The tough guys looked at one another, at Roscoe, and at the array of objects being pointed at them. More bewildered than anything else, they dropped their arsenal of weapons and raised their hands into the air.
"That's smart," Gabe told them. "Francis, get around behind and disarm them."
"That'll be a pleasure," Francis said.
"Then we'll tie them up and stow them below."
Roscoe snarled. "Okay, okay," he said. "But you wait'll my brother gets his hands on you."
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
In the Pacific Ocean just outside the Golden Gate two San Francisco Police launches sliced through the water toward a distant fast-moving smudge of smoke. In the bow of the leading launch stood McCorkle, shading his eyes to scan the horizons. He pointed toward the smoke and the launches picked up speed to go charging after it. McCorkle took out his notebook and made a note.
Elsewhere in the Pacific, Francis stood in the bow of the San Andreas and pointed toward a distant motionless smudge of smoke. "That's probably the Sea Wolf."
Gabe said, "Okay, everybody knows what to do."
"Get killed," Vangie said.
Down in the hold Roscoe and his gang sat roped and gagged on the floor. Water was starting to slosh around on the floorboards.
Roscoe grunted. His eyes went wide with alarm as he watched the water run across the decking. He began to thump his heels on the boards. The rest of the gang followed suit, and they got a pretty good drum chorus going, accompanied by strangled grunts. But it didn't seem to be doing any good. There was no sign anyone up on deck could hear them.
Miles to the south, the police launches closed slowly with the fast-moving smudge of smoke.
The motionless smudge of smoke to the north was coming into view of the San Andreas, close enough now to reveal the ship beneath it: Sea Wolf-rough, scaly, rusty, dark, grim, ominous.
Vangie, watching it loom ahead of them, closed her eyes and leaned faintly against the foremast, shaking her head dismally.
Slowly the two ships converged.
Captain Flagway uttered slurred suggestions having to do with the placement of ropelines. Francis and Ittzy waited by the rails while Flagway guided the ship, lurching and heeling, into a position approximately broadside to Sea Wolf. Lines flew across to lash the ships together.
Gabe had reloaded everything that passed for a gun and distributed them all among his crew. He stood now with one of Roscoe's huge revolvers in his belt and watched cautiously while mangy-looking sailors moved forward to Sea Wolf's rusty rail and tossed several planks across to make a bridge between the two ships' decks.
There was a moment of silence, then, when nothing at all happened. Gabe could feel the tension in his own unlikely crew; Francis trying to look mean, Vangie trying to look tough, Captain Flagway trying to look sober, and Ittzy
Gabe glanced around. Ittzy was just sort of standing there, unconcerned. Gabe wondered how the little man would get out of this one, and whether or not any of the rest of them would ride out of it all on his coattails.
There was somebody coming. Gabe faced Sea Wolf again.
A heavy-set gent with an eyepatch and a hook for a hand had appeared. A marlin spike was stuck in the thick rope holding up his trousers, and what looked like a rope burn circled his neck. He came thumping across to the San Andreas on one of the planks, jumped down onto the deck, and stood glaring around, sizing everybody up.
"He is meaner-looking than Roscoe," Vangie whispered.
Captain Flagway sighed. "I wish I was in Baltimore."
The big man with the eyepatch and the hook and the Marlin spike gradually narrowed in on Gabe, fixed him with his eye, and said, "Where's Roscoe?"
Gabe moved forward, mostly because he so much wanted to move back. "Roscoe's below," he said. "You his brother?"
"Me?" Chuckling, the big man shook his head and said, "I ain't that tough. I'm First Mate Crung."
Gabe said, "Well, where's Percival?"
"You shouldn't call him that," First Mate Crung said softly. "He mought hear you. Captain Arafoot is who he prefers to be."
"Well, where is he?"
"Captain Arafoot never leaves his cabin at sea."
Gabe started to grin. "Seasick, huh."
"Naw. It's just that every time he comes out he kills two or three guys, and we can't afford to lose crew that fast."
Vangie uttered a faint moan.
Well, it was no time to turn back. And the San Andreas had gone just about as far as she could. She was settling in the water-even a landlubber could see that much. Gabe said bleakly, "Well, I'll go over to him then. Meanwhile why don't you get your crew to start moving that wagon over to your ship? We're a little short-handed over here."
Crung frowned around at the deck. Ittzy, Francis, Flagway, Gabe, Vangie. Nobody else around. "So I see."
Vangie grabbed Gabe's sleeve. "Don't go."
"Vangie, when you're caught in a rising flood you don't just sit down and pray for drought. I got to." And he stepped past Crung, walked across the planks onto the rusty deck of the steamship, and stepped aside to let the half-dozen crewmen past who'd been summoned by Crung. They were a slinking, cowering lot, scurrying across and ducking away from him and from everybody else who stood upright. Something, he judged, had scared the guts out of all of them. It wasn't hard to guess what it was.
Vangie watched Gabe walk on board Sea Wolf as if it were a tightrope. She wanted to cry. It was such a shame. So much ingenuity and courage, devoted to a doomed mission.
She watched Gabe climb across coiled hawsers and reach the door of the captain's cabin. He knocked briskly and waited.
Even from here she could hear the sudden roar that boomed from the cabin. She shrank back and felt herself wanting to cower just like Captain Arafoot's crew.
Gabe pulled the door open and strode into the cabin. She watched with one eye. He'd left the door ajar behind him, but she couldn't see into the darkness within.
The roar increased to a ROAR.
Meanwhile, the Arafoot crew pushed and shoved, sweating and whining. They were trying to maneuver the gold wagon toward the planks that bridged the two ships, but the wagon weighed close to three tons and wasn't very helpful. When they finally got it away from the stack of hay bales, it began to roll in the wrong direction-toward the windward rail.
Ittzy leaped onto the wagon and grabbed the brake handle.
After that Ittzy stayed on top of the wagon to steer with the wagon-tongue and stay close to the brake. The crewmen hustled and groaned and heaved and sweated, and slowly the wagon moved toward the planks.
Vangie saw the activity out of the corner of her eye while she watched the dark doorway of Captain Percival Arafoot's cabin. Her hand was to her mouth. What could be going on in there?
Suddenly Gabe came pelting backwards out of the cabin as if he'd been nudged in the chest by a railroad engine doing ninety miles an hour. He tumbled head over heels across the deck.