Li Shoon's Nine Lives/Chapter 5

FTERNOON had changed to night. The two passengers had dined with Captain Mike Rourke. The early evening passed. Carrick and his friend were in the captain's cabin as the tug-boat plowed along a few miles away from the coast.

It had been left to the bow watch to report the unlikely event of sighting the long-vanished Budzibu.

In a tight little hutch back of the boat's pilot house, the wireless operator leaned back in his chair, headpiece adjusted on the chance of picking up the signal "Q—Q—Q" at any hour during the night.

From somewhere aft on the hurricane deck a figure might have been sighted, hiding cautiously behind a life-boat, only his head showing. It was Ling Cheng, sometimes the devotee of the sporting chance, but now neither taking nor giving foolish chances.

Only the mate in the wheelhouse and the bow watch were observing the course or neighborhood of the craft. These two and the wireless man were the only ones visibly on duty. The door of the wireless room hung ajar.

With an evil smile, Ling Cheng studied the scene. It was one nearly to his complete liking. By the aid of a tiny flash light he cautiously read the position marked by the hands over the dial of his watch.

"From the course and the time elapsed since leaving San Diego harbor I can come very close to giving our position," he told himself, with a low chuckle. "And the wireless man need not be long in the way! Yet I must be wonderfully careful until after I have sent my own wireless word!"

After listening intently, Ling moved forward in the felt-soled shoes he had donned for this grisly work. His eyes taking in all that was to be seen, Ling glided on through the night like an apparition.

In the wireless room, eyes closed, ready after the manner of his kind to open them at the first click through his headpiece, the operator undeniably dozed. Larry Dorkins would never wake again.

There came a swift flash, a burying of steel through flesh and between vertebræ. The knife was withdrawn, again plunged and withdrawn. There were some blots of blood on the floor, but that mattered not in Ling Cheng's design. Picking up the slight body of the late wireless man, Ling bore it to the starboard side of the hurricane deck. The boat was wallowing in a rough sea. Watching the most favorable instant, Ling cast all that was left of Larry Dorkins far out, so that it splashed in the sea and was swiftly astern on the waves.

Then Ling turned, though even his stolid disposition recoiled when he heard the incredulous, wrathful bellow of Captain Mike Rourke as that doughty master bounded from the top of the railed deck-house ladder to the deck.

Not a word was spoken, but the master came on warily, without waiting to summon help. Ling crouched and waited, gauging his man and judging that the encounter was one of life and death. Worse! Unless Ling came out victor, there was but scant chance that he could send his message over the waters!

So the two faced each other, but Mike Rourke was not the type of man to favor delayed action. Warily, yet with a bound full of latent power, the tug's master leaped at the Chinaman. Ling ducked, dodged, then struck with the knife. But Rourke, expecting that, was not to be caught at the other end of the dagger. Instead, his right fist crashed against the Chinaman's arm, breaking it. The dagger dropped to the deck.

"One murddher is enough for ye in a night!" bellowed Rourke, as he gripped his man, holding him with one massive hand by the collar. Like an eel, Ling Cheng sought to slip out of that coat, only to find his left arm held crushingly in one of Rourke's massive hands.

"It's not gettin' away ye'll be doing!" uttered the master grimly, shaking the prisoner as if he would empty him. "Watch below, there! Bow watchman! Is that you? Send Donovan to the foot of the laddher!"

In a trice Donovan, a deck hand, scarcely less powerful looking than Rourke himself, reached the foot of the ladder and hailed.

"Here I am, wid a lad I want ye to take hold av," roared Captain Rourke, appearing with his captive. "His right forearm is broken, but break his head as well, Donovan, av he thries to give ye the slip. Even av he does give ye the slip, let it be nowhere but overboard!"

With that, and steadying himself expertly despite the lurches of the wallowing tug, Mike Rourke passed the yellow man down to Donovan, who reached up to take the human offering. "I dunno where this yellow ape came from," announced Rourke, "but he killed Dorkins, I misthrust, an' threw him overboard. Hould him, Donovan!"

Then, still awake to all his duties as master, Rourke ran to the wheel-house, where he gave orders to make a short turn and put about over the foam-indicated course as closely as possible. In another instant the bow watchman's hoarse tones tumbled all hands on deck.

Carrick and Doctor Fleming, barely in their cabin, noted the abrupt changing of the course, accompanied by the noise of swift orders.

"Something out of the ordinary has happened," remarked Carrick, bounding up and opening the door. He and the chemist were soon on the deck. The first very tangible object on which their gaze lighted, as displayed under a deck light, was the now rather crumpled figure of Ling Cheng in the relentless grip of Donovan.

"How did this man get aboard?" demanded Carrick, indicating the prisoner.

"Ask the captain—he don't know," retorted the deck hand. "Naythur do I. But this yellow snake threw Dorkins, the wireless man, overboard. We're putting around to foind him av it can be done."

Then a white glare shot over the waters ahead. The Terence's searchlight was being employed in the task of keeping as close as possible to the widening and gradually vanishing track of white foam left by the tug's propellers.

"Don't let that scoundrel slip away," urged Carrick, and strode forward.

Long, keen, and earnest was the quest, for Mike Rourke believed that Larry Dorkins might be still alive and swimming more or less feebly. Rourke was no man to abandon another. He was a finely competent master of his seafaring trade, and bawled his orders from the bow to the wheelhouse. Yet presently even a man of Rourke's resource and resolve was forced to give up the quest. If Dorkins' body still floated, it had been impossible to pick up a glimpse of it on the crest of any white-capped wave or in the darker shadows of the trough of the sea. With a gulp, and a tear in either eye, Captain Rourke was at last compelled to give the order to put about and follow the course. Yet for a full three miles on the resumed southerly course that searchlight was kept playing over the waters ahead.

"D'ye see how I can do anny more av me duty?" Rourke demanded hoarsely at last.

"You have done your full duty, captain," Donald Carrick assured the tug's master.

"Then it's time to find out what we can be learning from that—begging your pardon, sir-r!—that dhirty haythen scoundhrel. I've bro-oken his ar-rm, but I'll be breaking his hear-rt av he doesn't begin tellin' all about himself and his dhirty wor-rk!"