metchanic one? I wouldn't letcha go alone, 'cept I knows be ixperience that pertaterstoors ain't like ord'n'ry men.'
'I'll manage all right,' Patricia assured him. 'Hurry up about it, and I'll meet you under that awning in front of the saloon. Then we can arrange to tackle the men who're loading the gold.'
'Righ-char, miss.... Remember that companion opposyte where we come over the side? Go dahn — yer mos' likely ter find the galley aft.'
Orace accompanied her as far as the top of the companion, and there they separated. He had unostentatiously bagged the most ticklish job in the programme for himself; for he had already located the engine- room companion aft of the hatch where the Tiger Cubs were working, and to reach it unobserved he would have to travel most of the way hanging over the side of the ship by his fingers, returning by the same method. But this fact he did not consider it his duty to disclose.
As soon as the girl had disappeared, he climbed over the rail and let himself down out of sight. In his younger days, Orace had been able to awe recruits with displays of gymnastic prowess, and he had not yet lost the knack. He worked swiftly and smoothly along the side, and did not halt until his ears told him that he was level with the after hatch. There he paused and edged himself up till he could peep over the coaming. He saw a crate go rattling down into the hold, and then someone unseen said something, and one of the men went to the starboard rail.
'Wot's 'e sy?' queried the man at the winch.
The man at the rail passed on the inquiry, and presently was able to answer it.
'Ses three more journeys'll finish it.'
'Tell 'im ter 'urry 'em all along. The Old Man's frettin' ter get orf.'
The command was duly relayed, and the man at the winch spat on his hand and sent the cable swishing down for a second load.
Orace let himself down to arm's length again and went on. The Tiger Cubs were working quicker than they had anticipated, and three more journeys, with at least two, if not three, of the ship's boats on the job, wouldn't take such a long time. It was not an occasion for dawdling.
Orace got well round to the stern and put a large ventilating cowl between himself and the men at the hatch before he ventured to return to the deck. Then he made a quick dash for the engine-room companion, and reached it unnoticed.
It is difficult to move silently over iron gratings, but Orace's bare feet enabled him to go down unobserved until there was only a short ladder to descend before he reached the level of the motors. There was only one man below, and he was bending over, tinkering with a bearing. Orace had got that far before the man straightened up to look for a spanner, and in so doing discovered his peril. The engineer let out a shout which reverberated deafeningly in the confined space, but which would have been hardly audible outside, and rushed.
As he came on he wrestled with his pocket, where his gun must have got stuck. That fluke gave Orace all the respite he needed, and saved him having to shoot. He jumped, and his feet struck the engineer full in the chest. The two went down together, but the engineer's body broke Grace's fall, and the head which in a few seconds was pounded into insensibility against a cylinder block was not Orace's....
Orace was about to leave — was, in fact, already climbing — when he had an inspiration, and returned. The stunned mechanic was of Orace's own build. Orace commandeered the man's cap and blue jeans, and, finding a convenient locker, pushed the engineer into it and turned the key. Thus equipped. Orace felt that he had a decided advantage — he would be able to move more freely about the ship, and, if he encountered any Tiger Cubs, he would be safe from challenge in the darkness until he had got close enough to make his distaste for their society effectively evident. Once more he began to make his way to the deck.
He was halfway there when he heard the tramp of heavy feet coming toward him. Grace turned and scuttled back. He kept his head averted and bent low over the nearest motor. The feet grated on the companion above him, and halted.
'All right down there, Joseph?'
'Aye, aye, sir,' replied Orace in a muffled voice, without looking up.
'We'll be off in less than an hour. You needn't bother about running on the electric motors going out — we want to get off as quickly as we can.'
'Aye, aye, sir.'
'I'll ring down as soon as the last load's being taken in, and you can start up then and keep running till we go.'
The footsteps retired along the deck overhead, and Orace breathed again.
He had noticed the iron door behind him, but had assumed that it led only to the fuel tanks. As a matter of fact, it did, but there was also a narrow alley running between the tanks and continuing forward till it reached the foot of an emergency companion. He heard the slight click of the door opening, and quickly bowed his head over the engines again.
This man did not speak; but Orace, apparently intent on inspecting a spark plug, could hear the stealthy slither of feet over the greasy metal, and the hairs in the scruff of his neck prickled. There was something sinister about that wary approach — the man behind him moved so silently that Orace would never have noticed the sound if he had not been expecting it. The door itself had been unlatched so cautiously that that noise also would probably have escaped him if he had not been listening for the retreat of the man who had spoken to him.
The stealthy feet drew nearer, step by step, while Orace kept his back turned and went on poring over the plug terminals. They were nearer now — only a couple of yards behind him, as far as he could judge. Another yard, and Orace gathered himself for a sudden movement. He had ceased to wonder whether the intruder regarded him as an innocent party. For some reason which he could not immediately divine Orace was suspect.
Some premonition, the prompting of a sixth sense, made him swing aside in the nick of time, and the smashing blow that had been aimed at his head whizzed past his ear and clanged on the engine casing. Orace whirled and leaped, but his feet slipped on the oily grating, and he sprawled headlong. His blunderbuss was underneath the borrowed overalls, and he had no time to fumble for it before his opponent had pounced on him and caught his throat in a deadly grip.
Except the thrill of a sporting burglary — such as a raid upon the home of a famous detective with the said detective in residence and, for preference, entertaining a select party of his fellow sleuths — there is no thrill to be compared to the thrill of a refined form of piracy.
So Patricia realized as she stole down the dimly lighted alleyway aft in search of the galley. There she was, on the Tiger's ship, with only two assistants, one of whom was temporarily hors de combat, and the odds against them were five to one, at a conservative estimate. The very forlornness of the adventure took away half its terrors, for with everything to lose — and as good as lost at the first slip — there was nothing to gain by footling and fiddling over the job. The only earthly chance of success was to blind recklessly ahead and chance the consequences. To funk the bold game would be fatal. The bold game was the only one which offered .the vaguest possibility of success — a plan such as they had set themselves to carry out could only hope to succeed if it were executed in the same spirit of consummate cheek and hell-for-leather daring as that in which it had been conceived. And that was what Patricia Holm intended to do, starting in at that very instant.
Even so, sir and madam — that was the determination which was glowing like hot steel in Patricia's brain. Orace had gone off to deal with an engineer, and Orace could look after himself as well as anybody. Having laid out the engineer, he would repair to the rendezvous, and when the girl failed to put in an appearance, after a reasonable time, he would set out in search other — incidentally disposing of any Tiger Cubs whom he encountered on the way. And, therefore, in a little while, there would be two vengeful people creeping about the ship and striking shrewd, secret blows at the enemy — here one moment, there the next, coming and going like wraiths, and leaving no more evidence of their passage than a Tiger Cub sleeping peacefully in the scuppers here and there. The girl guessed that Orace was still troubled with fears for her safety and doubts of her ability to pull her weight in the undertaking, and so, to save bothersome argument, she was going to take the bit between her teeth and leave him to fall into line behind — and, once she was started, he would have no option but to do exactly that, for the pace would be too hectic to allow any intervals for discussion.
There is this about the thrill of action, the electric omnipresence of danger, and the necessity for keeping yourself keyed up taut and ready to make lightning decisions: it takes up all the time of all your faculties and holds your brain buzzing round and round that one sole pin-point of motive. Patricia was not callous. It wasn't that she
