CHAPTER IV
A BATTLE UNDERGROUND
FIVE minutes passed; ten. The Wanderer was out of sight now beyond the trees. Ensign Stowell beckoned and his little command drew closer.
"We want those chaps," he said in low tones. "They've got a hiding place of some sort over there; probably a hut. There are six of us. Have you all got watches?"
Everyone nodded.
"Good. I'll go around to the further side, Jones will take the next post on the west, then Endicott. You stay here, Masters. Staples you will cut around to the east and Troy will go half-way. Five minutes by your watches from the time I start off you will all close in. Don't fire a shot until I give the word unless you are fired on. Then shoot to stop your man but not kill him. Make as little noise as you can, watch for your friends and don't mistake them for the men we're after. Get it, all of you? All right. Look at your watches."
The ensign rose and started eastward around the edge of the straggling grove. Jones followed, and Staples. After a minute or so Endicott and Nelson quietly went their separate ways, leaving a somewhat anxious looking youth behind in the shape of Billy Masters. Nelson kept to the sand so that his feet would tread on no crackling twigs, and, when he had traversed what he believed to be the proper distance, knelt and looked at the watch on the leather strap about his wrist. He had still two and a half minutes to wait. From his place he could see the Wanderer again. She was swinging westward now, perhaps two miles away, but one who didn't know would never have suspected her of interest in this forlorn stretch of reef and sand. Nelson thought he could make out a moving figure on her forecastle deck and wondered if it was Cochran impatiently awaiting a chance to ram a cartridge into that bow gun. Save for the roar of the waves and the plaintive cries of the gulls everything was still. The seconds ticked themselves slowly away. A minute more now to wait. A half minute—fifteen seconds—ten—five
He arose, revolver in hand, and stepped forward into the gloom of the pines. In spite of his care a twig snapped occasionally under his feet as, dodging queer, misshapen branches, he went on toward the center of the wood. The sand was soft and mixed with pine needles and clothed here and there with sad-looking vines already showing new leaves. The trees were more scattered than he had thought, and were twisted strangely by the force of the gales. After a minute he caught sight of something moving ahead of him and, with a leap of his heart, swung his automatic up. But it was Endicott. A second rustling brought Masters to view. Converging, they kept on. One by one the other members of the landing party drew near, Staples last of all. The ensign was clearly nonplused. He looked enquiringly from face to face. Each man shook his head. They stood in silence for a minute. The sound of the surf was strangely hushed here in the center of the little wood. Nelson could hear his watch tick. The ensign was looking toward the tops of the small trees, pivoting slowly on his heel. Jones was doing the same. Nelson, suspecting an airplane, looked, too, but saw nothing except the gray sky through the loose branches. The ensign raised a hand warningly and stepped a dozen paces to the eastward and repeated his queer survey, and then to the north. The others watched and waited in silence.
Suddenly they saw the ensign's roving gaze fix itself steadily on some point almost above his head. They craned their necks, but saw nothing. The ensign's head moved again and finally he walked away from them, step by step, still gazing upward. Nelson, for one, was fairly consumed by curiosity and would have remained so several moments longer had not his wandering gaze surprised Lanky Staples in the act of forming the word "wireless" with his lips. Then Nelson understood and peered eagerly into the topmost branches and, after an instant, saw what the officer had seen. Once detected the apparatus was startlingly evident. Twenty paces away from where Nelson stood, a twenty-foot sapling had been lashed to one of the taller trees. Some forty feet away another sapling, not quite so long, had been secured. Between them, invisible to a careless gaze, stretched two fine copper wires, perhaps two feet apart. From above they might have been detected, but from any point seaward they were invisible.
The ensign was stepping softly back toward the little group, a quiet smile on his lean face. "We've got them," he whispered. He bent a thumb over a shoulder. "They've dug a hole back there. See that darkest pine, the one with the branches low to the ground? There's a trap-door there. You stay here until I beckon. I want to make sure that it's unlocked. When I beckon, come quietly, but keep out of range, for they may start popping."
The ensign crept slowly off toward the indicated spot and presently they saw him stoop. A second later he straightened again and beckoned.
"Come on," said Jones softly.
They joined the ensign. Half hidden by the drooping branches of the tree, and raised a bare inch above the sandy floor of the forest, was a square of wood, some eighteen inches across, of matched boards painted gray and sprinkled with sand while still wet. The ensign pointed to a barely defined path that led toward the northern beach and looked accusingly at Jones, and Jones, observing, shook his head sadly and stuck out a dubious lower lip. But there was no opportunity for excuses, had he had any to offer, for the ensign noiselessly raised the trap, revealing a ladder which, at first startled glance, seemed to lead far into the bowels of the earth. At the foot of it was a glow of light. As their eyes grew accustomed to the gloom of the narrow shaft, revetted carefully with planking, they saw that the bottom was after all but a dozen or fourteen feet below them. And, as they looked they heard plainly the crackling of a wireless and the low sound of voices.
Ensign Stowell studied the situation a moment and then he leaned toward Jones and they spoke together softly. Jones passed on the orders. "Lanky, you come next. Then Chatty, then you, Endy. You stay up here, Billy, and watch. If any of them come up the ladder, drop 'em. All right, sir!"
The ensign slipped back the safety catch of his automatic and noiselessly lowered himself into the aperture. Jones, revolver ready, watched anxiously. Rung by rung the ensign descended. When his head had disappeared Jones followed. Those above, listening with painful intentness, heard scarcely a sound from the shaft. Staples scowled impatiently. Then he, too, set foot on the ladder, and at that instant they heard the ensign drop the last six feet and heard his voice cry:
"Hands up!"
Jones was gone now, Staples was descending rapidly and Nelson was following. The gray daylight disappeared as the latter feverishly searched for the rungs with impatient feet. From below came a dim yellow radiance. He heard the sharp report of a revolver, voices, the thud of Staples' body as he spurned the last rungs of the ladder. He looked down. Jones was flattened against the wall, but he cried a warning and dropped.
He landed on his feet, collided with Jones and sprawled sideways. Another shot rang out and he was conscious of a blow on his arm under the shoulder and of Jones leaping across him. Then he struggled to his feet. Smoke wreathed and eddied in the dim light of a single lamp that hung from a nail in one corner, and made a haze through which he saw dimly. One of the enemy lay prone on the earth floor with blood trickling from bis head. A second, a smoking pistol still in his grasp, stood with his hands above him. A third, surprised at the instrument, the receiver still in place was slewed half-way around on the box that served for chair and with drooping jaw and frightened eyes raised his hands, too, in token of surrender while his furtive glances swept the room for an avenue of escape. But the fourth and last member of the quartet was still unsubdued. It was he who had fired the last shot, and, although his revolver now lay on the ground under trampling feet, he fought fiercely, desperately in the clutch of Jones, uttering all the while the gutteral, savage growls of an animal. Back and forth they swayed, lurched against the man on the box, who cringed away from them, stumbled back to the center of the floor again. The ensign and Staples, their revolvers covering the others, watched the struggle for an instant. Then, just as Endicott joined them, Jones thrust a leg behind his adversary and sent him sprawling heavily. He was on him in the instant, astride his chest, pinioning his arms to the floor and the encounter was over. "Take that man's revolver, Troy," directed the ensign.
Nelson stepped across the prostrate enemy on the floor and approached the man who was standing. As he did so he tried to return his own weapon to its holster but found to his surprise and dismay that he could not raise it from where it hung at his side. So he used his left hand instead and took the revolver from the upstretched hand of the captive.
"Search him," said the ensign, and Nelson, giving the revolver to Endicott, went over him without finding any other weapon.
"Stand over there against the wall," commanded the officer, "and keep your hands well up. Now, you on the box, stand up."
The wireless operator had difficulty in obeying because his legs were not inclined to hold him, but Endicott helped him, more forcibly than politely, and he too was searched, without result, and sent to join his companion. By that time Jones' adversary was quiet and he was allowed to get up.
"Back to the wall there, please," said the ensign. "Jones, you and Staples watch those men. If they lower their hands an inch, shoot." He stooped over the man who lay unconscious from a blow with the butt of a revolver and examined the wound. "He will come around in a few minutes," he said. "See any water here, Troy?"
"No, sir."
"He will have to wait then. Now let's see what's here."
He went to the bench on which were the wireless instruments and papers and gave his attention to the latter. Nelson, conscious of a dull pain in his right arm, returned his revolver to the holster with his left hand and then looked curiously around him.
The subterranean apartment was much larger than he had expected to see, being fully five paces long by four wide. The walls and floor were of hard-packed sand, the roof of heavy timbers supported by posts of unpeeled cedar set at intervals along the walls. Although the floor must have been a full two feet below the ocean level it was scarcely more than moist. Three narrow two-inch boards ran from wall to wall at the end of the chamber opposite the ladder and served to hold the instruments of the wireless outfit: battery, jars, coils, detector, spark gap, condenser, switches and key. The discarded receiver swung over the edge from its cords. As was discovered later, the wires to the aerial were led along the roof and up a corner of the shaft. At the right of the bench a green tin lamp was supported by a nail driven in a post. There was no furniture except the empty box that had done duty as a chair. Some nails in the supporting posts held the coats and hats of the four conspirators. A box of safety matches had been spilled and its contents lay scattered on the ground.
Nelson had no difficulty in picking out the leader of the four, the one whose bearing at a distance had stamped him as military. It was he who had fought so desperately with Jones and who now, somewhat the worse for the encounter, stood straight against the wall, hands upheld and a sneering and haughty smile on his good-looking face. As Nelson observed him he spoke to the ensign.
"What you find there will be of no use to you," he said. "If you seek to prove us guilty of anything unlawful, sir, you are doomed to disappointment." He spoke in very precise English which might well have deceived his hearer until the latter had viewed the typically German countenance with its rather small gray eyes under heavy brows, its somewhat aquiline nose, high cheeks, carefully waxed mustaches and general expression of arrogance.
"We will let others decide that," replied the ensign coldly. He bundled the few papers and a small black leatherette-covered book together and placed them with care in the inner pocket of his jacket. Then: "Place these instruments, as many as you can, back in this box, Troy," he directed. "Hello, what's the matter with your arm?"
"I think a bullet got me, sir."
"Let me see. I should say so! Get his sleeve out of the way, Endicott. Better cut it. That's it." He made a tourniquet above the wound from which the blood was running freely. "You go on up, lad. Call Masters down to help you."
He turned then to the prisoners. "You will march to the ladder, one at a time, and wait outside. There is no use trying to escape, for a patrol boat is lying off the beach. Besides, you will be shot instantly the moment you make a break. Lieutenant Haegel, you first, please."
The man started at the sound of his name and two white disks appeared at his cheek-bones. But he bowed, smiled ironically and asked: "I may lower my hands, I presume?"
"Yes. Go first, Staples. Now, then"
Outside, Nelson, suddenly feeling faint, sat on the sand and tried to keep the trees from swaying. He saw Staples emerge, and then the German addressed as Lieutenant Haegel, but no others, for just then he toppled quietly over on the ground.