“One a young lad named Burnsey,” added Declan.
“The other a tall gaunt fellow,” added Ransom, “with red iron for hair and rings on every finger?”
“You’ve seen Davenport?” asked one of the crewmen, slapping the other on the arm. “They’ve seen Davenport, Gil!”
“He’s missing all right,” said the other man who unlocked the cell door and bowed with a wave, actions meant to mock them. “Now gentlemen, cause us no trouble; captain wants you topside, he does. Come along. Davenport and Burnsey—they’re the captain’s problem, not ours!”
“But I tell you the man was mad with the disease,” countered Ransom, stopping before this crewman. “You men are at risk. Your captain is putting you all at risk of death not to heed us.”
“No one’s to speak badly of Captain Smith, you!” shouted the second crewman.
“Do you think when all hell breaks loose on this ship and people are dropping like flies from the plague that your captain up top is going to be concerned about you down here?”
“Plague, you say again—and are ye stickin’ to that story?” asked the stouter, shorter of the two crewmen.
“It’s the truth, you fools! Every bit of it!” cried Ransom, intentionally unnerving the two big crewmen.
“It’s no wonder that old girl wants off the ship!” said the first crewman.
Declan and Thomas watched as Ransom expertly continued the plan to unsettle these two. “Why do you think I brought two doctors with me when I boarded, eh?” asked Ransom. “This is Dr. Irvin, and this Dr. Coogan, and I suppose your captain didn’t tell you that I am a Belfast constable, or that we three have chased this disease from Belfast to here—and now your shipmates, Burnsey and Davenport are dead while your captain scoffs at us.”
“If it’s true, Jeff,” said the taller of the two crewmen, “we’re pur’t-near the bottom rung here, a cut above the stokers.”
“It’s a big if,” countered Jeff with an unconvincing wobble to his voice. “I mean Mr. Murdoch and Mr. Lightoller said this fellow Ransom is a sly one, and we’re to give no quarter.”
“I thought he said no credence; to give no notice to what he says.”
“Aye, that too.”
“But if they saw Davenport out of his head with black plague, we could be next.”
Declan and Coogan boarded the lift ahead of Alastair, and as the two crewmen continued to speak of one another’s misgivings as they herded the trio of prisoners to the lift, the pair didn’t expect the affable Alastair to turn and blow a handful of finely ground coffee into their eyes.
Alastair followed up with a second complete surprise to the blinded duo and to the young doctors. Spinning his cane in hand and allowing it to slide through his fingers so that the wolf’s head was at ground level, he hooked it behind the foot of the taller crewman, stepped into him with an outstretched stiff arm, and sent him to his backside all in one fell swoop. The boys marveled at seeing Ransom in action, seeing the unsuspecting man toppled by his bear-like prisoner.
The second crewman faired even worse than his now unconscious friend as Ransom weaved expertly on his feet to the right and threw himself then to the left. Using his considerable weight against his stockier opponent, Ransom slammed the big fellow hard into the steel doorframe of the lift—sending the boys backing into one corner. The thud made such a horrible noise that Declan imagined the skull-buster must be resounding throughout the ship. With evident planning for the next blow, Ransom pulled back with his wolf’s head cane, and whacked the crewman in the back of the head even as the jailer slid down the doorframe.
“Gawd but that’ll leave a terrible headache,” Declan had shouted over the noise of the one-sided fight.
The sudden power displayed by Ransom left his young friends both in awe and fear as they winced in pain for the men that Ransom had put down in a matter of seconds
Ransom dragged the second man from the lift to lay across the other while shouting, “It’s in it we are now, lads!” He then leapt aboard the lift, wildly panting as a result of the fight.
Aboard the lift, Thomas slammed the cage door closed and sent the tiny gilded cage upwards. “Sorry, fellas, you had to see that; but those two weren’t listening to reason anymore than their captain.”
Then below them, the threesome heard the cursing and banging from one of the crewmen who’d come to.
“I imagine, lads, that you’re hearing the worse cursing you’ve ever heard—albeit muffled.”
“Where’d you get that black powder?” Thomas asked, laughing now.
“Ground African roast—coffee, boys! Sacks of it just outside my cell bars! Stuffed my pockets with it, you see… in the event it was needed.”
“And it was!” Thomas laughed.
“And so here we are,” said Declan, taking a deep breath and smelling the coffee that had dusted them, “three refugees, escaped prisoners, aboard
As the lift took them up and up, Thomas knocked at his clothes to brush off the coffee powder. “We’re in quite the predicament. How do we avoid another arrest?”
Ransom next stopped the lift at Deck C, second class berths and deck. “You two can go on up,” he told the interns. “Give yourselves up, lads, and get on that lifeboat and off this… this plague ship.”
“What about you, Alastair?” asked Declan.
“We’re all in it together, Detective.” Thomas stepped off the lift.
Declan joined Thomas on Deck C.
“Please, lads, be reasonable; there’s no hope of getting off the ship after Queenstown when it’ll be open sea.”
“True, we’ll be in the North Atlantic by time we convince that stubborn captain up there,” said Thomas, pointing in the general direction of the overhead decks.
“We came on board as a team, we remain to fight as a team, sir,” Declan insisted.
“Thomas, is Declan speaking for you, too?”
Thomas grimaced. “He is and he’s bloody right.”
“Ah!” gasped a lady passenger stepping by. “There are children aboard, sir!”
Thomas started to apologize but the lady had rushed on.
Alastair placed both hands on Thomas’ shoulders. “Are you bloody sure?”
“I am committed, sir, completely.”
Ransom shook his head over the two and smiled, surprised at the level of dedication these two young men had shown. Declan then sent the lift straight back down the way they had come. “So lads,” Ransom then said, “how do we proceed from here?”
“First things first,” replied Declan. “Smell that?”
Thomas took in a deep breath of sea air; they’d been in what amounted to a huge coffin below the waterline where no amount of pumped in air from above could compete with the smoke and haze, and where the smell of it clung like a fetid animal.
Ransom realized what the lads most wanted at the moment, so he followed them to the rail to look out at the sea from portholes, and then he followed them out onto the aft deck amid the second-class crowds here. After finding seats about a stationary table in what amounted to a cafe on deck, they planned their strategy which all hinged on discovering either Burney’s or Davenport’s body, for surely the men were dead at this point. “Two bodies aboard might well be the clear and present evidence of danger required to move Captain Smith to action,” Declan firmly said.
“Yes,” agreed Thomas, his eyes going to the Queenstown docks off the port side where he and the others saw a lifeboat with what appeared to be Charles Lightoller and two other officers escorting that unhappy passenger off
“At which time a bullet to the head might be in order,” added Ransom. “Short of that, if Smith continues on from here… I have no clue what we will do or be forced to do. Have you, lads?”
