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Page 55
The boys gulped queerly. Then Beany spoke up boldly.
"And don't you forget that we are your friends, too! I read a
piece once in a reader about a lion that was all tied up with
ropes and a mouse happened around and chewed him loose. You are
a colonel, but we are your friends just the same."
The Colonel burst out laughing. "Chew away, old fellow!" he said
when he could speak. "In the meantime let's get ready to leave."
"But, Colonel," wailed Porky, who never forgot anything and who
had an amount of curiosity that later nearly lost the Colonel one
of his "tools," "--but, Colonel, what about the mate?"
"By Jove, I forgot I promised to tell you about him! Well, two
or three times Captain Greene thought his traps looked as though
some one had been going through them, but he had everything
locked up, and special keys made. These were on him night and
day. But, you see, the mate knew a trick worth two of that. As
he had the run of everything, he simply doped the cup of coffee
the Captain always took before going to bed, and, while the man
was under the influence of the drug, he simply went through
things. Fortunately he was unable to find some papers that he
was most anxious to got hold of, and in the meantime the Captain
spoke to the ship's doctor about feeling queer and lazy in the
morning.
"Because everybody is suspicious of everything out of the beaten
track these days, the doctor took to watching things a little on
his own hook. He finally analyzed some of the coffee, and that
put him on tile right track. A smart lad, that doctor, I can
tell you! But it looked as though the mate smelled a mouse. For
days the Captain slept normally, while I commenced to get a dose
of the same medicine. I did not know what was happening in the
Captain's cabin, and no one was watching me. One night the
doctor came in just after I had had my last cigar and sat talking
to me. Blamed if I didn't go to sleep sitting bolt upright
talking to him! He laid me down on the bunk, and my cigar stub
came in for analysis. There was more dope! Fact! Things got
pretty thick along about then. No one suspected the mate, but we
suspected everybody else on the ship almost. Then little things
commenced to happen to the ship's machinery. One little thing
after another broke down. We seemed to be regular bait for
submarines. He had some way of signaling them other than the
ship's wireless. It is certain that he never got hold of that,
and he did not succeed in putting it out of commission if he
tried to do so. We don't know whether he did try or not.
"Then one night or one morning, rather, the doctor was found
unconscious just outside the Captain's door. When he came to, he
said he had felt uneasy about things, because nothing had
happened for several days, so he thought he would take a look
around. He was in his stocking feet, and just as he reached the
Captain's cabin, he saw a form ahead of him against the white
door. He approached cautiously, but could not tell whether the
person saw him or not. He did, all right. As soon as the doctor
was within striking distance, the shadow struck and down went the
doctor. He was hit with some padded weapon a glancing blow that
merely knocked him out for a few hours. If it had struck full--
well, we would have been shy one good doctor.
"When he was all right again, we put our heads together, and
decided to bait the midnight visitor with some bogus papers. Of
course we still did not have the least suspicion as to the real
source of the trouble.
"That mate was in our confidence, and was at all our
consultations. We followed clew after clew suggested by him.
And I will say they were good ones. We found part of the missing
papers sewed into the bedding roll of a soldier who happened to
be saddled with a jaw-breaking German name, the hangover from
some ancestors. We trotted him off to the brig, intending to
execute him later. Then we found a trinket belonging to the
Captain in the pocket of one of the sailors, a Swede. The idea
was, you see, to scatter our attention.
"I don't know where we would have ended if it hadn't been for a
trick of the Captain's. He told the mate, and everybody else he
could get hold of, that he had an ulcerated tooth, and was going
to take a sleeping powder. He had some powdered sugar all fixed
up. The mate was the only man in the cabin at the time, and the
Captain said all at once something came over him as though a
voice had shouted, 'Here is the man!'
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