A huge cable was brought across from the Malabart, fixed through the for’ard bits. The Malabart’s screw turned, and she slowly moved ahead until she took the strain of the tow and headed back for the shelter of the islands where she had lain in wait. Down on the engine-room steps Captain Eli held his torchlight against a water mark and slowly his face lost its grimness. His eyes twinkled when he saw the ship was no longer taking in an appreciable or dangerous quantity of water. He mentally estimated the time, and muttered: “We’ll make it, sure, unless she springs another leak, or the mats fail!”
Neither accident came, and in the dawn the Malabart towed her salvage into the sheltered waters, slacked off and came alongside as the Rhodialim’s anchors splashed into the sea. Drake, going across to his own ship, where the cook was serving out hot mugs of coffee, gulped one, and eyed the remnants of the two packing cases that Forbes had opened on the Malabart’s deck. Two centrifugal pumps, stocky and powerful, squatted there in the midst of the confusion, and the engineer was directing the fitting of the steam lines.
“We’ll lash the ships alongside. It’s safe, I think, and it’s so still in these waters they’ll not chafe,” Drake said to Catlin and the engineer. And that maneuver was quickly effected. The pump suckers were hauled across and splashed into the half-drowned hull of the salvaged ship and a few minutes later two great streams of water were pouring steadily into the sea. When daylight came the diving apparatus was planted on the Rhodialim’s deck, and, guided by a water torch, the man who had abandoned diving made a descent, found the sea cocks and closed them. And now the salvage was practically assured.
It was nearly noon when Drake said to Catlin:
“Now we’ll go below and get at the bottom of this business. We’ll have a little chat with that second mate we’ve got trussed up.”
They brought the man up to the deck. He was sullen, cowed, and palpably frightened. Drake regarded him coldly for a full minute, frowning before he said:
“We brought you up to get at the truth of this. Why did you come back to the ship? Did Morris send you?”
The man started to evade, to stammer, to make palpably false statements until Drake threatened with:
“Stow that guff! The only chance you’ve got is to come across with a clean yarn. If you do that, you’ll get away clean. Now quit your waving the hook, or back below you go, until I can hand you over to the shore police in Piræus. If it suits you better to talk Greek—— Christophe, come here and tell me what this man says. I want to get it straight.”
Christophe came, added his own urgings to overcome the man’s reluctance, and then listened with a dry grin to a voluble confession. Now and then he interrupted with a question, and although Drake understood the gist of the mate’s words, Christophe finally turned and in his own way told what he had learned.