The Ocean Wireless Boys on the Atlantic

“Well, I suppose we ought to be glad to have the chance to get abroad at all,” muttered Raynor, continuing the conversation whose record began in the last chapter.

“Yes, indeed, we’re lucky fellows,” said Jack cheerfully.

“Yes, it’s a fine old city and all that,” admitted Raynor rather grudgingly, “and I’ve certainly enjoyed my stay here; but I’d have liked to look about a little more. I wonder if there isn’t some place where they have machinery to show?”

“Gracious! I must say you’re a barbarian. Can’t you see all the machinery you wish in that greasy, fire-spitting old engine room of yours, without wanting a sight of more?”

“Well,” retorted Raynor, “would you trade one of those ‘old masters,’ as they call them, for a dandy set of modern instruments to put in your wireless room at home?”

Jack was fairly stumped. He broke into a laugh.

“That’s not a fair way of putting it,” he said after a minute. “I like monkeying with wireless as much as you do with machinery, but I can enjoy other things.”

“So can I. An ice-cream soda, for instance.”

“I’m with you there,” agreed Jack, “but we’ll have to wait for that.”

“Yes, till we get back to the U.S.A. The stuff they sell you for soda here wouldn’t be offered you by a bankrupt druggist in Skeedunk with bats in his belfry.”

Jack broke into a laugh, which suddenly changed into a quick exclamation of astonishment.

“Hark!” he cried.

“What’s the matter?” breathlessly from Raynor. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“You didn’t? You must be – there it is again.”

This time it was Raynor’s turn to start.

“I heard it all right then,” he exclaimed. “It was – ”

“A woman screaming.”

“That’s what. Gracious, what’s the matter?”

“It’s off down that street there,” decided Jack, pointing a little distance ahead where a small street branched off the main thoroughfare and skirted a small, unlighted park. “Come on,” he shouted to Raynor, and was off.

“What are you going to do?” called Raynor.

“Find out what’s the trouble. There’s something serious the matter.”

Suddenly the cries stopped as abruptly as if a hand had been clapped over the mouth of the person uttering them.

“There’s no time to lose,” panted Jack, sprinting.

“I’m with you,” gasped Raynor, running at his companion’s side.

The two lads dashed around the corner. Before them lay a narrow, gloomy street, edged by the dark trees of the little park, which, at that time of night, was, of course, deserted.

At first glance, nothing out of the ordinary appeared. Then they suddenly saw the headlights of an automobile. As suddenly, the lights vanished. They had been switched off by somebody.

“There’s where the trouble is,” cried Jack, and was conscious of a wish that he had some sort of weapon with him. They were rushing into they knew not what danger; but Jack was no quitter. Some woman was in trouble, and that was enough for him.

The same was the case with Raynor. Both lads, typical Americans, lithe-limbed, stout of heart and muscle, and with grit to spare, didn’t give a thought to the danger they might be incurring by their daring dash to the rescue. The mere idea that they were needed urgently was enough.

“Some ruffians are attacking the auto!” came from Jack as they drew closer.

“Yes. Look! There’s a woman in the car. Two of them,” added Raynor.

“They’ve been held up.”

“Looks that way.”

As the two boys neared the car, the whole scene became clear to them. It was a limousine and three men, two on one side and one on the other, were poking revolvers into the windows of the enclosed part. As the boys came up, the chauffeur, who till then had been paralyzed by fear, leaped from his seat and dashed off, taking the low stone wall, surrounding the park, at one bound.

“The great coward! He might have been a big help to us, too,” exclaimed Jack with indignation as he saw this.

“Yes, it’s three to two, and they are armed,” cried Raynor.

The next moment, with a startling yell they attacked two of the men simultaneously. One of them went down with a crash under Jack’s powerful right swing before he could do anything to defend himself, for none of them had noticed the approach of the two American lads.

The fellow’s revolver went spinning over the wall and fell with a ring of metal out of his reach. In the meantime, Raynor was not having such an easy time with the man he had tackled. This fellow was a heavily-built specimen of dock lounger, or worse, with a Belgian cap on his head and a handkerchief tied over the lower part of his face.

As Raynor rushed him, he seized the young engineer in an iron grip and pressed a weapon to his side.

“Fool, to interfere! This is your last moment on earth!” he snarled.

From the interior of the limousine, two women, one elderly and the other young, looked out, paralyzed with alarm. Too frightened to scream, they sat stock still as they saw what was about to happen.

CHAPTER XVI

AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Jack saved the day.

With muscles of steel, tensed like tightly coiled springs, he leaped on the back of the fellow whose revolver was pressing against Raynor’s side, and threw his arms about his neck. Choked and dazed, the man toppled over backward and fell with a crash to the concrete walk.

“Quick, old fellow, get his revolver before he can get up,” choked out Jack.

Raynor, recovering from his struggle, bent over and picked up the weapon and stood with it ready for action. Just as he did so, the third man, who up to now had been deprived of action from surprise at the quickness of the whole thing, came to himself and made a rush for Jack.

Before Jack could turn, the fellow had seized him and knocked him over. At the same instant, in the distance, they heard the shrill screaming of whistles.

“Les gendarmes!” shouted the man who had knocked Jack over.

The two recumbent men, aroused from their stupor by their fright at the approach of the police, gathered themselves up, and the three sped away, running at top speed across the little park where all was dark and shadowy.

In the meantime, the cowardly chauffeur, who had been watching from behind a tree, saw that the day was saved, and began to consider what he should do to save himself and his reputation. He had plainly deserted his employer’s wife and daughter, frightened out of his wits when the three ruffians demanded the women’s diamonds as they were on their way home from the opera. But now he leaped the wall again and shouted to the women that he had merely gone to summon the police, seeing that the boys had the case well in hand. Then he jumped to the seat, and, not wishing to face a police examination himself or involve his employer in one, he turned on full power and sped away.

Hardly was he out of sight, than there appeared a detachment of Antwerp policemen, led by an officer running at full speed toward the boys. Some timid householder had heard the screams and shouts, but, too timorous to venture out himself, had telephoned the nearest station; and the sudden appearance of the officers was the result.

“Bother it all,” exclaimed Jack, “here come the police. Although they’d have been welcome a while back, we don’t want them now.”

“Why not?” asked Raynor, not unnaturally.

“Well, we have a very important letter to the captain with us. If the police get hold of us, they’ll want to do a whole lot of questioning, and goodness knows what time we’ll get back.”

“What shall we do?”

“Take to our heels, I guess. It doesn’t look very honest, but we must get that letter to the captain to-night.”

“That’s so; he said he’d sit up and wait for us,” responded Raynor.

“That is why I’m so anxious not to be detained. Come on.”

The two boys set off, running at top speed.

“Keep in the shadow of the wall,” said Jack; “we don’t want them to see us.”

But that is just what the police did do. Their leader happened to be keen of eye and almost instantly he detected the two fleeing forms. He shouted something in French.

The boys kept right on. They ran like greyhounds. But the police were fleet of foot, too.

Then the boys heard behind them a series of sharp, yapping barks.

“What in the world are those dogs for?” asked Raynor pantingly.

They had passed the park now and were running through a street bordered with dark houses. Jack’s reply was startling.

“They’re police dogs!”

“Police dogs?”

“That’s right. They have them in New York, too, and I remember reading in the paper that they were imported from Belgium.”

Shouts came from behind them.

They were in French, but the boys readily guessed their import. As if to emphasize their cries, the police, who believed not unnaturally that they were in pursuit of the miscreants who had disturbed the midnight peace, drew their revolvers.

Bullets spattered at the heels of the boys.

“We’ve got to stop,” panted Raynor.

“If we do, we may get shot,” gasped Jack. “Quick, in here.”

He seized Raynor’s arm and pulled him inside an iron gate in a high wall that surrounded a garden, in which stood a pretty, old-fashioned house. It appeared to be unoccupied.

“We’re in a fine pickle now,” muttered Raynor.

“Yes, I’m sorry we ran. If they catch us now, we’ll have an awful time explaining.”

Raynor shuddered.

“You don’t mean they’ll send us to jail?”

“I don’t know. I’ve heard a lot about these foreign police. They’re likely to do anything.”

“And we can’t speak their language,” added Raynor. “That makes it worse.”

“I’m afraid that it does,” agreed Jack. “But hush! here they come.”

Headed by the nosing, sniffing, rough-coated police dogs, held in leashes, the police came running down the street. The boys had outrun them and hoped that by crouching in the shelter of the wall within the iron gate, they could throw them off the track.

But in this, they had calculated without the dogs!

As the dogs came level with the gate, they stopped and sniffed suspiciously. The police behind them began to talk excitedly, waving their arms and talking with their hands as well as their tongues.

“It’s all off now,” whispered Jack.

“Couldn’t we run up that gravel walk and get back of the house?” breathed Raynor.

Jack shook his head. He didn’t dare to talk.

Suddenly the leader of the police squad pointed to the iron gate.

“Open it and search the house and grounds thoroughly,” he said in French. “These are desperate criminals, it is clear. Great credit will come to us, mon braves, can we catch them.”

The iron gate was pushed open.

The next moment the two American boys with beating hearts stepped forward and faced this body of men, who, it was plain, believed Jack and his chum to be miscreants of the blackest sort.

CHAPTER XVII

RAYNOR’S UNLUCKY POCKET

It was the most unpleasant predicament of his life in which Jack now found himself. Naturally, his chum felt the same way about it. The irony of the situation was irritating.

Having chased away, at the risk of their own lives, some desperate crooks, the lads who had done all this found themselves accused of being nefarious characters.

“They are Anglise,” exclaimed one of the men as he turned a bull’s-eye lantern on them.

“No, sir, we are not. We are Americans,” exclaimed Jack proudly.

The leader of the gendarmes laughed in an amused way.

“Your country should be proud of you,” he said in good English with a provoking sarcasm.

In fact, neither Jack nor Raynor looked at his best just then. Their caps were gone, lost in the struggle with the would-be robbers, their hair was tousled, perspiration streamed down their faces and their garments were torn and dusty.

Jack felt all this, and the knowledge of it did not tend to cheer him. Had he been a policeman and known no more of the facts than did the gendarmes, he felt that he would have been justified in acting in the same way. But he determined to try to explain the case.

“We are off the American tank steamer Ajax,” he said. “To-night we had an important errand in this section of the city. On our way back to the ship we heard screams, and investigated. We found three men trying to rob an old lady and a younger one who were seated in the closed part of a blue limousine.

“After a struggle we disarmed them and put them to flight. Just as you people came up, the chauffeur, who ran away during the fight, reappeared, jumped into his seat and drove off. We were in a hurry to get back to our ship and so, foolishly, as I can see now, we ran off, thinking that if we stayed we might be detained and questioned.”

“Is that all?” asked the officer calmly.

“That is all,” responded Jack.

“It is enough.”

“Enough for what?” The man’s tone nettled Jack in spite of himself.

“Enough to secure you both a lodging in the prison of the city to-night.”

The boys looked aghast.

“What! Do you mean to make us prisoners and lock us up?” asked Jack, who had hoped that at the worst nothing more would be done than to question them and, having ascertained the truth of their stories, set them free.

The officer nodded and then gave a brisk command. At his words, a policeman took hold of both boys by the right and left arms, twisting them back so that if they made any great struggle to escape, their arms would be broken.

It was not till then that the full seriousness of their positions broke over the boys. Raynor gave a wrench to free himself of the grip of the police, but an excruciating pain that followed made him quickly desist.

“Keep cool, old fellow,” advised Jack, “this will all be straightened out.”

Then he turned to the English-speaking policeman.

“Of course we can send a message to the ship, and then you can speedily ascertain that we are telling the truth and set us free,” he said bravely, but with a sinking heart.

To his dismay the reply was a decided negative.

“You will be allowed to tell your story to the examining magistrate in the morning,” he said coldly. “And in the meantime, allow me to inform you that if it isn’t any more probable than the one you told me, – well – ”

He shrugged his shoulders and twisted his sharp-pointed, little black mustache.

“But, great heavens, man, it’s the truth!” burst out Jack.

“No doubt, no doubt. All our prisoners tell us that,” was the reply.

Suddenly the little officer’s eyes fell on Raynor’s coat. It bulged conspicuously in one of the pockets. He stepped quickly to the American lad’s side and, with a cry of triumph, drew out a revolver.

It was the one Raynor had taken from the foot-pad; but its discovery made things look black for the boys. The officer’s eyes narrowed. He looked at them with a sneer.

“So,” he said, holding up the pistol, “you two honest, law-abiding lads carry pistols abroad at night! This discovery alone, messieurs, proves that your story is a concoction from beginning to end. If you really come off a ship, you are samples of the sort of sailors we don’t want here.”

Jack tried in vain to be heard, but a wave of the hand enjoining silence and a crisp command to the subordinate police silenced him.

The next moment, held as if they had been desperate characters, the two boys found themselves, under armed guard, being marched through the sleeping city of Antwerp to prison cells.

Here was a fine end to their evening of adventure. But protests, they knew, would be worse than silence, and so they submitted to being ignominiously marched along without uttering a word. Beside them strutted the little officer, vastly proud of his “important captures,” word of which he took care reached the newspapers that night.

CHAPTER XVIII

IN DURANCE VILE

The boys passed a sleepless night in a none too clean cell. A sentry paced up and down in front of the bars, as if they stood committed for some heinous offense. To keep their spirits up, they tried to make light of the affair. But in that dreary place, with the stone-flagged floor and the steel grating, it was pretty hard to be lively.

“Never mind; it won’t last long, and think what a laugh we’ll have on these fool police once we are out,” said Jack with a dismal attempt at a chuckle.

“Yes; but in the meantime, they have the laugh on us,” objected Raynor with grim humor. “Anyhow, I’m not sorry. Those ruffians would certainly have robbed those two women if we hadn’t done something,” he added.

“We made our mistake in not standing our ground and facing the police,” decided Jack.

“I guess they’d have gathered us in on general principles, we being the only people in sight. Their motto seems to be, ‘We’ve got to collar someone and it might as well be you.’”

“That’s the way it appears to be,” agreed Jack with a sigh.

It seemed as if that night would never pass. But, like everything else, it came to an end at last. With a great clanking and parade of police, the boys were marched forth and ordered into a covered wagon. Then they were jolted off over the cobbled streets and finally ordered to alight in front of a building that looked as if the old burgomasters of the place might have transacted business there.

It was, in fact, one of the ancient guild-houses of the city, and bore a coat of arms on its ornate, time-stained front. Inside, it was cool and dark, with scrupulously clean floors and furnishings. Had the boys been in any more pleasant situation, they would have admired the quaint old carved beams and the stone-work enriched by clever, bygone masons’ tools. But just then they had no eye for architecture.

They were ushered into a large room whose groined ceiling and dark oak panels made it appear that only twilight ever filtered through the stained-glass windows, set in frames of carved stone. At one end, behind a high desk of dark, shiny wood, which looked as if it were as old as the building, sat a dried-up dignitary with a skin like parchment, peering through a great pair of heavy, horn-rimmed spectacles.

In front of him was a huge pewter ink-stand with pens sticking up in it like quills upon a porcupine. Before this personage, whom they guessed to be the officiating magistrate, the boys were marched with much pomp and ceremony. Then the little mustached official who had played the leading part in their arrest stepped forward.

With a bow and a flourish he explained the case. To the boys’ astonishment, too, they saw their caps handed up. Evidently the police had found them and taken them up as evidence. This was a hopeful sign, for in each cap the owner’s name was inscribed.

“They’ll know that we told the truth about our names, anyway,” said Jack, nudging Raynor.

At this juncture there was a sudden disturbance in the back of the court room, and in broke a burly, sun-bronzed man. It was Captain Bracebridge, the last man in the world the boys wanted to have see them in such a position. They crimsoned with mortification and felt ready to sink through the floor.

The captain burst through a line of small Antwerp police, who tried to restrain him, like a runaway horse through a crowded street. He came straight up to the boys and gasped out breathlessly:

“Read about it in the papers and rushed straight here. What’s the truth of it all?”

“Then you don’t believe that police story?” asked Jack gratefully.

“Of course not. Tell me all about it.” He turned to a short, sallow man, carrying a big bag, who had followed him in, like the dust in the trail of the whirlwind. “This is a lawyer. He’ll straighten this thing out in a brace of shakes.”

The lawyer made a long harangue to the court, of which none of the Americans understood a word; but apparently he had asked leave to take his clients into a consulting room, for presently they were ushered into a chamber which might have been, and probably was, used for the purpose in medieval times. They were in the midst of their story, when another disturbance occurred outside. A handsome automobile had driven up, out of which stepped a portly personage with dignified, white whiskers, gold-rimmed eye-glasses, top-hat and frock-coat.

“Monsieur La Farge, the head of the government railways,” whispered the loungers in the court room as he hastened down the aisle and whispered to the magistrate, who received him with great deference.

The next moment he, too, was escorted into the consulting room. To the boys’ amazement, he rushed up to them and, with continental demonstrativeness, began wringing their hands up and down and uttering a tirade against the police, the methods they employed and the force in general.

“You are interested in this case, sir?” inquired Captain Bracebridge.

“Interested!” M. La Farge appeared to be about to explode. “The police! Bah! Dunderheads! Idiots! Assassins! These boys saved my wife and daughter from ruffians who would rob them, and – ”

“Your wife and daughter?” exclaimed the boys in one breath. Their case was certainly taking a startling turn, for already their attorney had whispered who the newcomer was and his high rank.

“Yes, they told me about it on their arrival home last night, and also about the cowardly, foolish actions of Alphonse, the chauffeur, whom I have discharged. When I read in the papers of the arrest of two American lads and the story that they told, despite which the police had arrested them, I was angry, furious. I knew then that the deliverers of my dear ones had been arrested like felons,” exploded M. La Farge. “I hastened here at once to make what reparation I could for such an act of the idiots, the police! Bah!”

“Perhaps the police were not altogether to blame,” said Jack as the peppery M. La Farge concluded his angry harangue. “We should not have run away, and then perhaps we should not have been arrested.”

“It was all the fault of that foolish chauffeur in driving away as he did,” exclaimed M. La Farge. “But in one sense I am glad all this has happened, although I am deeply mortified at the same time. Had it not been for this occurrence, I should never have known whom to thank for the brave act you performed. I could not have rewarded you – ”

He drew out a check book. But both boys held up expostulating hands.

“None of that, if you please, sir,” said Jack.

“He speaks for me, too,” said Raynor. “We’d do the same thing over again, if it had to be done.”

“Police and all?” smiled Captain Bracebridge.

“I beg your pardon,” said M. La Farge, re-pocketing the check book. “I should have known better than to offer money for such a service; no money could repay it. But I must think of some other way. However, the first thing to be done is to extricate you from this unpleasant position and obtain the apologies of the police.”

For a man of M. La Farge’s influence, this was easy to do; and the boys certainly felt that the humble apology that the little mustached officer tendered them almost on his knees was due them.

That evening they were the rather embarrassed guests of M. La Farge at dinner at his home. In order not to make them feel uneasy, there were no guests outside the immediate family; but both boys had to endure what was for them quite an ordeal when the pretty Miss La Farge and her handsome, gray-haired mother thanked them again and again, and almost wept in apologizing for the action of the police. Then, seeing that the boys were really troubled by their thanks, they tactfully turned the subject, and the boys, whose bashfulness soon wore off, enjoyed a jolly evening. After dinner Miss La Farge, who was an accomplished musician, played and sang for them, including in her program a medley of American airs.

As they were leaving, receiving many cordial and pressing invitations to come again, their host presented each of them with a small flat package.

“A slight remembrance,” he said. “It is inadequate to express the gratitude of my wife, my daughter and myself, but perhaps it will help you in recollecting that you always have three warm friends in Belgium. Do not open them till you reach the ship.”

The boys stammered their thanks and then, after more warm good-nights, they parted from their kind and grateful hosts. That they walked briskly to the ship may be imagined. They were on fire with eagerness to see what the packages contained. They hastened to Jack’s cabin and opened them, and then gasped with delight. Inside each was a gold watch and chain; but, more wonderful than this, was the inscription under each lad’s name, “In grateful and unfading remembrance of the night of – from their steadfast friends, the family of M. La Farge.”