle head. He was smoking a long-stemmed
pipe. The ashes from the bowl of this pipe made tinder of his
whiskers. Now and then he pressed out the sparks and swore in
Russian.
A second and sinister figure squatted on the fore-hatch. He had a
rifle across his knees. The end of this rifle was tipped with a
polished bayonet.
“Standin’ guard,” said Micky McMasters. “The grand juke put ’im there
to watch the tea.”
“Tay!” said Mike Monkey. “Ye still insist it is tay?”
Micky squared his jaw. “I know nothing,” he said, “save that we are
’oldin’ a course for ’Akodate and the Inland Sea, which we should
reach this time day after tomorrow--if the steam don’t die out
altogether.”
Red Landyard stared at the Russian on the fore-hatch. He eyed the
bright point of the steel bayonet.
“They’re quiet now,” he drawled, “but we’re hardly out of sight of
land. I expect I’ll have to chain a man or two before long. The
forecastle is a volcano. Hear them talking? They’re arguing some
point in Russian.”
Micky swung and eyed the break of the quarter-deck, which showed four
lighted port-holes within the smudge of smoke that draped from the
tipsy funnel.
“They’re doing the same aft,” he said. “Ivan, the grand juke, is
leadin’ in the prayin’ or whatever it is. I never saw such a crew for
talking. I don’t know who are passengers and who are workin’ the
ship. I wish I’d studied Russian.”
“Wot good would that do?” asked Mike Monkey. “They wouldn’t reveal
their secret plans to us. Wot did they bring the rifle aboard for?
Wot’s to prove we ain’t shipmates with a howlin’ bunch of anarchists?
They’re quiet now. Them twa in the stokehold only look at me and chew
on their beards when Ah give orders. They’re waitin’ for somethin’!”
Micky strode across the bridge. He gazed sadly at the ripples that
curved from the _Shongpong’s_ straight bow. He estimated the speed of
the ship to be not more than seven knots an hour. There was no
bridge-rail log.
He came back to Mike Monkey and Red Landyard.
“Briefly stated,” ye said, “we’re in the ’ands of Providence.
Anything is likely to ’appen with all that talking fore and aft. The
course the grand juke gave me is to the Pacific--by the nearest
strait. I’m ’olding that course. That’s all I know. I ’ave a wife and
children at ’ome. I was thinkin’ of them when I took the contract to
work this ship to Victoria.”
Mike studied the little skipper’s dungaree jacket and unshaven face.
“How many Russians are there aboard?” he asked.
“Sixty or seventy.”
“Then Ah resign if it comes to blows. Ah am weak from starving on the
beach of Novgorod. All Ah have been able to find to eat on this
hooker is caviar and salt fish. Ah would as soon eat clinkers.”
A door slid open aft. A rolling voice struck forward. Ivan appeared,
followed by two Russians. They were wrapped to the beards in great
coats trimmed with fur. They climbed the bridge-ladder and stared at
the binnacle.
“East she is,” said Micky. “East, a quarter point north.”
Ivan swept the sea with a long glance. He nodded and pointed over the
freighter’s stumpy jib-boom.
“Japan lays there?” he questioned Micky.
“Yes. Habout four ’undred miles.”
“Have you sighted any ships?”
“None, yet.”
“If you do call me on deck. Answer no signals. Keep the Chinese flag
flying.”
“The Union Jack would look better!”
Ivan stroked his beard.
“You take my orders,” he said icily. “Avoid any suggestions. Keep
away from smoke, sails and particularly gunboats of foreign powers.
I’ll double the thousand rubles which I have agreed to give you three
officers. I’ll increase it to two thousand rubles a week.”
Mike gulped and drew his scrawny neck deep into his collar. He waited
until Ivan and the Russians had descended the bridge-ladder and
walked slowly aft to where the light streamed from the open cabin
door.
“Ye heard that!” grated the engineer with scorn. “Ah thought it was
possible to get a thousand rubles a week. Ah expect nothing now. It’s
too good to be true. Ah minds the likes o’ that Russian! It was in
Guatemala where I was paid three thousand pesos a month. The pesos
were worth sixpence on the pound.”
Micky McMasters shook his head.
“Anyway,” he said, “we’re on the first leg ’ome to blighty. We’re
gettin’ a free passage. That’s something!”
Mike Monkey went below to the clanking engines. Red Landyard stared
forward and aft. He entered the chart-house and turned in across the
single seaweed mattress it contained.
Micky stood the watch until midnight. He woke the Yankee mate, gave
the course and dropped down into the engine-room. He sat with Mike
until two bells. The Scotch-Irish engineer was bitter against the
Russians. He rose now and then and peered through the stokehold door,
where a lurid light glowed.
“Twa stokers,” he said, “and no fire to speak of.”
Micky glanced around in caution as the engineer came back for the
third time.
“Investigate the forehold,” he whispered. “Find out what is in those
tea boxes. Don’t let anybody see you doing it. There’s a plot of some
kind aboard this ship.”
“They’ve talked enough for a revolution.”
The little skipper paused on the first round of the engine-room
grating.
“Get forrard when you can,” he whispered. “Open one of those boxes.”
Mike gulped and nodded. He drowsed out the morning hours and climbed
to the deck at the first crack of dawn. He waited all the day for a
chance to creep through the stokehold without being detected by the
two Russian stokers. A second night came and after night the
twinkling lights of the Inland Sea. No chance afforded itself in the
passage between the Japanese Islands.
It was morning of the third day when Ivan with the long surname
dashed thoughts of a discovery in the forehold by summoning all hands
to the waist of the _Shongpong_.
* * * * *
A wild seascape greeted Mike’s eyes as he hurried up the engine-room
ladder and braced his spindle legs athwart the planks.
The dusky outlines of the Japanese Coast were fast fading in the
west. The wind swung out of a biting north. The sea had been stirred
by the tail of a storm. The dingy freighter, with her tipsy funnel
and standing rigging, rolled and tossed. She threatened to have the
two masts out of her at any moment.
Micky McMasters stood the bridge with Red Landyard. Ivan and all of
the Russians, including the crowd from the forecastle, were gathered
beneath the shelter of the quarter-deck’s lift. They glanced at Mike
Monkey and started chattering in Russian. His eyes lifted over their
heads. He gulped and moved his Adam’s apple up and down his scrawny
throat. He spat to the deck.
The Chinese flag which had been flying from the jack staff had been
replaced by a red oblong. It showed baleful in the rays of the sun.
Mike turned his chin. He looked at Micky. The little skipper’s jaw
was square set. His shoulders were thrown back. There was a fighting
fire in his eyes.
“Wot happened?” asked Mike shrilly.
“Our friends are in charge of the ship,” said Micky over the
bridge-rail. “Come up ’ere! They’re going to take a vote for captain,
mate and engineer. They say all things in their government should be
settled by a vote. They’re going to elect a citizen captain.”
“Wot is their government?”
Micky gripped the rail.
“Bolshevik!” he snapped.
Mike steadied himself on the wet planks. He spat to the deck for a
second time. His glance ranged from the little skipper to Ivan’s
broad face.
“Ah thought so!” he rasped. “We’re deluded men!”
Ivan strode from the press of Russians beneath the break of the
quarter-deck. He mounted the main-hatch. His voice rose and fell with
the whine of the north wind. He spoke in gusty torrents. He pointed
to the red flag aft. He turned and leveled an accusing finger at the
bridge where Red Landyard and Micky stood with folded arms.
Mike squinted at the half-circle of Russians. They were being worked
up to a storm by their leader. A fur cap was passed. Into this was
dropped slips of paper upon which were scrawled names. A rifle’s
bayonet lifted above the heads of the Bolsheviki. A club swung.
Mike leaped for the bridge-ladder and climbed to the bridge like a
frightened ape. He worked his lashless brows up and down. He spat
through yellow teeth:
“Wot’s the answer? Wot happened?”
Micky McMasters sighed. He thrust his hands in his pockets
resignedly.
“Hit’s hall hup!” he declared. “They’re electing a citizen captain to
take my place. They’re voting for an engineer and mate. They say
there should be equality on the sea as well as on the land. ’Ere
comes hour substitutes!”
Mike glared at three Russians who had detached themselves from the
others. One was a former coal-passer. Another had come aft from the
forecastle. Ivan made the third.
The Russian stood beneath the rocking bridge and said sternly:
“You mutineers get below to the stokehold. We will guide the
_Shongpong_ out across the Pacific. We will make our own report
without your aid. We need you on deck no longer.”
Red Landyard snatched up a belaying pin from the lee rail.
“---- you!” he shouted. “I signed on as mate--and I’ll be mate!”
“And I’m captain!” shrieked Micky.
The fight which followed was all one-sided. A hoarse command from
Ivan was answered by a determined rush forward. The Bolshevik horde
swarmed over the bridge of the wallowing freighter. Micky and Red
Landyard fought them tooth and nail. They swung belaying-pins and a
chart-case. They finished their end of the struggle upon their
knees--to which position they were beaten by the press of numbers.
Mike, considering discretion the better part of valor, managed to
creep along the weather rail and spring for the engine-room
companion. He sprawled down the ladder head foremost. He rebounded at
the grating. He snatched up a spanner and glared upward. He braced a
foot in the pit, out of which flashed the slow-moving cranks of the
cross-compound engines.
His chin described a quarter-circle. The companion-way was darkened
by the form of a man. Micky, still fighting, dropped down and struck
the grating. Red Landyard was hurled after the little skipper. Both
seamen had been shorn of most of their clothes. Their faces were
bleeding. Welts showed upon their shoulders.
“Gorblyme!” cried Micky. “Gorblyme--give me a hose! Give me hot
water! Give me steam!”
“Go easy,” drawled the Yankee mate, squinting at the whiskered faces
which blocked the entire companion. “There’s a few of them left. We
didn’t kill them all.”
“We ought to!” spat Micky. “Bolsheviki? They’re red-’anded
murderers--that’s wot they are!”
“That’s my opinion,” said Mike Monkey.
“You? You!” sputtered Micky. “Where were you when the fight started?”
“Ah came down here for a pinch bar. Ah was just going up when ye
joined me--precipitously.”
Micky rubbed his bleeding knuckles. He turned a cold shoulder upon
the engineer, then stared upward. He made faces at the Bolsheviki and
shook his broken right fist.
“I’ll ’ave you know there’s a law on the seas!” he snapped. “I’ll
report this outrage to the next British consul.”
Ivan pushed away the men about the companion. He descended two rungs
of the iron ladder, turned and sneered into the gloom of the
engine-room.
“You are to remain below,” he said coldly. “Get steam up and give us
full speed. You will be thrown overboard if you do not obey my
orders. The citizen captain so directs me.”
“Where’s me twa thousand rubles?” shouted Mike Monkey. “Coom down
here --ye scum of the steepies! Coom down!”
Ivan started descending. He thought better of the action when Mike
snatched up an iron bar and brandished it with agility.
“Coom down, ye Bolshevik dog! Coom down if ye dare!”
Ivan called in Russian. A ferocious face appeared over the edge of
the companion. The sharp point of a bayonet extended into plain view.
The muzzle of the rifle deflected until it was directly aimed at
Mike. He dropped the iron bar to the grating.
He held up his hands.
“That let’s me out!” he cried through chattering teeth. “Don’t
shoot!”
“Go forward,” Ivan ordered. “You and the American go forward and put
coal on the fires. You, McMasters, attend to the engines. None of you
three men will be allowed on deck. You will all be shot if you do not
keep the ship moving at full speed. Those are the orders of the
citizen captain.”
Micky picked up an oil can. He squirted a stream at the nearest
crank.
“Steam on the engine!” he said to Mike and Red.
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.]
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